व्यक्तिगत एवं संपर्क विवरण

शिक्षा एवं अकादमिक योग्यता (Education)

प्रकाशन एवं शोध कार्य (Publications)

उल्लेखनीय गतिविधियाँ / सहभागिता (Activities)

International Academic Activities

Delivered lectures or participated in conferences and seminars organized in various Universities (Tokyo, New York, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Kings College and SOAS – London, Hull, Budapest, Turin, Osaka, Dhaka, Manchester, Los Angeles and Beijing), Academic Organizations (Moscow, Sofia, Stockholm, Brussels, Rhodes, Oslo, Prague) and world bodies (UNESCO Paris). All the international lectures have been delivered in English

Major recent participation in a 5-week seminar at Washington at the Centre for Study of Culture and Philosophy. There were 21 participants from 10 countries (Sep-Oct, 2009). “The centre had accepted the paper on ‘The Sacred and The Secular: Conflictual or Complementary” for publication

Public Lectures

Have delivered many public lectures. Out of those six important lectures delivered in recent years are:

• 1)Banaras Hindu University Anne Basent Memorial Lecture on “Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and the issue of Modernity”, 2007. The then Vice Chancellor chaired the lecture (delivered in English)
• 2)Foundation Day Lecture on “Nature and Indian Literary Culture” 2008 at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata. This lecture is always chaired by the Governor of West Bengal (delivered in English)
• 3)North Gujrat University, Pattan Shri Mohanlal Patel Memorial Lecture on “Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore”, January 2011. The Vice Chancellor chaired the lecture
• 4)Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Suniti Kumar Chatterjee Memorial Lecture on “Medieval Indian Legacy: Linguistic and Literary” chaired by the most distinguished scholar of Indian thought and culture, Dr Kapila Vatsyayan in May 2011 (delivered in English)
• 5)Surya Narayan Memorial Lecture at Kalidas Akademi, Ujjain on “ When Shakuntala went abroad: The various translations of Kalidasa’s Abijnana Shakuntala in English and German languages” 2006
• 6)Tunchan Ezuttachan Festival at Trichur , Kerala on “A Comparative study of Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam Ramayana” 2010 (delivered in English)

Publications

Have written books in English and Indian languages (Hindi and Bengali). Also translated from the original English to Indian languages and vice-versa

Books published in English are:

• 1)Comparative Indian Literature: Some Perspectives published by Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 1992
• 2)Sparks Fly Upward: Three Essays on Aesthetics, 1999, Temonos, London
• 3)The Genesis of Imagination: Essays on Literature, Theory, Religion and Culture published by Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 2001
• 4)Medieval Indian Legacy: Linguistic and Literary, IGNCA, 2011
• 5)Hinduism : A way of life and a mode of Thought, Niyogi Books, October 2012, jointly authored by Usha and Indra Nath Choudhuri

सम्मान व पुरस्कार (Awards & Honours)

विशेष विवरण / भाषाएँ / रुचियाँ (Other Details)

Past Positions

• 1)Director, Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad, 2007
• 2)Member Secretary and Academic Director, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi (July 2002 - March 2006). The Centre is engaged in the pursuit of knowledge on arts and culture. It has several activities such as research, publication, training, documentation, dissemination and networking and has grown as the largest repository of information pertaining to the arts in India
• 3)Minister (Culture) and Director, the Nehru Centre, Indian High Commission, London (January, 1997 - January 2000). The job requirement was to arrange lectures, seminars, workshops and art exhibitions and interact with cultural bodies, universities and deliver lectures for creating awareness about Indian culture and its heritage. Among various lectures one was delivered at the invitation of Professor Gombrich at Oxford University on “The Idea of Indian Literature”
• 4)Secretary to the National Academy of Letters, popularly known as Sahitya Akademi, literary body, fully funded by the Government of India (March 1984 - October 1996). As Secretary of the Sahitya Akademi, was Executive Head of an organization, having almost three hundred employees, with regional offices in Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. The job included arranging seminars, lectures, travel grants, inviting foreign writers and publishing in twenty-two Indian Languages. Three important International Conferences arranged during that time were on Narratology, Mahabharata, and Comparative Literature with big participation from abroad. The proceedings of the seminar on Narratology and Mahabharata have already been published
• 5)Visiting Professor, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla in 2004. Delivered three academic lectures on “Mahatma Gandhi and Modernity”, “Bharata’s Natyashastra and Verfrumdung of Bertolt Brecht” and “Indian and Western Aesthetics and the notion of Saundrya (Beauty)”
• 6)Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University in 2001. Taught a course on Indian Literature specially Guru Grantha Saheb
• 7)Visiting Professor, a course in Translation Studies to M.Phil. Students in JNU in 2001. While doing this visiting became the first scholar of India to do a thoroughly researched scholarly paper on “An Indian Theory of Translation.” The paper is already published in the prestigious English journal of the National Academy of Letters “Indian Literature”
• 8)Visiting Professor at Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, (Deemed University) Hyderabad in 1996 and Professor of Comparative Literature at Central University, Hyderabad in 1993. (In both these universities planned courses of studies for starting Departments of Comparative Literature and also new curriculum for interdisciplinary studies)
• 9)I.C.C.R. Visiting Professor of Indian Studies at the University of Bucharest, Romania for two years between 1973 and 1974. Worked on Mihai Eminescu and Tagore and Mircea Eliade and Indian view of myth and reality
• 10)Professor of Indian Studies at the Post Graduate and Research Complex, Hyderabad, an Institute of National Importance granted by the Indian Parliament, (August 1981 - February 1984)
• 11)Reader in Indian studies and also taught Comparative Literature in the Department of Modern Indian Languages, Delhi University (July 1960 - August 1981)

वेब आधारित कड़ियाँ (Web Links)

सूचना स्रोत (Source)

• 1.बृहत् साहित्यकार संदर्भ कोश
• 2.साहित्य अमृत
• 3.केंद्रीय हिंदी संस्थान, आगरा
• 4.विकीपीडिया हिंदी
• 5.भारत कोश
• 6.कविता कोश
• 7.साहित्य शिल्पी
• 8.हिंदी समय
• 9.हिंदी लेखक ब्लॉग
• 10.सांगोपांग

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