Papiya Ghosh - Life

Life

Ghosh was born on 8 October 1953, at Dumka (Bihar, India). She was the third of four daughters of Ujjal Kumar Ghosh, an IAS officer of the Bihar Cadre, and his wife Purnima Ghosh. Her father was a victim of what was widely held to be a political murder in 1957. The four sisters were subsequently brought up by their mother, who took up a job as a school teacher to support her daughters after the murder of her husband.

Papiya attended St Joseph's Convent school in Patna, where she was school topper and elected Head Girl in 1971. She earned an undergraduate degree in History from the Patna Women's College (Patna University) and was also elected Premier of the Students' Union. Papiya was an avid debater, dramatist and writer from an early age, and, together with her sister Tuktuk, became something of a household name as a regular contributor to Kookie Kol, a column in the Junior Statesman, which was a popular youth magazine of the time.

As Patna University was closed down indefinitely in 1975 during Jayaprakash Narayan's agitation, Papiya Ghosh moved to Delhi University where she completed her MPhil and PhD, studying the pre-independence civil disobedience movement in Bihar (1930–34). After her PhD, she taught History at Delhi University for two years. In 1979, she decided to move back to Patna. This was in part to support her mother, who was by then living on her own, but also because she wanted to live and work in the midst of the land, people and society which formed the main focus of her academic research.

In Patna, Papiya taught first at Patna Women's College and then at the history department at Patna University. A highly regarded teacher, she took great personal pains to ensure that the content and quality of instruction her students received was at par with the best universities in the country. This was especially challenging given the general decline of standards at Patna University, the very limited funding available, deteriorating facilities, and official indifference.

Professional recognition was hard to come by, given the situation in Patna and its remoteness from the more high-profile academic centres of India. Nevertheless, she was awarded the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (twice), as well as fellowships from the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla) and Teen Murti Bhavan (New Delhi). She also contributed a number of scholarly articles to prestigious academic journals.

A follower of the philosopher Rumi, Papiya Ghosh was drawn towards Sufi mysticism, which she saw as a unique amalgam of influences truly representative the assimilative culture of the Indian sub-continent. She also had a keen interest in modern literature, especially writings by and about Indian and Pakistani women.