Deven Dutta: Departure of a Fearless Citizen

Dr. Jyotirmoy Prodhani

I still remember.

It was August 1987 and my first English class in Cotton. By mistake, instead of English Major, like many of us, we happened to be inside the English General class where students from all the departments in Arts were there in the jam-packed hall. The class was by Deven Dutta Sir.

It was also the first class of one of our friends Fazlur from the Economics Department who got a bit late. He stood on the door and said with visible trepidation, ‘May I come in sir?’ Without even lifting his head from the Register Book, sir waved at him to come in. As he entered the room with cautious steps, sir said in a single breath, ‘Kleus d’ deu’.

Fazlur stopped right in front of the lecture platform and meekly looked at him. Without looking at him, sir again said, ‘Klaus d’ deu’ and resumed calling the numbers. Fazlur froze and helplessly turned his head towards us. We had no answer to help him.

However, Nazu and Anita (we got to know them because they were rank holders in the HS exam that year) animatedly whispered to him, ‘duar khon jopai diya.’ After a bit of confusion, he proceeded towards the door, carefully closed it, looked at sir, who was still calling the numbers, and quietly came to his seat and sat down. As for us, we remained ultra-silent throughout the class.

We were actually petrified hearing the way he pronounced the Roll Numbers. Everybody got extremely alert not to miss his or her number to utter ‘Yes Sir‘ because none had the guts to tell him that one had missed the number.

As for English Major, he taught us the History of English Literature. None had the guts to ask him what chapter he was teaching. In the first few classes, instead of the whole lecture, we could only catch some hold of some words like ‘Anglo-Saxon’, ‘Beowulf, ‘Anglo-Norman’ etc., and coming back to the hostel we would start looking for those unfamiliar words in our books.

Every word he pronounced in English was with impeccable intonations, stress, and aspirations. That was one reason, we could hardly muster the courage even speak to him. Coming from small-town vernacular medium colleges and schools, Deven Dutta sir himself was quite an exposure to us.

Deven Dutta: Departure of a Fearless Citizen — Deven Dutta

Sir was, in a sense, an orthodox and a purist when it came to language. When he would speak in English, he would speak the language without compromising its phonetic character, a practitioner of what is in phonetic terms known as the ‘RP variety’ (Received Pronunciation) or British English. He was quite at ease to discard the trace of the mother tongue from his spoken English.

Again, when it was about the Assamese language, he would use it with equal dedication without uttering a single English word or incorporating a stray English term in his Assamese writings. It was not an easy task to master. He believed in respecting the authenticity of language, be it English or even one’s mother tongue.

His basic ideology pertaining to language was, ‘Never take your language for granted. You must learn it to master this, be it a non-native language like English or even your own mother tongue, like Assamese.’ His Assamese writings carried the flavour of country colloquiality, accented with idiomatic nuances. Reading Deven Dutta was always a journey towards an authentic landscape of language.

Though he seemed to be a man with a stiff upper lip, too serious a person, his analogies, and expressions were often full of creative onomatopoeia, ironies and humour, which marked his quintessential writing style, therefore refreshing and lively.

While being critical of government policies and corrupt practices, he was scathing, and would never care to mince words. In fact, his relentless fight for consumer rights and against irregularities that affected the day-to-day life of a common citizen often made him occupy the headlines. He was the first person in Assam to have taken up the fight for consumer rights as a personal mission.

He was instrumental in having the autorickshaws of Guwahati installed with meters against huge protests and threats by the autorickshaw operators who were notorious for exploiting the passengers in the most unscrupulous ways. He would even hit the street against the use of domestic gas cylinders by commercial establishments and draw attention to such irregularities that caused hardships to the ordinary consumers of cooking gas.

He would not even hesitate to verify the construction works done against public funding. He thought it was his ethical obligation to ask uncomfortable questions to the authorities and make government employees accountable to the common people. To bring such issues as part of the public discourse is no less a contribution of Deven Dutta as a public intellectual and a social activist.

There was a saying involving a well-known British playwright. Once he was asked, ‘Who are you?’ He replied, ‘Oh, don’t you know me? I am a very powerful person. I am a free citizen of a democratic republic.’

Deven Dutta drew both his sense of responsibility and his sense of power from the deeper understanding of democracy, where a free citizen is the most powerful, whom even the most powerful ruler is accountable to. It is the citizen who is the source of power and not the other way around. This is what Prof Deven Dutta showed and taught the common men through his writings, his activism, and his social commitments.

With his departure, we have lost a fighter.

Jyotirmoy Prodani teaches English at NEHU, Shillong

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