Bangladesh Bhavan Museum in Visva Bharati is closed since August

The museum at Bangladesh Bhavan in West Bengal’s Visva Bharati has not opened since August, when the decision was taken to temporarily suspend entry of visitors amid political turmoil in the neighboring country.

“In addition to exhibits on the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the museum also includes statues and portraits of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Sheikh Hasina, the country’s first president and last prime minister. When Hasina left her country and took refuge in India on August 4. A Visva Bharati official “At the height of a mass movement (in Bangladesh), his father’s statues were torn down by mobs,” he said on condition of anonymity.

“Since the Hasina government funded the Bangladesh Bhavan and it was jointly opened by her and our chancellor Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018, the decision was taken to close the museum until normalcy is restored in Bangladesh. Even after four months, neither the Authority nor the interim government in Bangladesh asked us to “He didn’t want us to reopen this place,” he added.

The annual event held to mark the death anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore at Bangladesh Bhavan on August 7 has also been shifted to the playground on the campus. Security at the Visva Bharati campus has been increased, officials said.

After Bangladesh was liberated in 1971, Tagore’s song ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’, composed in 1905, became the national anthem of the country. Although he was born in Calcutta in 1861 and died in the city on August 7, 1941, the Nobel laureate composed most of his famous poems and songs in these parts of undivided Bengal, which became East Pakistan in 1947 and then Bangladesh after the War of Independence.

The August release of Shyam Benegal’s biopic “Mujib, The Making of a Nation” about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has also been postponed. Mujibur Rahman was assassinated in Dhaka on 15 August 1975.