How “The path of music and poetry” showed the path of teaching and leading technology education: “In our tradition, a promise given to a teacher must be fulfilled”

The IIT Adivasi’ who became a frontbencher

At 4.30pm on July 7, as the shadows lengthened on the freedom memorial, Hijli jail, in Kharagpur, Yama took away a campus favourite. Living alone and quietly in a small apartment outside the IIT campus was a bespectacled, diminutive, 89-year-old professor.

He was “The IIT Adivasi”, the only surviving original. His name, Gitindra Saran Sanyal, meant “the path of music and poetry”. His was a path of teaching and leading technology education.

“Professor Sir” to today’s IIT directors and the 25,000 Kharagpur graduates over the last half a century, Sanyal was among the few able to recall first-hand how a modern and premier technical institution was created in a newly independent India. […]

“Do not merely say ‘yes’ and forget about it. In our tradition, a promise given to a teacher must be fulfilled — and remember, I am into my late 70s!” he reminded me. […]

Sourve: “The IIT Adivasi’ who became a frontbencher” by R. Gopalkrishna, The Telegraph Calcutta, Saturday, July, 2011:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110709/jsp/nation/story_14216515.jsp
Date Visited: Thu Nov 03 2011 10:19:10 GMT+0100 (CET)

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