TRINAMUL STUDENT UNION CHALLENGES TEACHERS TO BATTLE FOR PROTEST VENUE

The historical senate hall of Calcutta University was sullied on Wednesday by a battle over who had the right to use it as a protest venue: the Trinamul's student wing or a CPM-backed forum of teachers and employees.

The teachers and employees' forum had been staging a sit-in in and around the senate hall since last week to protest the university's decision to abolish the post of finance officer. Trouble started when the CU chapter of the Trinamul Congress Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) tried to upstage the protest by occupying the space outside vice-chancellor Suranjan Das's office, sources said.

The students, led by their general secretary Saurabh Adhikari, had assembled there at 11.30am, around half an hour ahead of the scheduled sit-in by a forum of the Calcutta University Teachers' Association (CUTA) and the Calcutta University Employees' Union.

When vice-chancellor Das arrived at 12.30pm, the campus had already plunged into chaos. Das was caught in the scuffle while trying to intervene between the students and the teachers. Some witnesses said he was assaulted as he tried to get past a barricade put up by the student union.

The CU campus had been on the boil since last Thursday, when the CPM-backed forum of teachers and employees started their sit-in.

The Trinamul-affiliated employees' union had tried to counter the protest a few days ago but the move fizzled out. When Trinamul's student wing jumped into the fray on Wednesday, the senate hall erupted.

The senate hall, whose official name is Darbhanga Hall, is part of the stately Darbhanga Building. In 1908, Maharaja Rameswar Singh of Darbhanga had donated Rs 2.5 lakh to CU for a building that would house the university library. This donation, along with contributions from the central government and the university's own reserve fund, helped complete the proposed building in 1912.

Darbhanga Building used to house the University Law College, its library and some offices, besides a large space on the top floor for examinations. The structure later became CU's main administrative block.

Darbhanga Hall has been hosting meetings of the senate, the highest decision-making body of the university, since the demolition of the grand Senate House to set up the Centenary Building. The offices of the vice-chancellor and the registrar were also shifted there after the demolition of the Senate House.

The hall is the official venue of meetings of head examiners, examiners, paper-setters, moderators and teachers. The university administration sometimes allows literary groups, teachers' organisations and academic bodies to use the hall for meetings and seminars.

Sources said some students attacked members of the teachers and employees' forum when the group demanded to know why the space they had been using for the sit-in had been snatched from them. "The general secretary of CUTA, Dibyendu Pal, was dragged away and assaulted. Many others, including women, were pushed around," a witness said.

Vice-chancellor Das, who couldn't enter his office for 15 minutes, sought to restore normality by asking the forum of teachers and employees to stage the sit-in inside the senate hall while the students could continue their protest outside it.

His intervention didn't work. A group of students led by Saurabh entered the hall to disrupt the protest inside.

At 2.30pm, Saurabh and other members of the Trinamul union went around the senate hall shouting slogans like " Ei CPM dekhe ja, TMCP- r khamata (CPM, come and see the power of TMCP)". A frenzy of clapping in front of the teachers' faces added to the tension.

A witness said he saw a student glaring at a professor and screamed in front of her face: " Eta ki CPM-r party office peyechis? (Do you consider this to be an office of the CPM?)"

Some of the teachers said they were shocked at the way the students behaved with them during the agitation. "Our students are like our children. I was extremely hurt by the way some of the students looked at us. Some students passed snide remarks every time they came near us and the non-teaching staff," said Saswati Mutsuddy, a teacher in the Pali department.

Mahalaya Chatterjee, professor of economics at CU, said she found it hard to believe her students could behave in such a manner. "I was part of several movements when I was a student and I have been a teacher in this university for more than two decades. I never saw students behaving in the manner they did today."

When the commotion continued, the vice-chancellor emerged from his chamber and asked the students to stay away from the senate hall. A little later, a senior leader of the state unit of the TMCP persuaded the students to leave.

Asked why he and his supporters had entered the senate to disrupt the sit-in by teachers and employees, Trinamul student leader Saurabh said: "There is no rule that bars students from entering the senate hall."

He claimed that the clapping and staring that the teachers were subjected to inside the hall wasn't meant to hurt anyone. "But if our gesture has hurt anyone, we are sorry for that."

Saurabh had led protests last year against Roshnara Mishra, a teacher at CU's Rajabazar campus and daughter of CPM veteran and leader of the Opposition, Surya Kanta Mishra. In the Trinamul ranks, he is credited with wiping out the SFI's influence on the Rajabazar campus. His reward was the post of TMCP general secretary in charge of seven CU campuses.

Education minister Partha Chatterjee said vice-chancellor Das had told him that he wasn't assaulted. "No such incident happened, although I have sought an official report from the VC.... It is an educational institution and everybody should abide by discipline. I am ready to discuss with all sides concerned to end the CU impasse. I have told the teachers not to behave like students. They have to take classes," he told Metro.

The Trinamul student union lodged a complaint with Jorasanko police station against four members of the forum of teachers and employees, alleging that they assaulted two of its members while entering the senate hall.

A section of teachers blamed the vice-chancellor for the ugly episode that violated the sanctity of the senate hall. A senior professor said Das's failure to prevent the fracas was the outcome of not standing up to similar incidents over the years.

The lobby in front of the vice-chancellor's office and the adjoining senate hall have witnessed several agitations, including the one by the CPM-backed employees' union against former vice-chancellor Santosh Bhattacharya in the late Eighties.

Section 144 had been clamped in and around the senate hall in the wake of that incident. The restriction was remained for years and no assembly was allowed there until 2008, when Das became vice-chancellor.

"It was after Das took over that the unions, particularly the students' bodies, gradually started ignoring the restriction. Students and employees' unions have staged protests in the area around the senate hall on several occasions over the past few years. But the vice-chancellor never took any action against them," a teacher said.

When a feud between two Trinamul employees' unions had erupted in front of the vice-chancellor's office in November 2012, Das had pledged to curb protests in and around the senate hall. But in July last year, the then TMCP state president Shanku Deb Panda staged a protest there, forcing the university to adjourn a syndicate meeting midway.