Deven Dutta

From the confines of the classroom to the battlefield of politics, he wants to be second to nobody.

Deven Dutta, who till the other day was teaching English at Cotton College, is now busy learning the grammar of a very different language. The Trinamool Gana Parishad (TGP) candidate for the Guwahati Lok Sabha seat has plunged into electoral politics with great gusto.

As the needle of the Tata Sumo’s speedometer hovers around the 130 km per hour mark, the stern-looking Dutta with his pencil moustache and a “cultivated British” accent says he enjoys speed. “I love to drive and be driven fast on highways,” he says, as the needle at that very moment travels speedily anticlockwise with the driver applying the brakes to avoid plunging into a pothole.

He speaks of Plato’s Philosopher King and the hurly-burly world of today’s politics whether he is wooing voters in the countryside or at a street corner meeting.

Ask him if he is an outsider to politics and he retorts with a vehement no. “I was always in politics as it is not only to do with party politics but also covers education, health and consumer rights on which I have aired my views publicly and have been intimately connected with for a number of years,” he says.

Few can challenge that. A former vice-principal of Cotton College, Dutta’s name is synonymous with social activism in the state. Dutta, however, admits he is new to party politics. “Politics is a vast realm. It is not just confined to fighting elections and then vanishing like a river dolphin or a porpoise if one loses and again reappearing just before the next elections.”

“One has to be in public life to enter politics,” says 60-year-old Dutta who did his masters from Ramjas College of Delhi University. He detests people joining politics as a profession and for extraneous considerations.

The zeal may be there. But his speech, delivered in typical British accent before a huge gathering of rural folk — as in the election rally at Rangamati High School, Palasbari, just the other day — though amusing might cost him a few votes.

Any role model in his new field? “I want to remain myself in whatever I do,” Dutta says, refusing to identify himself with any politician.