Chittaranjan Das

Chittaranjan Das, popularly known as Chitta Bhai or Chitbhai (3 October 1923 – 16 January 2011), was an Indian writer, translator, critic, and social reformer from Orissa. A multilingual, he focused his works in Odia language, covering a wide range of topics including education, literature, cultural creativity, social criticism, social work, sociology, and religion.

Considered one of the most prolific writers in Odia, with numerous diaries, essays, reviews, autobiographies, memoirs, columns, textbooks, and monographs, Das made many innovations in the fields of translation, essays, criticism and travelogue writing. His columns were published regularly in various newspapers. Knowing as many as 18 languages, Das has taught in Germany, Finland and Israel before returning to India. He was the first to translate the Kural into Odia. Das died in Bhubaneswar on 16 January 2011.

Early life and education Das was born in 1923 in Bhagalpur village in Jagatsinghpur district, Orissa as the third child of five boys and three girls. After schooling in his native village, he attended Punang School, then Ranihat Minor School, and then the Ravenshaw Collegiate School. After passing the matriculation examination in 1941, he enrolled at Ravenshaw College in Cuttack, where he became an active member of the Communist Party of India. Inspired by Manmohan Mishra, he became involved in the independence movement.

Das was married to Usha Das, a gynecologist, with whom he had one son. His personal diaries contained several incidents and his autobiographical diary entries were published as Rohitara Daeri (Rohit's Diary), a series of more than 20 volumes. Although he had a good command of more than a dozen languages, including German, Danish, and Finnish, Sanskrit, Pali, Urdu, and Bengali, he wrote chiefly in Odia.

Along with these, Das translated the writings of many prominent writers including Ashapurna Devi, Albert Schweitzer, Francois Mauriac, Verrier Elwin, Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Mahatma Gandhi, Kahlil Gibran, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, Boris Pasternak, and Martin Luther King into Odia.

Awards and honors Central Literary Academy Award, 1998 (for Bishwuku Gabaksha) Odisha Sahitya Academy Award, 1962 (for Jeevana Bidyalaya) Sarala Award, 1989 (for Odisha O' Odia) Bishub Award, 1998 (awarded by Prajatantra Prachar Samiti) Sahitya Bharti Honour, 2000 (awarded by Sri Gangadhar Rath Foundation)