GUWAHATI, Dec 12 - �Professor Birinchi Kumar Barua, who belonged to the clan of writers known as public intellectuals, was not content living in the ivory tower of knowledge and power, but reached out to the common people through his creative writing in Assamese and to his peer groups in other parts of India through his intellectual writing.�
Professor Dr EV Ramakrishnan, distinguished scholar and Professor Emeritus, Central University of Gujarat made the above comments while delivering the Birinchi Kumar Barua commemoration lecture today on �The making of Indian Literature: Region, Modernity Iiterature�.
Speaking about the impact of modernity of Indian literature, he said that Indian response to colonial modernity was complex and many layered. �Writers such as Bharatendu Harishchandra in Hindi, Govardhan Tripathy in Gujarati, O Chandu Menon in Malayalam among others interpreted modernity from their social context and the region within India did not respond in a uniform manner to the logic of Western modernity,� he said.
�In the twentieth century when the modern institutions such as colleges, universities, academies etc., came up, it was public intellectuals like Birinchi Kumar Barua who meditated between the domains of popular and social on one hand and intellectual and institutional on the other,� he added.
Calling him an �organic intellectual�, Dr Ramakrishnan said that his deep interest in oral traditions of North East revealed his concern for the marginalised voices of culture in the wake of colonial modernity.
