At the Visva Bharati University in West Bengal’s Santiniketan town, an idol of Goddess Tara was given to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, sparking a controversy.
As the main guest, the defence minister presided over the central university’s annual convocation ceremony on Friday.
Rabindranath Thakur (also known as Tagore), the first non-European Nobel Laureate, founded the university, which forbids idol worship.
The university’s students have claimed that because the defence minister was an outsider at the school, he was unaware of the culture.
However, they claimed that the local BJP leadership ought to have known that the university only worships ‘Brahma.’
The students also demanded an apology from the local leadership for giving the idol to Rajnath Singh, the defence minister, which they claimed insulted Rabindranath’s ideologies.
Demands to remove Vice Chancellor Vidyut Chakraborty from his position were made and posters of Chakraborty were put up on the university grounds.
The defence minister referred to Visva Bharati University as a ‘temple of learning’ where India and the rest of the world converge in his address to students.
Rabindranath Tagore, the institute’s founder, ‘whose thoughts and philosophy continue to influence Indian society,’ he further urged the students to be humanists.
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