Abstract
Aparna Basu, a noted historian, author and Professor, passed away on 3rd December 2018, after a brief illness. At the time of her passing, Dr Basu was a Chairperson of the National Gandhi Museum, trustee and patron of the All India Women’s Conference, and a trustee of the Sarabhai Foundation in Ahmedabad. She was also a Chairperson of the All India Committee for the Eradication of Illiteracy, a managing committee member of Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Delhi, and a governing body member of Indraprastha College, University of Delhi. Aparna Basu was a very active and supportive member of the Editorial Advisory Board of CWDS’ Indian Journal of Gender Studies and an enthusiastic contributor to its annual visual calendar.
Aparna Basu received PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She had published, co-authored and edited over a dozen books spanning the history of education in India, biographies of Abbas Tyabji, Kasturba Gandhi, Mridula Sarabhai and her grandmother G. L. Mehta. She was a pioneer in family history and had, in the last decade, become very interested in the archival photograph as a source of history. Her pictorial history entitled Gandhi’s Vision: Freedom and Beyond is to be released posthumously in early 2019.
A Scholar of Another Kind Devaki Jain
Aparna Basu had all the credentials of a high-flying scholar—a PhD holder from the University of Cambridge, Professor of History at the University of Delhi and a member of the editorial board of several academic journals—Indian Journal of Gender Studies and Indian Economic and Social History Review to mention only a couple. She was the University Grants Commission Convener of the national subject panel on History and Archaeology and was the author and co-editor of several books, biographies and anthologies. In the last couple of decades, Aparna curated exhibitions and wrote biographies and life stories of interesting people, including members of her illustrious family. She was on the governing body of colleges, schools and institutions.
Aparna had another credential not common among high-flying scholars—the willingness, the generosity to ₹bend down’ to assist other more action-oriented projects. She responded to so many requests for her guidance and contribution without assessing whether they would add to her credentials or were worthy of her status—just due to the generosity of her spirit. Aparna undertook the leadership of the All India Women’s Conference at a critical time in its history, causing the organisation to reinvent itself through newer activities. Even after her term as President was over, she continued to mentor it. Her involvement with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s work was another track no longer really the fashion among academics. I feel that the whole philosophy and activism generated by Gandhi are currently dormant. Undaunted, Aparna took up the chairpersonship of the Gandhi Museum, changed its character, made it lively by holding meetings, conferences and exhibitions and publishing tracts—all of which brought the institution and its legacy into prominence.
The extraordinary fact is that Aparna engaged in all this governance and direction while simultaneously writing well-researched books and informally guiding scholars, academic friends and colleagues. She guided researchers not only on where to look but also on how to organise their material. For me, she was both a friend of almost 6o years as well as an anchor and support, with whom I’d shared many experiences. Aparna never said no to sharing her expertise, and in 2018, she and I did a stunning exhibition drawing on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s life at India International Centre.
What hurts most is that she was reasonably fit and had many, many plans—no inkling of her illness. Hard to let her go…