Anjan Gosh, the generous theorist.
Anjan Ghosh, the generous theorist.
My friend Anjan died last Saturday of Leukaemia, when we all thought that it was reversible, leaving behind Sweta his wife, Ragini his daughter and countless friends, all shocked and bewildered.
He was a fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, teaching and researching on Contemporary Sociological Theory, having done his PhD at the University of Michigan.
My association with him has been long, over twenty five years, though rather infrequent but whenever we met or spoke over the phone, his generosity, his willingness to share with my personal and political thoughts, always overwhelmed me. But that’s what Anjan was, to all his friends and acquaintances, a rigorous intellectual and a very kind person. His academic pursuance’s were solidly rooted to the ground and he had rather an uncanny sense of social, political predictions -- over which we’ve had lots of arguments -- but mostly he was right and I can’t say this of many intellectuals.
Anjan was very special in Bengali ‘adda’ gatherings, where over tea but mostly whiskey – he was a slight drinker himself, may be just a peg -- we discussed contemporary affairs, seemingly unconnected and to a lot of people, just a waste of time. But Anjan’s perception on ‘adda’ was quite precious, at least for me. His notion was that the ‘addas’ were a kind of intellectual investment where one gathered resources to ponder further.
Two of his predictions, in a very heated ‘adda’, in the mid/late eighties are etched in my memory. One was about an article called The Rise of Gorkha Nationalism, that he had written for the Frontier, which was the paper for our youthful and radical articulations and the other was his incisive inputs for Sanjib Barua’s article in the EPW, called Beyond Friends and Traitors(if I remember the name correctly) dealing with Assamese identity and aspirations. Both of these dealt with the politics of identity and sub-nationalism and were very dodgy intellectual assertions those days. On one hand you would invite the wrath of the classical Marxist theorists and would be labelled a reactionary, a renegade, a revisionist and what not and on the other hand, the pro-nationalist theorists would call you, a divider of the nation, a separatist or even a terrorist! And now, with a historical hindsight at my disposal, I think how right Anjan was.
When I spoke to him last, on the phone, about four days before his death and said “Anjan toke boro dekthe icche korche, tui kobe berobi? (Anjan, I really want to see you, when are you being released?)”. His answer was, after a long pause, “Tui ar amake dekhte pabi na. (You will never get to see me again)”.
I sobbed, covering the mouth piece of the phone with my hand, hoping to hear a few more words from him, not even sentences, just a few words but none came. He was suffering and I didn’t want to see a suffering Anjan. I’ll miss him and so will a lot of people; we’ll miss his sharp glittering eyes, his mischievous smile and his kind generosity.
War and god foolishly take away the wrong people at the wrong time. Anjan would have laughed but might have agreed, I think.
Rahul Bose,
Uttor Phalguni
Post & Vill; Khonjonpur
Birbhum
West Bengal 731236
Email; ****@****
9th June 2010
I had the good luck of running into Anjan in 1976 when I was scouting for an MA (Sociology) admission in Delhi. He was in JNU (probably a research scholar). I remember him as a formidable intellect;. It is uncanny that I learnt about his passing last evening from Swapan Chakraborty over dinner at our place in Delhi.
I did not know Anjan because I spent my sociology days in Delhi University. But what really stirs this response to your post is the reassurance that we get from souls like you --- somewhat rare, not only today but historically (I don't hold shares of a global enterprise called The Golden Past) --- that emphathy, dialogue & humanity matter. Good to see you about.
-Abhijit (Sarkar)
Thank you very much, do keep in touch
Rahul