User:Saramohanpur1940/Prof. Arun Kumar Sinha

Prof. Arun Kumar Sinha (born 27th August 1940 at Saramohanpur, Darbhanga), taught English at Langat Singh College, Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. He joined in 1961 M S College, Motihari, Champaran as a Lecturer in English and in 1975 sought transfer to Langat Singh College, his alma mater, which was established in 1899 and from where he had done his MA in English in 1957-59 batch, and retired as University Professor & Head of the Department of English and its Principal in August 2000. L. S. College also celebrated a part of its centenary year (1999-2000) during his stint as the Principal. It may be relevant to mention that Prof. Sinha was the elected President of L S College Teachers' Association for four times in the 1980s and 1990s and was twice elected General Secretary of the Combined Teachers' Association of L.S. College and Bihar University PG Departments' College and University Teachers in the early 1980s. In the 1980s and 1990s he served as the Chief Editor of the L S College Magazine 'Vaishali'. He passed away on 27th-28th November 2011 at Patna. Later in his career, Prof. Sinha wrote a fine longish nearly 100 page introduction to 'Huckleberry Finn' and did an Intensive Study of T S Eliot--both published as books by Spectrum Books, New Delhi, the first one with the text of the novel. He co-authored the Eliot book with his son. He wrote on long poems like The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday and also 'Ariel Poems', while his son wrote on Prufrock volume and POEMS 1920 volume, The Hollow Men. The 85 page Introduction was largely by him. It is nearly 500+ pages one of its kind study with intensive annotations and critical essays on individual poems written over a period of 6-7 years published so elegantly by Madam Kalpana Rajaram, Editor and Publisher of Spectrum. He also translated the monograph of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar from Hindi to English with many long passages in verse from Dinkar for Sahitya Akademi --published by the Akademi to commemmorate the birth centenary year of Dinkar in 2007. His unpublished works include a full-length intensive study of 'Four Quartets', a novel in English, many critical essays, socio-political writings etc. He also wrote a long critical introduction to E.M Foster's A Passage to India for the Course material of the English (H) conducted by the Distance Education Directorate of B R A Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. He also guided a Ph.D dissertation titled 'Characterisation as Skill in the Plays of G. B Shaw.' For nearly 15 years, he gave several serious academic lectures on Literary and General topics to the college and university teachers participating in Orientation and Refresher Courses conducted by the Bihar University branch of UGC's Academic Staff College since its inception in 1987.

He had imbibed that true and complex spirit of the 60s--idealist, rebellious, down-to-earth (almost throughout his life he would spend an hour or so in the kitchen garden tending plants) and carrying that streak of detachment....That made him decide not to finish his doctorate on Dylan Thomas, the same streak that made him decide not to join Indian Foreign Service (Allied) on selection in 1964, among many other things, that we would generally be tempted to cling on to.

‘A Post-Colonial’ Approach to Life and Teaching While in the fields of teaching of English literature as well research, post-colonial approach has become the watch word during the past three decades or so in India, but for Prof.Sinha post-colonialism was a way of life. Rather it defined his persona and his world view from which emanated his attitudes to life, in general, and to teaching, in particular. To begin with, alongwith the reading of English literary texts, he continued to read and also impressed upon his students to read contemporary Hindi or Urdu literature too. Despite being a teacher of English, he made it a point to send his children to Hindi-medium government-run schools. He found himself closer to that great line of teachers like Prof. Amarnath Jha, Prof. Damodar Thakur, Prof. Kamta Charan Srivastava, Prof.Mahendra Pratap, Prof. H R Ghoshal and many such stalwarts in Bihar, who read and researched throughout their lives not from the perspective of adding the ‘list of publications’ to their CVs, but only to give their best, deliver almost with religious sincerity, their knowledge, understanding and interpretations of literary texts in the classrooms for the benefit of their students. No wonder, Prof. Jabir Husain, his fellow-traveller in social activism and a former Professor of English who stufied at L S College in the 1960s, wrote after his demise to his son in response to an article on Prof. Sinha, “Your father, whom you have rightly introduced in your blog, was one person whom I respected most for his profound scholarship and unassuming nature. I always ranked him with my teachers, Prof KC Shrivastav, Prof HR Ghoshal and Prof DN Mallik, all such persons that have greatly contributed to my life and career.”

