The organisers of a lecture on Amartya Sen have denied the Visva Bharati authorities disallowed them from holding the lecture at its premises.
The lecture was held at the Santidev Ghosh auditorium in Bolpur’s Gitanjali Complex on August 14. The main speaker, welfare economist and social scientist Jean Dreze, spoke on “Learning from Amartya Sen.”
There were reports in the media that Visva Bharati had denied permission to hold the lecture in one of its own auditoriums.
“We were aware that Visva Bharati had its own events scheduled on the day. We never asked them for any space to hold the event, so the question of their denying does not arise,” Anil Acharya, the editor of Anustup, the organiser of the event, told The Telegraph Online on Tuesday.
On the same day of the lecture, a team from Anustup went to Sen’s residence in Santiniketan to present a copy of a special issue of Anustup on Sen.
“It took us about four to five years to come out with this issue. Not much has been written on Amartya Sen in Bengali. Since he was in Santiniketan we went to his residence and presented him with the first copy. He was unwell, running a fever but showed interest in the magazine,” Acharya said.
He also clarified that the work on the special issue was done entirely by the Anustup team and not in collaboration with any organisation. There have been media reports that the special issue was a collaborative effort between Anustup, Visva-Bharati’s economics department and the AK Dasgupta Centre for Planning and Development.
“This was entirely an effort of some individuals and nothing to do with any organisation,” Acharya said.
Visva-Bharati officials had clarified that the university’s auditoriums were booked for events of Rabindra week.