Tag Archives: Ex-student

A letter to a Vice Chancellor

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To: Mr. S. Duttagupta

Vice Chancellor, Visva-Bharati University

Santiniketan

Vice-chancellor@visva-bharati.ac.in

 

Subject : Expulsion of Ms Andrea Loseries and Mr. Shin Sangwhan

 

Dear Mr. Duttagupta

 

I write this as an alumni of Patha Bhavana, and as a member of a family with a five generation long association with the institution and the place.

My maternal grandfather, Kalimohan Ghosh, worked with Rabindranath Tagore in rural reconstruction efforts in the villages under the Tagore estates in eastern Bengal when Rabindranath was involved in overseeing these estates. Later, when he came to Santiniketan, Rabindranath brought Kalimohan to Santiniketan for helping kickstart the Sriniketan project, working with Leonard Elmhirst in the initial stages. Kalimohan’s mother was the first generation of our ancestors to live a considerable part of her life in Santiniketan. My mother Sujata Mitra was born in Santiniketan and ended her life there. My father Sukhamoy Mitra was a professor in Kala Bhavana, and he too ended his life there.

My maternal uncle, Santidev Ghosh, was with Sangeet Bhavana till he retired, and was peronsally requested by Rabindranath not to leave Santiniketan for better financial gains elsewhere. Other members of my family too have long association with the place.

I was born there and did my schooling in Patha Bhavana. My daughter, the fifth generation, did her college there.

Anyhow, I had wished to write to you about a few issues that I felt were of importance, and on which I did not get a good response from Visva Bharati earlier. These included :

  1. Research on the earliest wax cylinder recordings made by Arnold Bake, between 1925 and 1928, mostly in and around Santiniketan. These are now in London. Not enough research has been done on these. My suspicion is that these might contained unpublished voice recordings of Rabindranath, Dinendranath, Santidev, Gagan Harkara and many others. Visva Bharati should have been the best institute to be involved in research of these yet un-researched audio material and identification of those recordings. The last person I know to study some of those early recordings of Arnold Bake was late Mr. Nazir Ali Jairajbhoy. I have had some exchange with his wife Amy Katlin Jairajbhoy of California, noted for her own work on ethnographic filming and ethnomusicology including work among marginal music groups in India. She too has knowledge on the topic of her late husbands work with the Arnold Bake collection. She wrote to me that she had video recording of Dinendranath performing in Santiniketan. Anyhow Nazir Ali Jairajbhoy worked mostly with the later life recordings of Arnold Bake (made outside of Santiniketan) and not the early life recordings, made in Santiniketan. Unfortunately, I had not succeeded in getting Visva Bharati interested in this research.
  2. Better preservation and research on the manuscripts currently in possession of Visva Bharati, which include a lot of un-researched history on the circumstances under which these manuscripts came to Visva Bharati. Kalimohan Ghosh was reportedly involved in collecting some of them from surrounding villages where the original family held manuscripts were in deteriorating condition and the families in question could not tend to them. These documents needed more public awareness in preservation of our cultural heritage and needed better exposure to popular media and further research by current scholars. There is also the related issue of the Surul Inscription and its historical significance. Such items are worth being published in Archaeological and historical and geographic magazines. Items less important than them often grace the pages of National Geographic or International Archaeological magazines. It should have been the duty of people of Visva Bharati to get these invaluable artifacts and documents to the world view and fire the imagination of the younger generation on preservation of cultural heritage.
  3. Refocus on the need for research in sustainable low carbon footprint existence through the rural reconstruction unit of Sriniketan, and finding a solution to the yet unsolved dilemma for India on how to redress the economic imbalance between an exploitative urban Indian economic growth path and an exploited rural Indian economic devastation. There is no task more important than that and not just for Visva Bharati or India, but for a wide swatch of humanity across the planet. Rabindranath did not tinker with Sriniketan for satisfying a superficial hobby. It is distressing to see how far the Sriniketan effort has degenerated in the radar of Visva Bharati. I was also tempted to get Visva Bharati interested to helping out some of the chemical free organic farming efforts ongoing, and being supported by small NGOs to bring a debt free and toxic free natural food cycle economy back in the villages around Santiniketan. These were areas where Sriniketan should have been playing a pioneering role for the nation. There is also other efforts, such as preservation of indigenous varieties of rice strains. India had more than a hundred thousand varieties of rice, developed over several millennia of experimentation, to suit differing soil and weather conditions. But in the past few decades, the corporation driven mono-culture has gripped the nation and India is rapidly losing her biodiversity with regard to rice strain varieties, and today it has no more than two thousand or so trains of rice left. There are a handful of people desperately trying to preserve what can still be preserved, because the day is coming soon when non sustainable high fertilizer high pesticide genetically modified patent holding crop technology, already proving a failure in the west, is going to have to be replaced, and India will have lost its five thousand year old wisdom of rice cultivation by then. Sriniketan, again, should have been in the forefront of these efforts. And again, I failed to get anybody interested in such “boring” issues.
  4. Engage in a research of the decades long chain of correspondence between Kalimohan Ghosh and Leonard Elmhirst, currently preserved in the UK. These documents contained invaluable information on the purpose Kalimohan was sent by Rabindranath to various countries in Europe and the middle east to learn from their education, agricultural and rural reconstruction programs and then to see how to filter through them, and experiment with what might be modified and made usable under Indian conditions, through micro-experimentations in Sriniketan and elsewhere. My belief is that these are treasure troves that best deserve to be researched by Visva Bharati, but unfortunately these documents are not preserved in Santiniketan and are likely to be auctioned off by Dartington Hall if no one shows any interest. I have not had any success, again, in getting Visva Bharati interested in these issues. And that is not all. After the demise of Kalimohan, for the next so many decades, his fourth son Salil Ghosh continued a correspondence with Leolard Elmhirst, till Elmhirst passed away. Those documents too, are filed and preserved by Dartinton Hall. Those too are expected to be illuminating for research on a number of topics, the most important being Rabindranath’s efforts to start the ground work of research to eventually be the pathfinder that might halp solve some of the future problems that India was surely expected to face. Needless to say, I failed to get the University interested in this work. In fact, my experience has been that one immovable constant about the university is its lack of interest in engaging in anything worthwhile.

