Surajit Chandra Sinha

Surajit Chandra Sinha
Prof. Surajit Sinha working at his home in Shantiniketan.
Born	1926 Susang, Bengal, British India
Died	27 February 2002 Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Anthropologist, administrator
Religion	Hinduism
Spouse(s)	Purnima Sinha (nee Sengupta)
Relatives	Mani Sinha (Uncle)

Surajit Chandra Sinha (1926–2002) was an Indian anthropologist and a former Maharajkumar of Susang in undivided Bengal.

Background

He was born in Mymensingh District (currently in Bangladesh) in 1926. He was the eldest son of Maharaja Bhupendra Chandra Sinha, the Maharaja of Susang, who was a well known artist and who had studied in Presidency College, Calcutta. Sinha's mother belonged to the zamindari family of Sithlai in Pabna district. Sinha's youngest sister is Purba Dam, the eminent exponent of Rabindrasangeet. He was married to Dr. Purnima Sinha, a physicist, author and music scholar, who was the daughter of the eminent legal scholar and Bengali novelist, Dr. Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta.

Susang was a zamindari which traces its origins to the reign of Emperor Jahangir. In the British period, it was ranked third in protocol in the Government House of Calcutta after Coochbehar, a princely state and Burdwan, the premier zamindari of Bengal. The Maharajas of Susang, a hill estate, were the most influential zamindars of Mymensingh. The other major zamindari family of the same district were the Maharajas of Muktagacha, who in spite of being the richest zamindars in the district, considered the Susanga Maharajas to be their chiefs. The Maharaja of Susanga was the chief of all the other zamindars of Mymensingh, which emerged from the Muktagacha family, the predecessor estate.

A close paternal uncle, Maharajkumar Mani Singh was a well-known communist leader and the author of Jiban Sangram. Moni Singh was an elected head of the CP in East Pakistan. In his youth Sinha followed in the footsteps of this paternal uncle. Sinha's maternal uncle was Kumar Jyotirindra Moitra, an eminent exponent of Rabindrasangeet, who was a son of thezamindar of Sithlai. Moitra, who was popularly called Botukda, was a lifelong member of the CPI and wrote the school song for Patha Bhavan, a school founded in Calcutta in the 1960s.

Even though Sinha was brought up and worked in Calcutta for most part of his life, he spent several years, especially the last few years in Santiniketan, where his parents owned a house from the beginning of the twentieth century. The Sinhas of Susanga can be considered to be one of the founding families of Santiniketan.

Education

After his early education in a high school in Mymensingh, and then at Ballygunge Government High School, Calcutta, he started his college education in physics at Presidency College, Calcutta, but later shifted to geology and then to anthropology. Nirmal Kumar Bose, the eminent anthropologist, became his mentor soon after Bose and Sinha met in the viva examination for the masters degree, where Bose was one of the examiners. Later, Sinha completed his PhD in anthropology from Northwestern University, United States on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Career

In his long and illustrious career he held the post of professor, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta for a long time.

He also held a number of administrative posts such as director of the Anthropological Survey of India in Calcutta. At this time he was considered to be an advisor of the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. He was the upacharya of Visva Bharati in Santiniketan. After retirement he became the second director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

Sinha distinguished himself in the field of social anthropology. Upon returning to India from the United States, he continued to conduct field research. His main area of research was Indian tribes, particularly the Bhumij tribe in central India.

Opinion

Sinha was committed to the ideologies of both Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, arguably the two most eminent Indians in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The difference between the views of these two men was that whereas Gandhi wanted every Indian to be (in the best sense) a Shudra, Tagore wanted every Indian to be (also in the best sense) a Brahmin.^[1]

Legacy

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1993 and died after a prolonged illness in 2002. He left behind a rich heritage of anthropological fields of research. He inspired a whole generation of Indian anthropologists and contributed significantly to understanding the process of acculturation of tribal people in India.

Publications

• Science, Technology, and Culture: A Study of the Cultural Traditions and Institutions of India and Ceylon in Relation to Science and Technology
• (ed.), Tribal Polities and State Systems in Pre-Colonial Eastern and North Eastern India, (Calcutta, 1987)
• Tribes and Indian Civilization: Structures and Transformation (Varanasi, 1982)
• (ed.), Ascetics of Kashi : An Anthropological Exploration, (co-edited with Baidyanath Saraswati) (Varanasi, 1978)
• (ed.), Field Studies on the People of India : Methods and Perspectives, (In Memory of Professor Tarak Chandra Das), (Calcutta, 1978)
• (ed.), Anthropology in India, Tribal Thought and Culture, (Calcutta, 1976) ^[2]
• (ed.), Aspects of Indian Culture and Society: Essays in Felicitation of Professor Nirmal Kumar Bose, (Calcutta, 1972)
• (ed.), Cultural Profile of Calcutta, (Calcutta, 1972)
• (ed.), Research Programmes on Cultural Anthropology and Allied Disciplines, (Calcutta, 1970)
• (ed.), Ethnic Groups, Villages, and Towns of Pargana Barabhum: Report of a Survey, (co-edited with Biman Kumar Dasgupta and Hemendranath Banerjee) (Calcutta, 1966)
• (ed.), Levels of a Economic Initiative and Ethnic Groups in Paragana Barabhum, (Durham, N.C., 1964)

References