Ramendra Sundar Tribedi

Ramendra Sundar Trivedi

Painting of Ramendra Sundar Tribedi

Ramendra Sundar Trivedi (1864–1919) was a renowned Bengali author.

Life

He was born at Jemo situated at Kandi subdivision of Murshidabad (a district that is in present West Bengal) on 20 August 1864. His father's name was Govindasundar and his mother's name was Chandra Kamini. From his childhood, Ramendra was a successful student. After obtaining his B.Sc. degree (coming first in the exams), he competed for the prestigious Premchand Roychand Scholarship with physics and chemistry as his subjects. He won the scholarship (1888). The examiners' report said:

"The candidate who took up Chemistry and Physics appears to be about the best student who has yet taken up these subjects for the examination and on this account deserves recognition.”[1]

He was a teacher and later, the principal of the Ripon College of Kolkata.

Ramendra Sundar Trivedi died on 6 June 1919.

Writing career

Ramendra Sundar was a polymath who wrote on a host of themes, including popular science and the philosophy of science. His first articles appeared in the periodical 'Navajiban'.

His contribution to the functioning and development of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad is considered to be momentous.

His writings have been used in school and college textbooks in West Bengal and Bangladesh.[2]

In Bengal, Ramendra Sundar's fame rests mostly on his popular science essays. As a popular science writer, Ramendra's commitment seems to have been “to share with everyone else the fun, the delight and ecstasy of science (in Ramendra’s case, the themes and findings of modern western science). This could only be achieved by dissolving the alien terms and themes in an indigenous, flexible, and comprehensible linguistic medium. Thus, when creating scientific terms, Ramendra took care to select words which were sweet sounding and easily pronounced, drew examples from mythology, folklore and local traditions…, cemented his prose with humour, lined his comments with mild irony and talked of the gravest things with his tongue in his cheek. In this witty, sly, sceptical, gay and eminently human vein, he dragged science, epistemology and philosophy into the midst of a Bengali adda and domesticated them on the couch of a bhadralok’s drawing room."[3]

Books

References

  1. ↑ Asutosh Vajpeyi, Ramendrasundar Jiban Katha, Gurudas Chattopadhyaya & Sons, Calcutta, 1330 (Bengali Year), p. 51
  2. ↑ Gawlpo Sawngroho (Collected Stories), the national textbook of B.A. (pass and subsidiary) course of Bangladesh, published by University of Dhaka in 1979 (reprint in 1986). Also Bangla Sahitya (Bengali Literature), the national text book of intermediate (college) level of Bangladesh published in 1996 by all educational boards.
  3. ↑ Santanu Chacraverti, Ramendrasundar Trivedi: A Pathbreaking Populariser of Science in Bengal, in NK Sehgal, S. Sangwan, and S. Mahanti (eds.) Uncharted Terrains: Essays on Science Popularisation in Pre-Independence India, Vigyan Prasar, New Delhi, 2000, p. 84


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