Rabindranath had toyed about the need for an ideal institute that was more than a school or a college or an university. India having lost its forests of the Upanishadic Aranyak period and the Tapovan phase of its history, he had toyed and experimented with conceptualizing a century ago, under difficult circumstances not under his control, how one might bring back an ambience that were to be a similar germinating ground of brilliant minds. He even selected the name, Visva Bharati, not out of a hat, but after careful deliberation.

However, instead of writing on those “boring” topics, new developments in Santiniketan coax me instead to write to you about a wholly different topic, getting rid of all non-Indians.

I now understand that the university is busy kicking out the last of the foreign professors, such as the Ms Andrea Loseries of Austria and Mr. Shin Sangwhan of Korea.

This has surprised, disappointed and pained me. In one swift stroke, Visva Bharati appears to have amputated the Visva out of itself and prepared to reincarnate itself as a Bhubandanga-Bharati.

There would be no point in engaging with the university on lofted topics of research on Arnold Bake’s recordings or Manuscriptology, or preservation of indigenous strains of rice, or studying old correspondence between dead people like Elmhirst and Ghosh, if the university is mainly focussed on burying itself into a tomb in Birbhum.

I shall therefore request you to seriously contemplate on what direction you are to steer this institution towards in the forthcoming years, and to contemplate on what Rabindranath might have envisaged the destiny of Visva-Bharati and India was to be, and in todays larger geo-ecological-economic context, how rational thought might prompt one in course correction for this supposedly open institute in the development of human endeavor of global significance  that was to sprout itself from the soil of India.

I would also suggest that Visva Bharati assumes a bit of humility, and absorb a realization that it needs good people more than good people needs Visva Bharati. It is the unproductive and lazy manipulative people that Visva Bharati has no dearth of, and who would cling to VB at any cost, because their presence has no constructive value and they have nowhere else to go.

Thanking you

Santanu Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada

1-604-597 8261.

