Ashapurna Debi was born in 1909. Her conservative family did not send her to school, but encouraged by her mother, she learnt to read and write on her own and published her first poem in the children’s magazine Shishu Saathi. Married at fifteen to Kalidas Gupta of Krishnanagar, she continued to write with his support. Pratham Pratisruti (1964) is the first of a trilogy that includes Subarnalata (1966) and Bakul Katha (1973). Translated here as The First Promise, it won her the Rabindra Puraskar in 1966 and the Bharatiya Jnanpith award in 1977. Ashapurna published 181 novels, 38 anthologies of short stories, and 52 books for children. She died in 1995.
Usman Jawed Siddiqi has an MPhil in Sociology from the University of Delhi. He works as a senior researcher at the Centre for Equity Studies and coordinates the India Exclusion Report. He is intere
R.M. Pal was born in Kamilla district of undivided Bengal. He taught English at Rajdhani College in Delhi. He was closely associated with the Radical Humanist Movement and was personally close to M
Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, publisher of Ebong Alap books and an independent researcher, has also written Identities and Histories: Women's Writing and politics in Bengal (Stree, 2010).
Yogesh Maitreya is a poet, translator, columnist, PhD scholar and publisher at Panther’s Paw Publication. He has translated work of fiction and non-fiction from Dalit literature. For his PhD, he
Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi is an Indian civil servant who served as 17th Chief Election Commissioner of India. He was appointed as the CEC as the successor to Navin Chawla on 30 July 2010. He has
