Guha, Ajit Kumar

Guha, Ajit Kumar (1914-1969) educationist and intellectual, was born on 15 April 1914 in comilla. He passed the Matriculation examination in 1930 from Ishwar Pathshala in Comilla, IA (1932) and BA (1934) from Comilla Victoria College and MA in Bangla (1939) from Calcutta University. He also subsequently sat for the BT examination.

Ajit Kumar studied at santiniketan from 1940 to 1942, where he made an in-depth study on the writings of rabindranath tagore. He started teaching at the Priyanath High School in dhaka from 1942. In 1948 he joined the jagannath college as a professor in the Department of Bangla and continued to teach there till 31 July 1968. From 1957-58 he also worked as a part-time professor in the Department of Bangla at the university of dhaka. He briefly left Jagannath College to join the T&T College, Dhaka, as vice-principal.

Ajit Kumar was arrested on 24 February 1952 for his active participation in the language movement and imprisoned for one and a half years. He was again arrested on 30 May 1954 and was incarcerated for about a year.

Ajit Kumar, a freethinker, contributed to the non-communal and secular culture of Bengal by writing many articles on literature, education and culture. He was also well known as a Tagore scholar and edited Rabindranath's Savchayita, Sonar Tari, geetanjali. He also edited kalidasa's Meghdut.

He was an eloquent speaker and was called upon to speak at different cultural and literary programmes. Ajit Kumar, who never married, died on 12 November 1969 in Comilla. [Gopika Ranjan Chakraborty]