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Former Presidency students from across the world have raised the protest pitch against the campus vandalism at a time another section of the alumni seems keen to close the chapter by reposing faith in the chief minister’s promise of a fair probe.
“We call on the mentor group of the University, and (the) alumni of the institution publicly associated with the current state administration and the ruling party, to issue unambiguous public condemnations of the incident, lest their silence be construed as complicity and encourage further attacks on their alma mater,” the statement said.
Among the academicians who lent their names to the protest were Debraj Ray (New York University); Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri (retired professor of the Delhi School of Economics); Bhaskar Dutta (Warwick University); Maitreesh Ghatak (London School of Economics); Amitendu Palit, (National University of Singapore); Jayasri Dutta (Birmingham University); Rahul Ray (Boston University); Dilip Mookherjee (Boston University); and Anup Sinha (IIM, Calcutta).
On Wednesday, another forum of former Presidencians, mostly based in Calcutta, had thanked the chief minister for “openly standing by the university” while demanding an “impartial inquiry”.
Among those in that group were advocate Jayanta Mitra, fighting a legal battle for the state government; Bivas Chowdhury, the director of the Central Statistics Office; and Mamata Roy, a Calcutta University pro VC.
Calcutta University teacher Kaberi Chakrabarti, among the signatories to Thursday’s statement, explained why they are stressing the need to issue “unambiguous” statements. “In the statement issued by the mentors four days after the incident, and the resolution taken by the alumni yesterday, there is no mention that armed hooligans from outside carrying flags of the Trinamul students wing were behind the attack; something VC Malabika Sarkar said soon after the vandalism. Therefore, we feel, the statements were ambiguous.”
In the Presidency mentor group, eight of the nine members are Presidencians. Its chairman, Harvard professor Sugata Bose, could not be reached for comment.
Chowdhury did not want to attach any importance to the latest statement. “Anyone can say anything. But as the police inquiry is on, we did not want to pin blame on any political outfit. There is no ambiguity in the resolution that we took,” he said on Thursday night.
Chakrabarti also criticised the alumni association (which is allegedly soft on the government) for remaining silent when state ministers were browbeating the VC and the registrar for publicly blaming supporters of the ruling party for the April 10 vandalism.
Probe on
Officers from Jorasanko police station went to the campus on Thursday afternoon and recorded statements of the VC, Somak Raychaudhury, the head of the physics department, and dean (students) Deboshruti Roychowdhury. They took the sports department’s register to learn about the university’s collection of javelins. The attackers had allegedly come with a javelin.
Thursday’s statement said: “We… condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. We stand in complete solidarity with the vice-chancellor, students, teachers, staff and administrators of the university, who have taken a united stand against this vicious assault…. We demand of the state government that the attackers be immediately identified and punished, and adequate security be provided to prevent the recurrence of this shameful incident.”
Industries minister Partha Chatterjee had said: “I am surprised that the vice-chancellor and the registrar spoke to the media before going to the chancellor.” When VC Sarkar said she wanted to joint the students in a protest march, another minister, Subrata Mukherjee, said: “The history and geography of the VC needs to be taken into account.”
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