Scholar extraordinaire: The enduring legacy of Rajat Kanta Ray

Rajat entered Presidency College in 1963 to do his BA and on finishing his degree continued his further studies at the University of Cambridge where he did a Tripos followed by a Ph.D. He was four years my junior. Our paths really did not cross at the time though I was doing my MA through Presidency College during 1962-1964. In our time, Presidency College allowed the history department’s graduates to do the Masters through the college which meant we, as Presidency College graduates, could use the college library, which was a great advantage, and had access to the faculty. This was a unique benefit for the history students of the college.

The history department of Presidency College had a great tradition of remarkable teachers, starting from Kuruvilla Zachariah, who joined the college around 1917, to Sushobhan Sarkar to Amales Tripathi to Ashin Das Gupta to Rajat Kanta Ray. Rajat was a student of Ashin Das Gupta, my husband, who had joined the college as professor in 1961. That would explain our closeness to him and his family to this day.

I was fortunate to know Rajat from early on as he became my husband’s student. We saw him at our home then and again after his Cambridge years, by which time I can recall our rejoicing over Rajat’s scholarly persona. Slowly but surely, Rajat became more of an intellectual partner of Ashin Das Gupta, which is always such a reward for both teacher and student when they grow to feel a deeper understanding of one another.

My husband admired Rajat’s learning and strong commitment to teaching and to the discipline of history. They had much to discuss as Rajat’s interests began to flourish. For example, Rajat engaged seriously with the Cambridge scholars Gallagher and Seal on their theory of the history of Indian Nationalism but took his position in this. I can recall how intensely Ashin and Rajat discussed this subject in the context of the controversy that the Cambridge School had raised.

Rajat started to publish more of his research in the same area, such as his Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and Conflict of Interests in Calcutta City Politics, 1875-1939 in 1979 and his Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875-1927 (1985). Rajat was a thorough researcher, always backing up his content with footnotes of endnotes. One could differ with his views as is only natural in the best traditions of history writing but could not easily fault his scholarship.

The other aspect of Rajat’s academic commitment that endeared him to his teacher was his ability to write well in Bengali and his penchant for Bengali literature. In the 1980s, Ashin Das Gupta was leading and editing a series of history books in Bengali for Ananda Publishers. He invited Rajat, among others, to write a volume in that series on the Battle of Plassey or Palashir Juddho, its title in Bengali. I recall how happy his teacher was when Rajat did the work on time and made a significant contribution to the subject to the benefit of the series his teacher was leading.

Quite understandably, Presidency College was a den of diverse ideologies which gave the college its intellectually stimulating character. Given its array of brilliant students of those generations, some of whom held Leftist views like Sukhamoy Chakrabarty, Parthasartahi Gupta, Amartya Sen, who were influenced in those views by their legendary teacher Susobhan Sarkar, there were others like Rajat’s teacher Ashin Das Gupta who did not hold Leftist views. Both groups would air their views in the Presidency College Magazine and there would be stimulating debates between the groups with no acrimony but fierce arguments, from what I could gather.

In his time as teacher, Rajat was known for his broadminded approach to the prevailing ideologies and had a large number of close students of his own, who found great repose in Rajat’s approach. I admired that quality of an openness to ideologies as that is always helpful in keeping extremism at bay.

I continued to interact with Rajat even after his teacher, my husband, was no more. That was partly, of course, personal because Rajat kept in touch with me, his guru ma, which were his words for me.

But there was another connection that engaged us, which was Rajat’s delving more and more in Rabindranath. That became all the stronger during his years as Upacharya of Visva-Bharati for five years, from 2006 and 2011. By then, I was steeped in my research on Rabindranath’s ideas of an alternative education and the histories of his institutions at Santiniketan, Sriniketan, Visva-Bharati where the poet implemented those ideas.

I went regularly to Santiniketen to continue my research in the Rabindra-Bhavana Archives which I had begun in the mid-1970s, when my husband and I were teaching at Visva-Bharati and raising our son in Santiniketan’s pastoral environment.

Rajat was then deepening his interest in Rabindranath’s great and mysterious poem, Jibon Debata, though Rabindranath never analysed it himself. We too had occasional discussions on it, Rajat and I. Rajat took a closer interest in my work and I shared the final draft of my Rabindranath Tagore A Biography, published by Oxford University Press in 2004.

Over some more time Rajat’s thinking on Jibon Debata culminated what became his last major piece of writing, serialised by the celebrated literary magazine, Desh, now being published by Ananda Publishers. It is sad that the book on which Rajat worked courageously despite his very rapidly declining health could not be brought out in his lifetime.

The book, when it comes out soon, will remind us all of Rajat’s intellectual legacy and his sensitive personality.

As told to Sudeshna Banerjee

(Professor Uma Das Gupta is a historian and Tagore biographer. She was regional director of the United States Educational Foundation in India for the eastern zone and retired in 2004 as Professor, social sciences division, Indian Statistical Institute. She is currently a resident of New Town.)

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