SIPRA SARKAR (1931-2008)
Sipra Sarkar, who slipped into eternal darkness in the late hours of Tuesday, June 24, had no enemy save Time. She was born on May 30, 1931, and was the daughter of Susobhan Sarkar, the outstanding teacher of history at Presidency College. From her school days, she was a brilliant student. She studied her intermediate arts at Ashutosh College. She moved to Presidency for her BA and her MA degrees, in both these examinations (BA in 1950 and MA in 1952) she stood first in the first class. Her first job was at Surendranath College, where she taught from 1953 to 1957. With the formation of the history department at Jadavpur University in 1957, she moved there and remained there till her retirement in 1991.
Sipra's brilliance made her one of those students who have brought glory to Presidency College. Her intellectual prowess and the quiet force of her personality made her an unforgettable figure in the college and in the Coffee House. She became the role model for many of her juniors, male and female. She had many admirers during her student days and later. She remained single.
Her qualities as a student struck awe even among some of her seniors. My teacher, Tapan Raychaudhuri, recalled to me how, as a young lecturer, the first bunch of MA scripts he had to examine contained one that appeared to him to be absolutely excellent in its precision, lucidity and analytical power. He marked the script in the high 80s, something that was unprecedented in Calcutta University. Fearing he had been too generous, he took the script to his teacher, Professor Anil Banerjee, who had one look at the handwriting and said, "This is Sipra's script. You don't have to worry." Raychaudhuri, after a lifetime of teaching in Calcutta, Delhi and Oxford, believes that Sipra's MA paper was the best answer script he had ever read.
Sipra carried all the powers of precision, clarity and analysis that so struck Raychaudhuri into the classroom when she became a teacher. She never brought even a sheet of notes to her lectures, no matter how complicated the theme. She didn't need notes because the lecture had been worked out in her mind to the last detail. The structure and analytical rigour were unsurpassed. I never had the good fortune to be her direct student, but when I started teaching I attended some of her lectures at Jadavpur so that I could learn from her pedagogy. The rigour of her lectures reminded me of the lectures of Ashin Das Gupta who had taught me as an undergraduate at Presidency and had also never needed any notes. Both had learnt from their teacher, Susobhan Sarkar, the importance of logic and coherence in class lectures. But both Das Gupta and Sipra had the rare gift of taking their students through apparently simple steps to the very frontiers of the subject being taught.
For many years, Sipra taught European history and the history of political thought. When she took upon herself the responsibility of teaching the Russian Revolution, she sat in the National Library and read everything there was to read there in English on the subject. She knew there was no easy route to being a good teacher. She had a phenomenal memory. When she examined tutorial essays and caught a student copying straight from a book, she noted the book and the exact page number in the margins.
Sipra Sarkar never went abroad to study. She could have. She chose to remain in Calcutta to teach, and work for the Communist Party. She wrote no scholarly monographs. In today's academic rat race, she would be considered a failure. Like her father's teacher, Kuruvilla Zachariah, she left the vanity of immortality to take care of itself. She cared for her teaching and her students.
Sipra was that rarest gem, which the oceans had borne for the benefit of students. All those who knew and loved her will remember her by the words of Yeats: "One dear brilliant woman."
RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE (http://telegraphindia.com/1080626/jsp/opinion/story_9465229.jsp)
__._,_.___
*****************************************
Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
*****************************************
Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf
*****************************************
MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm
*****************************************
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm
*****************************************
Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/
*****************************************
MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm
*****************************************
German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm
*****************************************
Some FAQ's about Mukto-Mona:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/faq_mm.htm
****************************************************
VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/
****************************************************
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
-Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
__,_._,___