Pramada Ranjan Ray
Pramada Ranjan Ray (Bengali: প্রমদারঞ্জন রায়; 1875–1947) was an Indian civil servant in the Survey of India and a Bengali author. He is noted as the younger biological brother of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury and the father of the writer Leela Majumdar.
Family
Pramada Ranjan Ray was born in 1875 into the Ray family of Kishoreganj, in what is now Bangladesh.[1] His brothers included Saradaranjan Ray (1858–1925), a pioneer of cricket in India; Muktidaranjan Ray (1867–1934); and Kuladaranjan Ray (1873–1950). His elder brother Kamadaranjan Ray (1863–1915) was adopted as a child by a zamindar family in Mymensingh and became known as Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, the celebrated children's writer, publisher, and printing pioneer.[2] Together with his brother Kuladaranjan, Pramada Ranjan translated works by Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle into Bengali for young readers.[3]
Pramada Ranjan Ray converted to Brahmoism, while some of his siblings remained Hindu.[4] He married Surama Devi, who had been adopted as a child by his elder brother Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, after her birth-father, Ramkumar Bhattacharya (later the sannyasi Ramananda Bharati), had placed his daughters in the care of friends following the death of his wife.[5]
Their daughter Leela Majumdar (1908–2007) became one of the most celebrated Bengali children's writers of the twentieth century. When in 1933 Leela married Dr. Sudhir Kumar Majumdar (1897–1984), a Hindu dentist and graduate of Harvard Dental School, Pramada Ranjan, firm in his Brahmo convictions, disowned her. She retained cordial relations with her mother and siblings.[4]
Career
After studying at Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur, Ray trained at the Survey of India's school in Dehradun and joined the Survey of India as Extra Assistant Superintendent.[6] In the preface to his book, he recalls spending approximately twenty to twenty-two years on field surveys in remote and dangerous terrain.[6]
His field career ran from 1899 to 1920. From 1899 to 1907 he worked principally in Burma (Myanmar), surveying the Shan States (1899–1902 and 1905–1906), Kengtung (1902–1904), and the Chin Hills (1906–1907), travelling on foot through dense jungle, often with no roads or settlements within twenty to twenty-five miles.[6] He also served briefly in Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province in 1904–1905. From 1907 onwards he worked across northeastern India, including East Bengal, Assam, Tripura, the Lushai Hills (1908–1909), the Khasi Hills, Jaintia Hills, Kamrup, and Dimapur.[6] The family was based in Shillong during his northeastern postings, and in 1919 he was transferred to Calcutta.[5]
On 29 June 1913, the title of Rai Bahadur was conferred on him by the British Indian government.[7][8]
Works
Ray wrote Baner Khabar (Bengali: বনের খবর, lit. News from the Forest), a Bengali prose collection published in 1956 with a cover designed by his grandnephew Satyajit Ray.[6] The book recounts his experiences over two decades of jungle surveying: encounters with elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, and bison; rescuing people from dangerous situations; and vivid descriptions of the indigenous peoples of the Shan States, the Lushai Hills, and northeastern India. He records that he first entered the Shan States in 1899, and that in his first year a tiger sat breathing outside his tent — an encounter he later recalled as less alarming in retrospect than it seemed at the time.[6]
References
- ↑ Sengoopta, Chandak (2016). The Rays Before Satyajit: Creativity and Modernity in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. pp. 31–35. ISBN 978-0-19-946475-3. Search this book on
- ↑ Raychowdhury, Hitendrakishore (1984). Upendrakishore O Moshua Ray Poribaarer Golposholpo. Firma KLM Private Limited. p. 1. Search this book on
- ↑ "Private Collection of Upendrakishor Ray (Chowdhury)'s Family". Endangered Archives Programme, British Library.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bagchi, Barnita (2018). "Ar konakhane/'Somewhere Else': Utopian Resonances in Lila Majumdar's Autobiographical Writing". Cracow Indological Studies. XX (2): 163–178. doi:10.12797/CIS.20.2018.02.08.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "The beyond beckons Lila Majumdar". The Statesman. 6 April 2007.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Ray, Pramadaranjan (1956). Baner Khabar [News from the Forest] (in Bengali). Kolkata: Dilipkumar Gupta – via Internet Archive. Search this book on
- ↑ "Pramada Ranjan Ray". Who's Who in India, Supplement 2. Newul Kishore Press. 1914 – via Wikisource. Search this book on
- ↑ Survey of India General Report, 1928–29. Survey of India. 1929. p. 8. Search this book on
External links
- Baner Khabar (1956) at the Internet Archive
- Entry in Who's Who in India, Supplement 2 (1914) at Wikisource
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