Tonu@me.com

cc: The registrar, Visva-Bharati University

registrar@visva-bharati.ac.in

Cc by physical mail to : Sri Pranab Mukherjee,

Rastrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, India

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

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The date was November 8, 2009.
I had written on the then maintained blog on Santiniketaner Khata, about my feelings and frustrations about the continued decline of Santiniketan. It got off to a flying start to from a world beating institution way ahead of its time and geared to spearhead creative as well as social movements on multiple fronts for the nation, and for the region and for the world of the future. But from that, it has now come to a sorry state of irrelevance so deep and pathetic that it defies logic.
And yet, there seem to be no serious soul searching by anybody. I find the bizarre situation not an act of God, and not a machination of the Delhi Government. I see the people of Santiniketan, the Bengali group and the exstudents of Santiniketan as directly responsible for the deterioration of the institution. Out of them, the ex-students have been the biggest failures. They failed to live up to any single expectation of its founder.
This has been a cause of a major heartburn for me, I have tried to shake the apparently lethargic and drugged group of ex-students into some form of recognition that the ball stops at our court and to contribute into some serious thinking and joining hands and doing something more than lip service towards reviving the institution.
My failure, along with every other person before me and after me, has made writings such as the one I did in November 2009 so heart wrenchingly bitter. It is like admitting that we, ourselves, are the greatest failures as social humans.
We are in fact the reason india will struggle to get out of its difficulties. Those of us that have migrated to the west, we ourselves are responsible again for overseeing the slow deterioration of the west and devaluation of its great institutions and philosophies.
Its like a virus. We go everywhere to suck out what benefit we can for ourselves. But instead of contributing to its growth and giving something back in return, we have only learned to take and take and never give anything back.
Welcome to the new diaspora of educated Indians – the techno-maggots of the new millennium. We have mastered the art of training, and yet have not understood the meaning of the word ‘education’.

And for those that worry about the decline of Visva-Bharati, look no further than the ex-students to find one of the main root causes of its decline.
The decease lies within.

————————————–

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

We spend a lot of time, thinking and talking of Visva-Bharati and who and what has been the reason for its decline.
It is my belief, that the ball is in our court, and the biggest fault lies on the shoulders of the ex-students. Of course, I do not expect the ex-students to agree. Admitting fault is not in anybody’s nature.
Sunday, November 8, 2009

WHOSE FAULT IS IT ?

No one in sane mind would dispute the fact that Visva-Bharati has fallen from grace and is not living upto expectation of any kind, past or future.

There are long stories, doing back fifty or more years, on who did what and when, and how this or that factor contributed to the future malady of the University. Looking through all that, it is not difficult to get mired in it and end up with a headache, and a feeling of disillusionment, a defeatist view that nothing can really turn the clock, or bring a change for the better.

While most of the pessimism might be placed on some ground reality, it still might be worth thinking outside the box, and trying to see whose fault it might be. This is not necessarily for the purpose of pointing fingers, but rather, to see if change can be brought, for the better, even at this late stage.

First, who are, or should have been, the stake holders? We know a few – those that are inside Visva-Bharati. The list starts with the VC. But his is a temporary job – lasts for five years. Then there are the Students – who might stay for 2 or three years, and in some cases, if we include the school, as much as ten or fifteen, depending on where one starts and ends. Then comes the workers and their multiple unions, albeit politicized.

Next comes the Government, which is the custodian, and the financier, of the University.
Lastly, there is the vast diaspora of Alumni, literally spread around the Globe.

There is a sixth party – the citizens of India, whose tax money the Govt doles out so generously to the University. But I shall for now discount the 6th group – they have many items on their plate, and the University might be virtually invisible in their list, when they go to vote.

So, taking the five groups : VC, Students, Workers, Govt, and Alumni, it is this last group, the Alumni that shows up as the oddest one. This is one entity that is wholly divorced from the affairs of the University – and yet, it is this group that Rabindranath liked to most depend on, in order to protect the University. There is a reason – this is the only group that does not, or should not, have any vested, selfish, interest.

And, this is the group, in my eyes, that has failed Rabindranath, and the University, most spectacularly.

Mind it, it is not that the Alumni are all insignificant people, barely eking out an existence, too busy keeping body and soul together, and in no position to think of grander issues like their alma mater. Quite the contrary. A vast number of them are highly educated and professionally successful. They are spread around India and around the world. Many have acquired foreign passports, as citizens of nations in Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, etc. Some are well known locally and even globally.

Tagore and Gandhi - Wikipedia

And yet, this is the most disorganized, disunited and disinterested group among the five stake holders of the University.

Why is it so ?

