14 Sep: AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday visited for the first time Visva-Bharati University, where three generations of his family had been chancellors.
Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi held the position of Chancellors of Visva Bharati University in their capacity as the country’s prime minister.
Gandhi arrived at Shantiniketan by car to interact with students of the University, after covering some distance in a helicopter.
He met around 1,000 students at the Rabindra Bhavan and discussed several issues with them for over an hour.
On being asked what he would do for the job prospects of fine arts students studying classical dance in the event of his becoming prime minister and Chancellor of Visva Bharati University, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi replied that becoming prime minister is not the only ‘job’ in the world and that there were many other jobs a person could do.
“If I will be the prime minister of India like that is the only job a person can do! There are many other jobs that a person can do,” Gandhi said.
Stress should be given on fine arts studies, said Gandhi, who is on a three-day visit to West Bengal.
Gandhi, who spent nearly one-and-half hours with the students, told them, “You can write to me or to the PMO with your suggestion how to strengthen fine arts studies.”
When another student asked him about corruption at the university, Gandhi replied, “corruption is a problem everywhere. You have to find a solution to it.”
A student from Bangladesh told Gandhi that many students from his country were eager to study at Visva Bharati but faced problems in getting a visa.
He also inaugurated an exhibition ‘Three Chancellors’ on the tenures of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi as chancellors of the central university.
Visva Bharati University was founded by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan, 200 km from Kolkata.
The exhibition, organised by the Visva Bharati, comprised photographs and correspondences of the three late prime ministers–all from Gandhi’s family–who visited Santiniketan as Chancellors of the University.
Gandhi earlier visited the ‘Udayan’ complex to pay floral tributes at the rooms used by Tagore.