CM Mamata Banerjee to unveil Vidyasagar bust on Tuesday, 28 days after vandalism

KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will on Tuesday unveil a new half bust statue of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar in College Street that will then be taken to the north Kolkata college named after 19th century reformer. The reinstatement of the statue at Vidyasagar College comes 28 days after the earlier one was vandalised during BJP president Amit Shah’s roadshow that had passed both College Street and Vidyasagar College on May 14.

“The half bust statue of Vidyasagar will be reinstated in the very room where it used to be. The CM will unveil the statue at Hare School grounds at 1pm and then it will be transported to Vidyasagar College,” education minister Partha Chatterjee said on Saturday.
The CM had earlier announced reinstatement of this statue along with two full-scale statues of Vidyasagar, one at the college gate and another at the approach to Vidyasagar Setu. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, had promised a panchadhatu (alloy of five metals) statue of Vidyasagar in the wake of the controversy.
The vandalism of the statue of a Bengali icon had added fuel to the already vitriolic verbal battle between Banerjee and Modi. Banerjee had termed it an attack on Bengal’s culture by an alien party to appeal to local sentiments. In the final phase of Lok Sabha elections held five days later, Trinamool won all the seats.
“At the time, the entire state had protested against the vandalism and hooliganism. We had promised to reinstall the statute that was destroyed. Both the Vidyasagar bicentennial celebration committee and school education department had requested CM to unveil the statute, to which she gave her consent. All of Bengal’s literati, Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar’s family members and the bicentennial committee members along with other prominent guests from the society will attend the occasion,” Chatterjee said.
Unlike the earlier statue that was made of plaster of Paris, the new half bust statue will be made of bronze, the education minister revealed. A full-figure bronze statue of Vidyasagar will also be unveiled at the college gate that day. Chatterjee also said three more statutes will be set up soon — the statute of Rabindranath Tagore at the main gate of the Presidency University, a statute of Sir Asutosh Mukherjee at the main gate of Calcutta University and another statue of Raja Rammohan Roy in College Street.
Plans are afoot to set up a museum on Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in the college.