Ashim Mukhopadhyay

Dr. Ashim Mukhopadhyay
Dr. Ashim Mukhopadhyay
	Dr. Ashim Mukhopadhyay in Jadavpur University, Kolkata
Born	Ashim Mukhopadhyay; 26 February 1945
Occupation	Researcher and analyst on socio-economic situations, Sociologist, Journalist, Author, Athlete (weight lifting.)
Nationality	Indian
Notable works	Coming of women into Panchayati Raj; Role of Women in Community Based Preparedness Project in Nadia; Child Labour in Beedi Industry Murshidabad District in West Bengal; Pavement Dwellers (Bengali version); "Peasants of the Paraganas"; "Panchayat Prangane (Bengali version)"; "Oxbow lakes project"
Notable awards	Media India ; 1982 ; University Blue: Jadavpur University ; 1962 ; University Blue: Jadavpur University ; 1963 ;

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Dr. Ashim Mukhopadhyay (born 1945) is an Internationally acclaimed socio economic situation analyst, researcher, journalist and author.

Life[edit]

Ashim Mukhopadhyay was born in India on 26 February 1945. He was born in the town of Komilla, Tripura, Undivided India. He lived most of his life in acute poverty. He worked as a stoker (class 4 staff) of the South-Eastern Railway and later in Gardenrich, Kolkata. He collected and saved money to complete his Masters Degree from Jadavpur University in 1963. His flair to travel made him tour across hundreds of villages in West Bengal to write on the socio-economic conditions of the Bengal Peasants.

File:Coming of women into panchayati raj.jpg

Image of the front page of the book titled Coming of Women into Panchayati Raj by Ashim Mukhopadhyay published by Jadavpur University

File:Image of the newsletter where an article on oxbow lake was published.jpg

Ashim Mukhopadhyay, appreciated by the British Council in their newsletter for his contribution to the Oxbow lake project

File:Ashim Mukhopadhyay receiving the Media India award in 1982.jpg

Ashim Mukhopadhyay receiving the Media India award for the Best human interest story

Later life and major works[edit]

While staying at Kolkata, he taught students of Jadavpur University and also he was a regular columnist at Indian Express and the ABP Group. He was an enthusiast learner and has worked on various issues with respect to socio-economic conditions in Bengal and Bangladesh. In 1969 he started writing for the Frontier (weekly), Mumbai and then he also contributed articles to The Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai same year and continued writing for them till 1995. Teaching at Jadavpur University and writing for major daily in the country, got him an invitation to work for The Asiatic society Kolkata in 1993 as a Special Officer on Duty (Research Division) which he took without any hesitation. He continued to teach at Jadavpur University alongside and worked on women’s participation in decentralization of administration in rural West Bengal. He also campaigned for women empowerment in the panchayat administration and authored several books on women’s role perception and performance for UNICEF. In 1996, he worked as a project co-ordinator on a study about Child Labourers in Beedi industries in West Bengal, which was funded by the Union Labour Ministry, Government of India. He also spent two years (1995-1997 in Australia as a research Associate in a data collection team of the school of Social Sciences and Asian Languages, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, led by Professor Peter Reeves. He has also worked in various Ox-bow Lakes projects conducted by the British Council, Kolkata, funded by the Overseas Development Administration, United Kingdom.

During Bangladesh Liberation War[edit]