Frankly, I do not know. A lot of them maintain a cursory interest in Santiniketan, and the University. Many of them attend to cultural functions here and there, listen to renditions of Tagore songs and dance drama. Some make a career out of it. And in spite of that, in the last fifty odd years, there has never been a ground swell, a movement, to get the Alumni diaspora under a single umbrella, with a specific agenda, to try to give something back to their Alma Mater, to repay a part of their debt, and, most importantly, be a serious stake holder for Visva-Bharati.

So, today, among thousands of news reports, analysis, and endless rounds of discussions on what is the matter with Visva Bharati, and how and why it has become what it is today – the Alumni shows solidarity with the Union leaders of the University in one critical sphere – its refusal to analyze itself, before judging others.

Its not that effort has not been made a few times to appeal to the Alumni to join hands, and decide what we can do, or give, instead of passing judgment and comment on others. But, typically, while such appeals might stir an unconnected third party – the diaspora of Alumni, 99 out of 100, would shun such appeals.

Why ?
It is high time when this critical group that has thus escapes scrutiny, be placed under the microscope.
This group is the biggest failure, the biggest shame, in the history of the University. And it happily remains invisible – while willingly passing high judgments on all others.
It is perhaps just as well that Tagore was cremated and not buried. He would have had a restless stay, having to turn in his grave so often, for the misguided faith he had placed on the ex-students of the University.
For the last 25 years, being involved as I have been with ISO 9000 Quality Assurance system, and with developing tools for self-analysis systems based on searching for the root-causes of problems in order that a firm might be able to self-regulate itself for perpetual and incremental improvement in its function and its operating process, so that the ultimate product can stand the competition and be counted as a quality product – I have tried to think things through for the past two years, about Visva-Bharati. And hundred times out of hundred, I come back to the same issue in the root-cause analysis, and in thinking through a road map for the betterment of the University, from the stand point of us, those that are not working for the University. Every time, without fail, the ball ends up in our court – and the Alumni are identified as the first and most critical group that should have, from our perspective, been engaged, been unified, and been proactive. And we have not.
The first step in all this would have been to get the Alumni together under one umbrella, and instill the first lesson in the process of self-assessment – learning what this group as a stake holder could potentially do, and what is has so far done.

One does not need to be certified as a lead auditor for ISO 9000, or for that matter, to have high level of experience in root-cause analysis. After all, these systems were thought through by ordinary people, using nothing more than a bit of common sense, and unbiased analytical thought. It was astute of Rabindranath, that he had come to the same conclusion, long before ISO 9000 was born, that the most important stake holder for the Asram should be the ex-students.
And we failed him. And we continue to fail him. And we continue to waste time, judging others.
Sure, we engage in some token activity, in a path of continuously diminishing returns, where more and more effort produces less and less significant return, and bring no appreciable change for the better. We all know, that the path so far pursued is a slippery slope going downhill.
And still – the ex-students continue to fail, and continue to feel good about themselves.

 Sorry, Gurudev – I am truly, genuinely, sorry.
Tonu

November 8, 2009

————————————————–

I wrote than more than two years ago on the Khata blog. Now that I am planning to close down every other site, more or less, except this one. I thought I shall bring over some of my musings from there, to here.

Nothing much has changed in these two years, except that Santiniketan has faded further into the backwaters of the world, slowing decaying, along with the rotting vegetation of a dying forest.

Tonu – March 24, 2012

Whose fault is it – (Tagore’s fading influence)

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(Moved from an older blog of the past)

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2009

Whose fault is it ?

No one in sane mind would dispute the fact that Visva-Bharati has fallen from grace and is not living upto expectation of any kind, past or future.

There are long stories, doing back fifty or more years, on who did what and when, and how this or that factor contributed to the future malady of the University. Looking through all that, it is not difficult to get mired in it and end up with a headache, and a feeling of disillusionment, a defeatist view that nothing can really turn the clock, or bring a change for the better.

While most of the pessimism might be placed on some ground reality, it still might be worth thinking outside the box, and trying to see whose fault it might be. This is not necessarily for the purpose of pointing fingers, but rather, to see if change can be brought, for the better, even at this late stage.

First, who are, or should have been, the stake holders? We know a few – those that are inside Visva-Bharati. The list starts with the VC. But his is a temporary job – lasts for five years. Then there are the Students – who might stay for 2 or three years, and in some cases, if we include the school, as much as ten or fifteen, depending on where one starts and ends. Then comes the workers and their multiple unions, albeit politicized.

