ABSTRACT
Readers will, perhaps, be forgiving if this prefatory note largely assumes the form of a biographical sketch. Amiya Kumar Das Gupta was bom on 16 July 1903 in what is now Bangladesh. A childhood spent in a rural setting amid lush tropical surroundings, a rudimentary education along lines laid down, absent-mindedly or otherwise, by the British for the subject people, his early upbringing was no different from that of others who grew up in that particular milieu during the first decades of the century. Das Gupta, however, came from a sect which, by tradition, combined the pursuit of the medicinal science with a passion for classical grammar. Deriving pleasure from logical propositions thus came easily to him. And once he joined the University of Dacca as an undergraduate in the Department of Economics in 1922, a new world was suddenly revealed. It was a quiet university, for Dacca was a quiet colonial town. A recently built secretariat, intended for the stillborn provincial government of East Bengal and Assam; had been handed over to the university in the suburb of Ramna across the railway track. The architecture was half Gothic, half Moorish, the indolence of casuarinas and gulmohurs filled the air. There was a simulation of the British pattern of university education, with halls of residence and all that. In today’s cliche, it was an elitist institution; such elitism somehow fitted snugly into the context. Das Gupta was able to extract the most from the university. A remarkable collection of dons had gathered at Dacca: for example, the Hartogs, the Langleys, the Wrenns. You had personages like S.K. De, A.K. Chanda, Mohitltal Majumdar, A.F.A. Rahman in literature; R.C. Mazumdar, Susovan Sarkar, K.R. Kanungo in history; S.N. Bose, J.C. Ghosh, K.S. Krishnan in mathematics and the physical sciences. The university’s Department of Economics (which at the time, was not separated from Politics) had its fair share of interesting men. S.G.