During the Liberation War of Bangladesh, Ashim Mukhopadhyay crossed the international borders and went to Satkhira, Kusthia, Jhenaidah, talked to the members of the Mukti Bahini who escorted him to different places where they were engaged in fighting with the Pakistani military. He also talked to the villagers who narrated the massacres of thousands of Bangladeshis by the Pakistani military personnel and the Pakistani and Bangladeshi fundamentalist thugs like Al- Shams, Al-Badar, Jamaat-e- Islam, etc. Mukhopadhyay saw scores of decomposed bodies hanging from trees or stuffed into drains and the rubbles of buildings destroyed by Pakistani bombs. In a village at Narail, in Jessore district a boy of 16 picked a skull and showed it to Mukhopadhyay and cried out,” He was my father. They killed him before my eyes.” Ashim Mukhopadhyay also covered the Bangladesh War as a freelance journalist in the Tripura sector. He went to Agartala, the state capital of Tripura. He was given shelter by one Haridas Mondal, a leader of the state wing of the Congress party, who helped him to sneak into ditches every night and watch the exchange of fire between the Pakistani Army and the Indian Army and Mukti Bahini combined. He sold his pictures and stories to The Indian Express, The Frontier, etc. In March,1978, Mukhopadhyay went to Bangladesh with valid passport and valid visa to meet a septuagenarian relative in Sylhet. From there he went to Dacca, the capital where he was kidnapped by the Bangladesh Police at gun point off the house of Tajuddin Ahmad, a close follower of the Liberation war supremo and the first President of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Mujibur was assassinated in the night of 14 August 1975 by the Bangladesh Military at his 32 Dhanmandi residence. Tadjuddin and a few other Mujibur followers were slain in a jail. Mukhopadhyay’s offence was that he went to see Tajuddin’s wife and express his heart felt sympathies to her and other members of the family. Mukhopadhyay’s passport was seized and he was mentally tortured for more than two hours and then asked to collect his luggage from the place he was staying in Dacca and wait at the bus stop nearest to his temporary shelter. He was also asked not to disclose the reason of his sudden departure from Dacca to anybody. Muhopadhyay heard one of the officials, a mountain of a man endowed with a gorilla face to whisper a rickety, short tempered middle aged man, both of the kidnapping gang, that they would take Mukhopadhyay to Jessore cantonment and kill him over there. Mukhopadhyay did not wait for the kidnappers at the bus stop, instead he took an auto -rickshaw and went to the Indian High Commission Office. Hardly had he disclosed his identity to the Indian Military personnel guarding the High Commission gate and was given entry, when the gorilla man, his rickety, short tempered mentor reached the spot and raised a brouhaha demanding handing over Mukhopadhyay to them. The High Commission officials did not agree. All through the night the two sides held series of meetings during which the kidnappers claimed that Mukhopadhyay was an admirer of the liberation fighter, Abu Taher who happened to be a rival of the then President, General Ziaur Rahman and later most ignominiously slain at the same Jessore cantonment. They alleged that Mukhopadhyay had all along been writing against the “real” freedom fighters like General Ziaur Rahman. Anyway, the kidnappers failed to show any valid proof that Mukhopadhyay entered Bangladesh without valid permission or that he had made any news coverage. They agreed to return his passport but on condition that Mukhopadhyay would leave Bangladesh next morning. Next morning when Mukhopadhyay went to the airport along with Indian High Commission official, who did not wait till his take off, the same officials again harassed him a lot and addressed him with slangs. It was at the intervention of an unknown American gentle man that Mukhopadhyay was saved and the man helped him to board the flight. A few days later, the Press Attache of the Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Calcutta met Mukhpadhyay and threatened him with dire consequences if he dared write anything about his experiences in Bangladesh. But Mukhopadhyay wrote a piece on the matter in the Frontier weekly in Calcutta.

Publications by Dr. Ashim Mukhopadhyay[edit]

Non-fictions

Coming of women into Panchayati Raj (Jadavpur University Press, 1996)
Role of Women in Community Based Preparedness Project in Nadia (UNICEF, 2000)
Child Labour in Beedi Industry Murshidabad District in West Bengal (Jadavpur University Press, 1996)
Pavement Dwellers (Bengali version) (Sankha Prakashan, 1975)
Peasants of the Paraganas in Peasant Struggles in India: Edited by A. R Desai (Oxford University Press, 1979)
Panchayat Prangane (Bengali version (Jadavpur University Press, 2005)
Oxbow lakes project (Project Funded by the Overseas Development Administration UK in collaboration with The British Council Kolkata, 1996)
On Bangladesh (Sydasienbulletinen, Stockholm, Sweden, 1983)
Problems of Kampuchea in the eyes of the Indian people and the government (Kampuchea Conference, Japanese Organizing committee, Tokyo, 1983)

Poetry

In the darkness of the whites: a book of poems (Swarnakshar, Calcutta, 1991)

Foreign Tours[edit]

Foreign tours: Lectured on a symposium on the News Coverage on Asia in the Scandinavian Media, organized by the Institute of Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, Sweden in August, 1978 Lectured in the Second International Kampuchea Conference held in Tokyo, Japan, organized by the Japanese Organizing Committee, Tokyo, Japan,1982

References[edit]

Links[edit]

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