KOLKATA: Suranjan Das , who said on Tuesday that he wanted to be relieved of his responsibility as Jadavpur University vice-chancellor, stayed clear of the campus on Wednesday. But he kept himself busy, visiting another college campus less than 7 km away, where he spoke to an audience — comprising students and their parents — about students’ protests and democratic rights.Das has been forced to go through several stints of detention on the campus, the last two happening in a span of 10 days spread over the last week of June and the first week of July. The VC has tried to teach his students the difference between “democratic protests” and “undemocratic and unconstitutional” detentions, but his words did not cut much ice on his own campus.On Wednesday, however, Das found a much more receptive and sympathetic audience at The Heritage College when he spoke of debates but also warned against “infringing on the democratic rights of others”.Das, incidentally, has used this phrase verbatim several times to describe students’ gheraos at JU.Das referred to Amartya Sen’s “The Argumentative Indian” in the course of his speech to students and their parents: “Of course, we should have debates. Of course, students should have democratic rights. But, unfortunately, what is happening today (is that), in the name of exercising democratic rights, certain sections of students are also infringing on the democratic rights of others. That is not in the spirit of democracy. If you have to drive home a point, if you have to raise a point, there is a democratic process thourugh which that point has to be raised. But, unfortunately, that does not happen in some instances.”Das did not make a single direct reference to JU and his spells of confinement there but they, evidently, were not far from his mind.“It is important that all of us try to ensure a proper democratic, tolerant spirit prevail in all sections of society,” Das said, before ending his address with a quote from Tagore: “Manusher proti biswas harano paap (It is a sin to lose faith in mankind).”Earlier in his speech, he made another reference to the ills of anarchy: “We should keep our doors and windows open so that, when the breeze blows in, it can make us think afresh. But we should not allow a situation where the wind unsettles the very foundation of the house.”

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