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The life of Govindo Chandra Dev

Syed Badrul Ahsan
WHEN Govindo Chandra Dev was shot and bayoneted to death in the early hours of March, 26, 1971, by the soldiers of the Pakistan army, it marked the end of one of the foremost intellectuals of the Indian subcontinent. For Dev was a scholar beyond measure; and beyond measure too was the personality that defined his being. A thinker in the extreme, he was yet an individual who drew from other individuals the feeling that he was accessible. There was little that was hard to fathom about him. Those who knew him, his colleagues and students alike, have consistently recalled the human qualities that endlessly underpinned his philosophy of life.
There was the old-fashioned about G.C. Dev, as he has come to be known. In him lay an abundant desire to explore the limits of thought, to a point where those thoughts could then be related to life as it was lived on the ground. His writ ran nearly everywhere, but that was again part of his worldview. Intelligence must be all-embracing and intellect had to be all-expansive, for him, if life was to have meaning. And meaning lay in an understanding of the basic tenets of thought that Shri Ramkrishna had propounded in his time.
And yet Ramkrishna was not the beginning and the end of experience for Dev. In his religiosity, which again diverged from the conventionalities that come entwined with faith, Dev sought the secular. He was, as the late Dewan Mohammad Azraf would say, always in search of a principle, on the lookout for a synthesis of thoughts. All thinkers are wont to do that. With Dev, the difference lay in his unending endeavour to draw
inspiration, and light, from such diversities in philosophy as those propounded by Spinoza and Buddha. He went looking for Copernicus and Kant. It was always the ethical that defined his view of the world around him, and the worlds beyond the one he inhabited.
Observe the trajectory of GC Dev's life and the clouds will clear away. Born in Sylhet, he would go on to attain academic feats that would swiftly and inexorably bring him in touch with the outside world. He travelled all the way to Bombay, to study Vedantic philosophy at the research institute there; and then made his way to Calcutta, where he had earlier been, to begin a teaching career at Surendranath College. The college would in time move to Dinajpur, in the war years, and then would be taken back to Calcutta. But Dev would stay back in Dinajpur and establish what would be a new Surendranath College. It was driving ambition at work, the goal being a dissemination of education.
It was a task Dev would continue at Dhaka University, all the way from 1953 to 1971. There was forever a higher purpose that underscored Dev's mission in life. Of course, that purpose received a knock with the partition of the country in 1947. Undaunted, however, he chose to stay on in a place he considered home. It was Pakistan, of course, but more importantly it was home in the ancient concept of the meaning. Home was everywhere -- in Calcutta, in the eastern part of a truncated Bengal, in distant Pennsylvania where he lectured.
Dev's evolution as a philosopher was a continuous affair. He explored Buddha's humanism and Vivekanda's philosophy, and dwelt on idealism and its place in life. Respected worldwide for the keenness that interspersed his thoughts, Dev propounded his ideals all over Pakistan, a state that would not be his even if he gave his soul to it. The growing communalism of the state must have caused scratches on his sensibilities, but he showed no outward signs of his discomfiture. Yet, quiet happiness was surely his when his fellow Bengalis moved towards a clear break with the past in December 1970 through opting for nationalism. Dev joined the multitudes and marched across town in defence of all those elements of politics that bound democracy to people, or the other way round. It was a season when everyone marched, for the cause was liberty.
In the early moments of liberty, for the genocide of the Pakistan
army had already led to a declaration of Bengali independence, life for Govindo Chandra Dev came to a quick, sad end. As Pakistan's soldiers, with murder in their thoughts, beat their path to his door and then called out his name, Dev, ever the gentleman, opened it. The next moment he was sprawled on his sofa, pushed into it by the men intent on taking the life of the Hindu, the "enemy" of Pakistan, they saw before them. Dev was bayoneted. And then was shot. Darkness descended on him, as it descended on an entire nation.
(The Department of Philosophy, Dhaka University, celebrates GC Dev's centenary of birth today). Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs. The Daily Star