Dr Sanjukta Ghosh is a historian based in SOAS South Asia Institute. She has devised a new form of connecting community cultures in the India-UK year of Culture 2017.
Early Influences
Dr Ghosh’s historical influences in life have been the social reconstruction works of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Vivekananda and Daniel Mackinnon Hamilton. She has lived and worked in Kolkata, Barrackpore, Shantiniketan, Diamond Harbour and Belur. Her childhood memory in Jharkhand of social projects under the direction of her grandfather, the late Srish Chandra Ghosh remains strong, as he was a close associate of the founder of the Satsang social movement; Thakur Anukul Chandra.
Background
Dr Ghosh has an academic interest in Indo-British connections. She studied World History, Politics and Literature at Loreto College before undertaking a Masters and MPhil by dissertation in Modern History from the Centre for Historical Studies at JNU, New Delhi. She was awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (UK) for her doctorate in the Department of History at SOAS. Her doctoral research focused on the impact of British rule in the Bengal Presidency with regard to scientific knowledge exchange. She has also published this year a new edited volume, by Routledge, on memories of British rule in India that looks at different segments of cultural connections.
Apart from her academic and journalistic work, Dr Sanjukta Ghosh has presented several policy reports at the United Nations and European Parliamentary levels.
She has won several awards and distinctions, including the Charles Wallace Trust and the British Council.
Community Projects
Sanjukta is committed to social work and community projects in her native India and the UK. She looks at hidden discrimination and minority rights. In recognition of her long standing social cohesion projects among the Dalit communities, she was given the Kolkata citizen award. In the UK, she continued this work as the Coordinator for research and advocacy with the International Dalit Solidarity Network (now based in Copenhagen).
Sanjukta’s interest in minority communities led to high profile UN advocacy campaigns over ten years. She spoke on the relatively unknown forms of discrimination among minorities, and gender rights with a global consortium of Middle East minorities affiliated to the UNPO.
Recent Work
Dr Sanjukta Ghosh has been critical to a crowd-funded Bengal Heritage project led by the charity London, Sharad Utsav that has several community projects in India and the UK. Aligned with SOAS South Asia Institute, she is co-ordinating the partnership with cultural events. The art installation of the Durga idol will be in the cloisters of the Paul Webley Wing of the Senate House, the University of London for five days in the first week of October 2017.
The demonstration of clay idol-making in the form of Durga by artists flown in from Kolkata’s potters’ quarter and community art hub Kumartoli, is the first on UK university premises. The cultural exhibition of the process of Durga idol-making at SOAS will accompany cultural events demonstrating the world’s greatest festival of ‘crowd-sourced ideas’.
She said: “We will celebrate the heritage of Bengal in the heart of Bloomsbury, the most diverse cultural quarter of London.” As part of this mission, she is also working with the Bloomsbury Festival (18-22 October) to display the idol in its grandeur and opulence along with story-telling and a matching performance.” The purpose here, as she says, “is to give Bengal heritage in art and craft a significant place in a world-class festival that celebrates the arts, culture and science through hundreds of events in parks, museums, galleries and public buildings that attract the audience from across London and the world. Durga Puja is a celebration of community spirit and creativity and needs to be part of India’s global image”.
In the Bloomsbury Festival, she is also organising a panel on the transformations of community culture and the function of artistic enterprises in India. She says: “This year has been busy with projects on the role of social media and changing forms in the communication of crowd sourced creative ideas, that will shape the contours of India’s political and community capacity building”.
Collaboration
Sanjukta recently started collaborating with Aritra Sarkar and the Kolkata based Wedoria Chronicles’ (an offshoot of ABP media conglomerate) initiatives in graphics and social media to develop writers and artist-led workshops on democracy in India. First of the global diaspora events was a workshop and discussion at SOAS Indian Society forum on the philosopher and technologist Aritra Sarkar’s debut graphic novel “The Goliath of Shenzen”. Organised and chaired by Dr Ghosh, this was for the UK chapter of the global workshop series on literature for social change.
Future Plans
As a historian who strives for social change, Sanjukta has plans for future projects on education, literature and culture for the purpose of community empowerment.
