Museum at Bangladesh Bhavan in Visva Bharati closed since August

The official said neither the Centre nor the interim government in Bangladesh has asked the central university to reopen the museum

KOLKATA: The museum at Bangladesh Bhavan in Visva Bharati in West Bengal, hasn’t opened since August when the decision to temporarily stop entry of visitors was taken against the backdrop of political turmoil in the neighbouring country.

A decision was taken to temporarily close the museum since the Sheikh Hasina government funded the Bangladesh Bhavan (Photo courtesy: Hitachi)

“Alongside exhibits relating to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the museum houses statues and portraits of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first president and father of Sheikh Hasina, the last prime minister. When Hasina left her country on August 4 and took shelter in India at the height of a mass movement, her father’s statues (in Bangladesh) were demolished by mobs,” a Visva Bharati official said on condition of anonymity.

“Since the Hasina government funded the Bangladesh Bhavan and it was jointly inaugurated by her and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our chancellor, in 2018, a decision was taken to close the museum till normalcy is restored in Bangladesh. Although four months have passed, neither the Centre nor the interim government in Bangladesh has asked us to reopen it,” the official added.

On August 7, the annual event held to mark Rabindranath Tagore’s death anniversary at Bangladesh Bhavan was also shifted to a playground on campus. Security on the Visva Bharati campus was beefed up, officials said.

After Bangladesh was liberated in 1971, ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’, a song Tagore had composed in 1905, became the country’s national anthem. Though he was born in Kolkata in 1861 and died in the city on August 7, 1941, the Nobel laureate composed many of his famous poems and songs in those parts of undivided Bengal which became East Pakistan in 1947 and subsequently Bangladesh after the Liberation War.

The screening of a biopic Shyam Benegal made on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, “Mujib, The Making of a Nation”, expected in August was also put off. Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in Dhaka on August 15, 1975.