Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave an assurance Thursday that the government would examine what it could do amid demands that it stop the auction of 12 paintings by Rabindranath Tagore due to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on June 15.
But he also made it clear the government had no legal right over the rare works.
These paintings are from the collection at Dartington Hall in south Devon, which Tagore had visited several times, and have a combined pre-sale estimate of £250,000. One of the paintings is a portrait of a woman with a fan.
Dr Singh, who holds the culture portfolio, was chairing the first meeting of a national committee tasked with drawing up a roadmap to commemorate Gurudev’s 150th birth anniversary. The matter had been brought up by CPI(M) MP Sitaram Yechury, a committee member. Earlier, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had written to Dr Singh on the matter.
The meeting was attended, among others, by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and HRD minister Kapil Sibal. But two top politicians from West Bengal, railway minister Mamata Banerjee and Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, stayed away.
In his speech, the Prime Minister also made a strong pitch to ensure the revival of Visvabharati, the university Tagore founded at Santiniketan. The government, he said, had released funds to implement some of the suggestions made by a high-level committee headed by former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi. n More: Page 2