Anil Kumar Gayen

A Forgotten Founder of a University
[Born February 01, 1919 and died on February 07, 1978]
Abhijit Guha

Anil Kumar Gayen was a renowned scholar in the fields of Mathematics and Statistics. He earned Ph.D. degree in 1950 in Statistics from the University of Cambridge. Gayen was Professor of Statistics and Head of Mathematics Department at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur during 1954-1978. Professor Gayen made significant contributions in Applied Statistics. He also contributed to linear statistical inference and the distribution of product-moment correlation coefficient. Gayen also studied the measurement of discriminating powers in psychometric and educational measurement problems. Professor Gayen obtained his Ph.D under the supervision of Professor Henry Ellis Daniels, FRS, who was the President of the Royal Statistical Society, UK and the co-formulator of the famous Parry-Daniels Map. Gayen was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and Cambridge Philosophical Society and he was President, Statistics Section of the Indian Science Congress in 1971.(INSA:2012).

Apart from his academic contributions, Anil Kumar Gayen dedicated the later years of his life towards the establishment of Vidyasagar University as a non-traditional institution of higher education in the erstwhile Medinipur district of the West Bengal state in India. This university was named after the nineteenth century social reformer and educationist Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar. Based on the recommendations of a citizen's forum named Regional Education Association led by Professor Anil Kumar Gayen, the University Grants Commission approved the establishment of Vidyasagar University in the erstwhile Medinipur district. The First Vice-Chancellor of Vidyasagar University Professor Bhupesh Chandra Mukherjee rightly mentioned in his article in the Journal of Higher Education published by the UGC that Professor Anil Kumar Gayen's vision was clearly reflected in the Vidyasagar University Act of 1981 wherein among others, it was stated that the "University shall have the power to make such academic studies as may contribute to the improvement of economic conditions and welfare of the people in general and the tribal people in particular. (Vidyasagar University Act 1981 was amended in 1997 and 2011)

Early Life and Education
Anil Kumar Gayen was born in a very poor family of a remote village named Lakkhi under the Khejuri block of the present Purba (East) Medinipur district. His father Jibankrishna Gayen died when Anil was a mere child. Anil's mother Panchamidevi had to run her family with a son and a daughter under much economic hardship. Anil Gayen started his education in a village Pathsala (traditional village primary schools). At the age of eight, he was admitted to class III in Krishnanagar Middle English School of the locality. Gayen acknowledged with deep respect the training of the Headmaster Dharanidhar Jana and Pandit Adhar Chandra Maity, who first aroused his interest to develop skills in English language and Mathematics. After successfully passing out from the Middle English School Gayen took admission in class VII at Henria Sibaprasad Sishkayatan in 1931. In the year 1935 Anil Gayen earned Matriculation degree with letter marks in Sanskrit and Mathematics. Anil Gayen then moved out of his village home and took admission at the Bangabasi College in Kolkata and passed Intermediate in Arts (IA) Examination with letter marks in 1939. After passing the IA, he was qualified with Honours in Mathematics from the then Ripon College (presently Surendranath College) in 1939. During this period he used to stay at Ramkrishna Mission Students' Home for poor students on the recommendation of the Principal Swami Mangalananda Maharaj of Contai (Kanthi) Ramkrishna Mission of Midnapore. After graduation, Anil Kumar got admission to MA degree in Applied Mathematics at the Calcutta University but he had to discontinue his studies owing to acute economic crisis of his family. He had to earn by doing private coaching for his own subsistence in Kolkata and also for sending money for the upkeep of his mother and unmarried sister. But he had to leave Kolkata during this period since Second World War broke out. After returning to his village home he worked as a low paid home tutor at Medinipur and he could not appear in the MA examination in time. Fighting single handed Anil, however, managed to return to Kolkata and passed his MA Examination in Applied Mathematics from the University of Calcutta in First Class and he also ranked First in the year 1943 by winning a Gold Medal. Dr Shyamaprasad Mukhopadhyay, the then Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University waived his tution fees and his friends in Kolkata also extended economic cooperation to Gayen. (Mandal 2009:644-647). After the completion of MA degree Anil Kumar worked as a teacher first in Henria Sibaprasad Sishkayatan, then at Presidency College and Bengal Engineering College at Sibpur for a brief period.

