Nabaneeta Dev Sen | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1938-01-13)13 January 1938 |
| Died | 7 November 2019(2019-11-07) (aged 81) Kolkata, India |
| Occupation | Novelist, children's author, poet, academic |
| Education | University of Calcutta (BA) Jadavpur University (MA) Harvard University (MA) Indiana University Bloomington (PhD) |
| Notable awards |
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| Spouse | |
| Children | Antara andNandanaSrabasti Basu |
Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Nôbonita Deb Sen; 13 January 1938 – 7 November 2019) was an Indian writer and academic. After studying arts and comparative literature, she moved to the United States where she studied further. She returned to India and taught at several universities and institutes as well as serving in various positions in literary institutes. She published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children's literature. She was awarded thePadma Shri in 2000 and theSahitya Akademi Award in 1999.
Dev Sen was born inCalcutta (now Kolkata) into aBengali family on 13 January 1938. She was the only child of the poet-couple Narendra Dev (Narendra Deb 1888–1971, son of Nagendra Chandra Deb) andRadharani Devi (1903–1989), who wrote under the pen name Aparajita Devi.[1][2][3][4] She was given her name byRabindranath Tagore.[5][6]
Her childhood experiences includedWorld War II air raids, seeing people starving in theBengal famine of 1943, and the impact of large numbers of refugees arriving in Calcutta after thepartition of India.[7] She attended Gokhale Memorial Girls' School andLady Brabourne College.[7]
She received her BA in English fromUniversity of Calcutta,[8][5] and was a student of inaugural batch of the Department of Comparative Literature atJadavpur University, from where she obtained her MA in 1958.[3] She obtained another MA (with distinction) in comparative literature fromHarvard University in 1961 and went on to receive a doctorate fromIndiana University Bloomington in 1964.[3] She then completed her post-doctoral research at theUniversity of California at Berkeley andNewnham College, Cambridge.[5][9]
Dev Sen was a writer in residence at several international artists' colonies, includingYaddo andMacDowell Colony in the United States; Bellaggio in Italy; and theMishkenot Sha'ananim in Jerusalem.[10]
She held the Maytag Chair of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Colorado College, 1988–1989.[10] She was a visiting professor and a visiting creative writer at several universities including Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Chicago (USA), Humboldt (Germany), Universities of Toronto, British Columbia (Canada), Melbourne, New South Wales (Australia), and El Collegio de Mexico.[9][10] She delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecture series (1996–1997) atOxford University on epic poetry.[9]
In 2002, Dev Sen retired as Professor of Comparative Literature atJadavpur University, Calcutta.[2]
She was aUniversity Grants Commission Senior Fellow atUniversity of Delhi.[9] From 2003 to 2005, Dev Sen was the J. P. Naik Distinguished Fellow at the Centre of Women's Development Studies in New Delhi.[11]
She represented herself and India in many international conferences, both academic and literary,[10] and at the Festival of India USA in 1986.[4]
Dev Sen was a member of theSocial Network for Assistance to People (informally Association SNAP) that published a ground-breaking survey in 2014 that revealed the extent of poverty among the Muslim community ofWest Bengal.[12]
She held executive positions in the International Comparative Literature Association (1973–1979),[10] and the International Association of Semiotic and Structural Studies (1989–1994).[10] Dev Sen was the vice-president of theBangiya Sahitya Parishad, an academy for Bengali literature. She was the founder and president of West Bengal Women Writers' Association.[13] She was the founder secretary and later vice-president of the Indian National Comparative Literature Association.[1][9][10] She was a Fellow of theRoyal Asiatic Society of Great Britain.[9][10] She was a member of the advisory board for Bengali, Sahitya Akademi from 1978 to 1982, as well as the Member and Convenor, BharatiyaJnanpith Award Language Advisory Committee from 1975 to 1990.[1][5]
She also served as Member of the Jury of important literary awards including theJnanpith Award,Saraswati Samman, Kabir Samman, andRabindra Puraskar.[citation needed]
Dev Sen published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children's literature.[5][2][1] She worked with the treatment of women in world epics; she wrote several short stories presentingSita in a different way from how she appears in theRamayana.[14]
Her first collection of poemsPratham Pratyay (First Confidence) was published in 1959.[5][2][1] Her second poetry collectionSwagato Debdoot was published 12 years later.[15]
Her first novelAmi Anupam (I, Anupam) was published in 1976 in the Puja Issue of theAnanda Bazar Patrika.[2] It is about urban middle class intellectuals who lead the youth in revolution and later contradict them during theNaxalite movement.[5]
Dev Sen dealt with a wide variety of social, political, psychological problems like the role of the intellectuals in theNaxalite movement (Ami Anupam, 1976),[5] the identity crisis of Indian writing in English (1977),[5] that of second generationnon-resident Indians (1985), breakdown of the joint family, life in old age homes (1988),[5] homosexuality (1995),[7] facing AIDS (1999, 2002),[7]child abuse, obsession, and uprootedness.[7]
Her first short story collection wasMonsieur Hulor Holiday (Monsieur Hulo's Holiday, 1980).[5] Her essays, such asNati Nabanita (Nabaneeta the Actress, 1983), are considered the best of her prose writing by critic Sanjukta Gupta.[5]
Her best-sellingKaruna Tomar Kon Path Diye (The Path of Thy Grace, 1978) has an account of a solo woman on pilgrimage toKumbh Mela.[5] Her travelogueTruck Bahoney Mac Mahoney depicts her ride on a ration truck acrossnortheast India andTibet in 1977.[5] Her other notable works includedBama-bodhini,[6]Srestha kabita, andSita theke suru.[1]
She was a well-known children's author in Bengali for her fairy tales and adventure stories, with girls as protagonist,[16] having first written for children in 1979.[17]
She was the chief editor of Bengali in the Macmillan'sModern Indian Novels in English Translation series.[18][19]
Dev Sen received many national and international awards and honours, including: Gouridevi Memorial Award, Mahadevi Verma Award (1992),[6] Celli Award fromRockefeller Foundation (1993), Sarat Award fromBhagalpur University of Bihar (1994), Prasad Puraskar,Sahitya Akademi Award (1999).[1] She has also received Rabindra Puraskar, Kabir Samman, Samskriti Award,[9]Kamal Kumari National Award (2004),[20] Mystic Kalinga Literary Award (2017),[21] and the Big Little Book Award for children's literature in 2017, when the award focused on Bengali writing.[17] She was awarded thePadma Shri (2000), the fourth highest civilian award by the Government of India.[22]
In 1958, she marriedAmartya Sen, an economist and academician and then a lecturer of economics at the Jadavpur University, who would be awarded theNobel Prize four decades later.[2][3][8]
She moved to Britain with Sen[5] and they became the parents of two daughters,Antara Dev Sen andNandana Sen.[2][8]
After her divorce in 1976, she returned to Calcutta with her daughters. She had one adopted daughterSrabasti Basu.[2][5][23]
Her hobbies included reading, records, and travelling.[2] In addition to Bengali and English, she could read Hindi, Oriya, Assamese, French, German, Greek,[4] Sanskrit, and Hebrew.[24]
She died on 7 November 2019 in Kolkata following cancer.[25][26]
Nabaneeta Dev Sen.
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