The incident reportedly took place during the Basanta Utsav festivities on the Rabindra Bharati university campus.

A fiery controversy has erupted in West Bengal over an act that is being called 'obscene' and 'vulgar' by many, while others are calling it an expression free will and non-conformity to traditional artistic expressions. At the Rabindra Bharati university campus in Kolkata, some female students were photographed with a set of words, painted on their bare backs with colours. The words are being said to be an intentional 'distortion' of a much-referenced line from a famous Rabindrasangeet, '...chaand uthechhilo gogon-ey (the moon rose high in the sky). In this choice of text, however, the line was prefixed with a word that is frequently hurled as abuse in colloquial Bengali to refer to the male genital organ.

The incident reportedly took place during the Basanta Utsav (Spring festival, pre-Holi celebrations) festivities on the campus. Some male students, it is said, coloured the lines on the women's backs 'in jest'.

Since then, controversies flared on social media regarding the action of the young students. As Bengali intelligentsia lay divided on whether to defend the 'distortion of Tagore's legacy' or to 'celebrate the free expression of art, even if it is apparently vulgar', people hit out at each other over their stance in such a situation.