Next comes the Government, which is the custodian, and the financier, of the University.

Lastly, there is the vast diaspora of Alumni, literally spread around the Globe.

There is a sixth party – the citizens of India, whose tax money the Govt doles out so generously to the University. But I shall for now discount the 6th group – they have many items on their plate, and the University might be virtually invisible in their list, when they go to vote.

So, taking the five groups : VC, Students, Workers, Govt, and Alumni, it is this last group, the Alumni that shows up as the oddest one. This is one entity that is wholly divorced from the affairs of the University – and yet, it is this group that Rabindranath liked to most depend on, in order to protect the University. There is a reason – this is the only group that does not, or should not, have any vested, selfish, interest.

And, this is the group, in my eyes, that has failed Rabindranath, and the University, most spectacularly.

Mind it, it is not that the Alumni are all insignificant people, barely eking out an existence, too busy keeping body and soul together, and in no position to think of grander issues like their alma mater. Quite the contrary. A vast number of them are highly educated and professionally successful. They are spread around India and around the world. Many have acquired foreign passports, as citizens of nations in Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, etc. Some are well known locally and even globally.

And yet, this is the most disorganized, disunited and disinterested group among the five stake holders of the University.

Why is it so ?

 Frankly, I do not know. A lot of them maintain a cursory interest in Santiniketan, and the University. Many of them attend to cultural functions here and there, listen to renditions of Tagore songs and dance drama. Some make a career out of it. And in spite of that, in the last fifty odd years, there has never been a ground swell, a movement, to get the Alumni diaspora under a single umbrella, with a specific agenda, to try to give something back to their Alma Mater, to repay a part of their debt, and, most importantly, be a serious stake holder for Visva-Bharati.

So, today, among thousands of news reports, analysis, and endless rounds of discussions on what is the matter with Visva Bharati, and how and why it has become what it is today – the Alumni shows solidarity with the Union leaders of the University in one critical sphere – its refusal to analyze itself, before judging others.

Its not that effort has not been made a few times to appeal to the Alumni to join hands, and decide what we can do, or give, instead of passing judgment and comment on others. But, typically, while such appeals might stir an unconnected third party – the diaspora of Alumni, 99 out of 100, would shun such appeals.

Why ?

It is high time when this critical group that has thus escapes scrutiny, be placed under the microscope.

This group is the biggest failure, the biggest shame, in the history of the University. And it happily remains invisible – while willingly passing high judgments on all others.

It is perhaps just as well that Tagore was cremated and not buried. He would have had a restless stay, having to turn in his grave so often, for the misguided faith he had placed on the ex-students of the University.

For the last 25 years, being involved as I have been with ISO 9000 Quality Assurance system, and with developing tools for self-analysis systems based on searching for the root-causes of problems in order that a firm might be able to self-regulate itself for perpetual and incremental improvement in its function and its operating process, so that the ultimate product can stand the competition and be counted as a quality product – I have tried to think things through for the past two years, about Visva-Bharati. And hundred times out of hundred, I come back to the same issue in the root-cause analysis, and in thinking through a road map for the betterment of the University, from the stand point of us, those that are not working for the University. Every time, without fail, the ball ends up in our court – and the Alumni are identified as the first and most critical group that should have, from our perspective, been engaged, been unified, and been proactive. And we have not.

The first step in all this would have been to get the Alumni together under one umbrella, and instill the first lesson in the process of self-assessment – learning what this group as a stake holder could potentially do, and what is has so far done.

One does not need to be certified as a lead auditor for ISO 9000, or for that matter, to have high level of experience in root-cause analysis. After all, these systems were thought through by ordinary people, using nothing more than a bit of common sense, and unbiased analytical thought. It was astute of Rabindranath, that he had come to the same conclusion, long before ISO 9000 was born, that the most important stake holder for the Asram should be the ex-students.

And we failed him. And we continue to fail him. And we continue to waste time, judging others.

Sure, we engage in some token activity, in a path of continuously diminishing returns, where more and more effort produces less and less significant return, and bring no appreciable change for the better. We all know, that the path so far pursued is a slippery slope going downhill.

 And still – the ex-students continue to fail, and continue to feel good about themselves.

Sorry, Gurudev – I am truly, genuinely, sorry.

Tonu