Alokranjan Dasgupta

Alokeranjan Dasgupta (6 October 1933 – 17 November 2020) was a Bengali poet who was the author of over 20 books of poetry. He translated Bengali and Santal poetry and plays into English and German, and also translated literature from German and French into Bengali. He also published a number of books of essays, and was well known for his distinctive prose style.

Education Dasgupta was born in 1933 in Kolkata. He studied at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, and then at St. Xavier's College, the Presidency College, and finally at the University of Calcutta, gaining a Ph.D. for his studies on the lyric in Indian poetry. Since 1971, he taught at the faculty of the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He was closely associated with the Deutsche-Indische Gessellschaft (DIG), which is a premier institution for promoting close links between India and Germany.

A poet much admired by his fellow poets and the wannabes, his poetry is known for both thematic and technical innovations. The German government felicitated him for his contribution to bring together two different cultures together by awarding him the Goethe Medal in 1985.

Awards Dasgupta received many awards and honors including the Sudha Basu award from the University of Calcutta (1983), the Goethe Prize in Germany (1985), the Ananda Purashkar (1985), the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (1985), the Rabindra Puraskar (1987), the Sahitya Akademi Award (1992) for his book of poems Marami Karat (translated as The Mystical Saw and Other Poems) and the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (2005).