Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee

Hello and apologies for this long long and absolutely yaaaaaaawwwning gap of almost a  month. It has become increasingly difficult these days to take time off for a blog post though I wish to write more often and post more and more meaningful and helpful material than I presently do. But this time I had to take time off and write to share a bad bad news. The Indian academia, particularly, the world of English and Postcolonial Studies suffered a tremendous blow on its face in the passing away of one its most loved, treasured and esteemed scholar, Dr. Meenakshi Mukherjee on 16th  September 2009. Scholar, teacher, and critic par excellence, she was  warm, gentle and friendly as a human being in general and as a guide to the young aspirants in the field of English studies in particular. Meenakshi Mukherjee taught at Patna, Poona, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chicago, California and Texas. She was on her way to Delhi for the launch of her new book, a biography of the historian R.C. Dutt, published by Penguin when she suffered a silent heart attack at the Hyderabad airport. It is really amazing how cruel luck sometimes is and how mercilessly it shatters your plans. It was exactly on the last Friday  when I mentioned her name to my students of MA (English) II year while discussing the nature and scope of Indian Writing in English and told them that I hope to see her at the forthcoming Jaipur Literature Festival to be held during 21-25th  January 2010. But this can never happen now. No discussion of Indian Writing in English can be complete without a mention of Meenakshi di (as she was affectionately called) and her work on the subject. Particularly, her brilliant book The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English (Oxford), for which she won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award  (a rare  honour for a literary critic), is justly regarded as a pioneering text in the field of English and Postcolonial Studies in India. She is survived by a 93 year old mother and two daughters. My heart goes out to them. She has left behind herself a body of work, so dazzling, so original and so encouraging that it will always always keep attracting young talents to be her torchbearers.  

Read an obituary written by Professor Harish Trivedi of Delhi University.

RIP.