A group of students staged a 24-hour demonstration outside the Visva-Bharati publishing department’s office on AJC Bose Road. They were protesting the varsity’s rustication of three students at the forefront of protests against some of the actions of the vice-chancellor and his alleged bid to saffronise the campus.
The protests started with an assembly of around 100 people, representing a number of student organisations, near Minto Park, on Friday afternoon.
The demonstrators marched till the publishing department’s office. They submitted a memorandum to an official of the department.
The protesters then started a sit-in, blocking a slice of the road in front of the office.
The demonstration continued through the night and ended at noon on Saturday. Around 30 protesters sat through the night, shouting slogans and singing songs of protest.
In the morning, they distributed leaflets among pedestrians and motorists.
In the night, when the din of motorists fell silent, some protesters took to graffiti. They made stencil paintings on the boundary wall of the building that houses the Visva-Bharati unit.
The subjects ranged from the contentious citizenship thrust of the Narendra Modi regime to the plight of migrant labourers during the lock down last year.
“Whenever the energy levels dropped in the night, we took to singing and slogan shouting,” said one of the participants who spent the night at the venue.
Falguni Pan, one of the three students facing the axe, turned up at the venue around 8pm on Friday.
“The VC is treating Visva-Bharati as his fief. During the tenure of other vice-chancellors, we had direct access to them. Their doors were always open. The incumbent is rarely visible. He operates from behind closed doors,” said Pan.