Teaching and Research
In the year 1946 Anil Kumar Gayen married Krishna Chongdar, the daughter of a rich businessman Panchanan Chongdar of Howrah district. Just after few months of marriage Anil Kumar set out for England on 20th August 1947 to work for his Ph.D. degree at Cambridge University. He completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge within three years in Mathematical Statistics in the year 1950. After his return from England Gayen joined the Indian Statistical Institute at Kolkata as a faculty and also began to teach statistics at Calcutta University. He finally joined the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur as Assistant Professor and worked there for the rest of his life. Gayen was a very successful teacher and researcher not only in theoretical statistics but also in the application of the subject in solving various educational problems. During his professorial tenure at the elite institute like Kharagpur IIT, Dr Gayen supervised a number of down to earth research projects sponsored by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) which were aimed to recommend reforms in the systems of school leaving examinations in West Bengal. (Ibid).

Vidyasagar University
The greatest work in which Anil Kumar Gayen devoted his life during the last decade of his brilliant career was the establishment of Vidyasagar University in Medinipur. During the early 1970, experiences of the NCERT surveys provided professor Gayen a stimulus to form the Regional Education Association, a registered society, which took up the herculean task of establishing a university in Medinipur. Gayen's mission was to set up a non-traditional university with subjects like Anthropology, Applied Mathematics, Economics, Political Science, Commerce and Library Science. He planned that all these subjects would act in an interdisciplinary fashion and collectively, these subjects would plough back their findings of research towards development of the underprivileged sections of the rural society and particularly the tribals. Dr Gayen proposed to the UGC that "non-traditional" also meant that the curriculum of Vidyasagar University will have job orientation. With these two aims, Gayen fought a long battle for educational reform like the true descendent of Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and clinched the sanction for the establishment of Vidyasagar University in Medinipur. The Vidyasagar University Act was enacted in the West Bengal Assembly in 1981—three years after the demise of Professor Gayen. The CPI-M took over control of this small university in Medinipur and managed to erase the name of Gayen as founder of Vidyasagar University from public memory.During the long period of Left Front rule the general impression among the public was that this university was founded by the CPI(M) leaders of West Bengal. The UGC recognised this university on condition that it should develop in a non-traditional manner, incorporating subjects with a bearing on rural development.

Accordingly, departments like Economics with rural development, Political Science with rural administration, Anthropology with tribal culture, Commerce with farm management. Applied Mathematics with Oceanology and Library and Information Science were introduced in the 1985-86 academic session. The Vidyasagar University Act mentioned that the institution would have the power "to organise specialised diploma, degree or post-graduate courses in such subjects as tribal languages, habitat and customs, rural administration, forestry, regional resource planning, ecology and environmental studies." It was a pro-poor and pro-tribal legislation that was expected to determine the functioning of this university.

It was an irony that the contributions of Anil Kumar Gayen towards the establishment of Vidyasagar University was not given due recognition by the makers of the Vidyasagar University Act in 1981 and the subsequent amendments made in 1997 and 2011(Guha 2001; 2008; 2012a; 2012b; Roy 2010) In the first week of May 2012, Executive Council of Vidyasagar University under the leadership of the Vice-Chancellor Professor Ranjan Chakrabarty has formed a Committee to commemorate the contributions of Anil Kumar Gayen in a befitting manner and for the first time in the history of Vidyasagar University certain concrete proposals have been adopted to honour the founder of this institution of higher learning in the state of West Bengal in India.

References :
Compendium of lNSA Fellows. P. 295 (Downloaded from google.com on 08.06.2012)
Guha, A. 2001. 'An Anthropological Enquiry of Vidyasagar University Campus: Myth and Reality'. Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society. 36: 251-255
2008. 'Of a University, a Tribal Village and Policy-making : (De) construction of a Development Dialogue', in Contemporary Society : Tribal Studies (2008) eds. Deepak Kumar Behera and Georg Pfeffer, Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi.
2012 a. 'Rule makers, rule breakers', Frontier, Vol.44, No.27, January 15-21, 2012.
2012 b. 'Party and the campus'. The Statesman, 3 March 2012, p. 6.
Khejurir Sekal Ekal, 2009, Edited by Swapan Kumar Mondal, Netaji Patha Chakra, Purba Medinipur. Mukherjee, BC, 1987-88, "Vidyasagar University : Its Objectives and character". Journal of Higher Education 1987-88, Vol.13 Nos. 1-3.pp. 125-126.
North Dakota State University in Collaboration with American Mathematical Society, "Anil Kumar Gayen in Mathematics Genealogy Project". (Downloaded from google.com on 08.06.2012)

Frontier
Vol. 45, No.9, Sep 9-15 2012