Actually, Prof.Sinha’s general refrain was that a teacher must be able to ‘stimulate’ the minds of the students. For him, that was the most enlivening ideal for a teacher, much more than his acquiring of degrees or fellowships or scholarships. Teaching was a life-long commitment, a socio-political commitment, so to say, and any teacher’s knowledge or research was good enough only if it got delivered effectively in the classroom lectures and the students got benefitted out of that.

That post-colonial rebellious streak also took him to social activism. Despite the reservations which many teachers of English, in particular, and others had regarding Prof. Sinha’s penchant for socio-political work, he continued to contribute intellectually as well as ‘physically’ in that arena. That sometime brought him to the distribution of political pamphlets, pasting of posters in the middle of nights, and also selling of his socio-political periodicals like Samadhan, Chingaari, Yuva Jagaran etc with his associates and students at the railway stations, main markets, residential areas etc. But here also, he remained an outcaste. Coming from the apparently ‘elite’ class with an English literature background, his championing of the cause of the marginalised and the depressed classes from the Socialist and Sarvodaya standpoint was viewed with suspicion by the leaders of these classes, and while many of his ‘followers’ went on to reach state assemblies and also the Parliament of the country, his ‘clean, no-nonsense and intellectual style politics’ pushed him onto the margins, despite working very closely with the likes of Lohia, JP, George Fernandes, Charan Singh, Karpoori Thakur etc. He realised it all, saw it through but could not change his style. He would smilingly say, ‘people consider me a holy cow, who needs to be worshipped but not to be followed’. Nevertheless, in the 1980s and the 1990s, students from all streams—from SFI, IPF, AIDSO and also ABVP and never from NSUI—kept coming to him for guidance and kept inviting him for lectures in their conventions, meetings etc. He became the Muzaffarpur District President of Lok Dal, and state convener of its Intellectuals’ Cell, as well as Member of its State Executive in early 1980s. This was at a time when the present Chief Minister of Bihar Shri Nitish Kumar was the President of Yuva Lok Dal; and the former Chief Minister Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav, a young MLA of the party, when he paid a visit to Prof. Sinha’s house as an emissary of Chowdhary Charan Singh to thank him for organising a successful public meeting in Muzaffarpur for Chowdhary Charan Singh, the President of Lok Dal.

It is rather ironical that while he chose long cuts in life, life chose longer cuts for him. While some severe, life-changing and deeply disturbing family problems slowed him down, he still somehow grappled with his dilemma of remaining faithful to his teaching profession vis-à-vis his socio-political work. It was a dilemma worth the comparison with the ones faced by Shakesperean tragic characters—how to be true to one’s basic responsibilities of being a teacher while being part of issues that also impacted the academic environments. Somehow he found a balance whereas the teacher of English literature was not supposed to be immersed in his literary texts only oblivious of his socio-political and economic environs, but he was also called upon to engage himself with social issues. And though his personality embodied the both worlds, it did cause untold suffering and struggle to him as a human being. Behind the flourish of language, depth of understanding and empathy with social causes thatcame to us as a well-made ‘product’—he fancied his lectures as a kind of performance whereas the teacher had to act out his interpretations in loud, lucid and lingering voice in order to reach out to the students who came from various socio-economic backgrounds and had differing levels of understanding---there were many disturbing personal and domestic factors that were all kept under painful control. No wonder, Hemingway’s‘courage is grace under pressure’ were his most quoted words.

If one has to just name a few writers and thinkers who shaped his persona, his world view and whom he kept reading and also kept teaching about, it should be something like this: Buddha, Gandhi, Marx, Lenin, Vivekananda, Ambedkar, Nehru (with reservations), M N Roy, Acharya Narendra Dev, Lohia, JP, Vinoba Bhave, Donne, Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, Hardy, Browning, Wilde, Eliot, Lawrence, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Premchand, Jainendra Kumar, Muktibodh, Ajneya, Marquez, Neruda etc. However, it would be lopsided if his life-long admiration for the Hindi film star Dev Anand, in particular, and to the great entertaining and informative role played by Hindi cinema, in general are missed out. Similarly his love for the Pete Samprases, Nadals, Federars, Maradonas, of the world needs to be mentioned in the similar vein which many a time kept him glued to television during ungodly hours—the same hours hat he chose to say good night to in his characteristic unassuming manner.