[ALOCHONA] A great Scholar passes - Prabhati Mukherjee d/o Noakhali

 

Obituary of Prabhati Mukherjee

A REBEL WITH A CAUSE:

November 18 1920-April 8 2008

 

Born in Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, Prabhati Ghosh moved to Kolkata with her family after her father's death. In her very middle class family, she was earmarked for a meager education and early marriage, as were her several older sisters; but her indomitable spirit led her to graduate from Calcutta University and marry a young man she loved. Overruling disapproval from her own and husband's family, she entered the job market to be economically independent, not content with remaining a housewife, although her conjugal life was enriched with the birth of a daughter. At this time, her husband introduced her to a Left party of which she became a mid level leader. The rebel in her prevented her from submitting to the cultural orthodoxy of both her husband and party and she left both to marry another rebel.

 

Suffering from cultural isolation and deprivation in political and economic aspirations, Prabhati, now Prabhati Mukherjee, went to England for equipping herself as a scholar to fight obscurantism. After securing a Diploma in Anthropology from Oxford under the tutelage of E.E.Evans-Pritchard, she went on to Humboldt Universitat, Berlin, securing the degree of D. Phil under the supervision of renowned Indologlist Walter Ruben. Thereafter, she taught at that university as a junior professor; but when she learnt that she was to become a mother again she insisted that both she and her husband return to India as her child must not be born on foreign soil. They returned to Kolkata in 1957.

 

By the time Prabhati Mukherjee returned to Kolkata, a sea change had taken place in the cultural outlook of what Somnath Lahiri had characterized as 'husbandiarchy', at the behest of leaders such as Jyoti Basu and Muzaffar Ahmed. She was approached by women leaders for resuming political activities, but she preferred fighting obscurantism as an academic. Well versed in Sanskrit and German, in addition to Bengali, Hindi and English, and with a remarkable knowledge of French, Prabhati pursued her researches on ancient Indian texts and their interpretations by reputed academics, leading to the publication of many papers in India and outside, and two notable books: Hindu Women: Normative Models (Orient Longman, 1978) and Beyond the Four Varnas: The Untouchables in India (1989, Reprint, Shimla, 2002). The first substantiates how the normative models of Hindu society violate the contemporaneous model enforced by the sanctimonious upholders of social norms; the second exposes the roots of untouchability which make both traditional views and modern measures superfluous. Her papers, and especially her two books which went through several editions, were acclaimed in India, Japan, Europe and the US.

 

Prabhati Mukherjee was affiliated as Senior Fellow to Sanskrit College (Kolkata), the UGC and the ICSSR (New Delhi) and to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, twice. She was Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar at several academic institutions and universities, most notably at State University of New York, Binghampton, where she received a distinguished citation as an erudite and popular teacher, the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris and the Max Plank Institute at Starnberg, Germany.

 

Ailing since 2006, she has left behind two unfinished papers: one, eliciting a singular mention of Draupadi in the battlefield in a Bengali version of the Mahabharata, the other recording the conversation of a Brahmin with Alexander. The latter evokes the independent spirit of scholars of the time, as the Brahmin refused to come to Alexander, the latter met him on his way back from India. As Alexander died shortly after, this conversation is of immense importance to scholars of Indian and Hellenic studies.

 

Pursuing a cause all her life-honestly, purposively and fruitfully-Prabhati Mukherjee left behind her husband, her two daughters, three cherished grandsons and one son in law at 9.45 am on April 8 2008, when the encapsulated energy in the rebel merged with the energy at large.

 

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