KOLKATA: Visva-Bharati university on Thursday said that President of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Dr Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, will deliver a lecture on "India: A Soft Power" in the virtual mode on January 21.
The Students Federation of India, the student wing of the CPI(M), protested against the decision claiming that Sahasrabuddhe was a BJP member and the central university, originally founded by Rabindranath Tagore, should not become a platform for spreading a particular ideology.
A Visva-Bharati official said Sahasrabuddhe was an internationally known academician and the university invited him to deliver the speech as part of its lecture series.
"We don't see the ideology of an individual but whether he fits the parameters to speak on an issue. Dr Sahasrabuddhe has attended programmes in various universities of the world. If anyone tries to indulge in politics on the issue, that is unfortunate," the official said.
Vice-Chancellor Prof Bidyut Chakraborty will preside over the programme in which the ICCR president will deliver his lecture.
ICCR is a central government organisation responsible to promote cultural exchanges with other countries and people.
Sahasrabuddhe was a national vice-president of the BJP between 2014 and 2020, according to the ICCR website.
Visva-Bharati SFI unit office-bearer Somnath Sow, said: "The university under Bidyut Chakraborty has been inviting only RSS-BJP sympathisers to its programmes."
On January 9, 2020, the university had invited BJP Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta for a lecture on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) triggering protests from the SFI.
Dasgupta, Chakraborty and others were confined for six hours in a building of Visva-Bharati on that day as hundreds of Left-leaning students staged a sit-in outside it, accusing the politician of promoting hatred among communities.
Tagore, the first non-European Nobel Laureate, founded Visva-Bharati in 1921.
It was declared to be a central university and an institution of national importance by an Act of Parliament in 1951.