Sunandan Roy Chowdhury is a Bengali from Calcutta. He did most of his primary schooling in Calcutta Boys’ School, a protestant Christian school that was set up in 1877 in Calcutta of British colonial times in India. He was in Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur in his middle and senior schools. Narendrapur as the institution is commonly known in Calcutta is an institution of excellence created by Hindu Bengali monks who are part of the RamaKrishna Mission order which was founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1902. RamaKrishna Mission believes in the coexistence of religions and tries to be a syncretic order. This idea of pluralism and syncretism got embedded in Sunandan’s mind in a nascent way from a very early stage of his life.

After school, he did a bachelor’s degree in History at Presidency College, Calcutta. In the three years of college, he, along with colleagues, gave impetus to the formation of independent student organisations in colleges, and these organisations were not linked to any existent political party. His three years of college brought him in touch with social and political life of the non-mainstream left in Calcutta and also exposed him to the paradigms of Indian and western social science academia.

After three years of college in Calcutta, he moved on to do masters in modern and contemporary Indian history at the Centre for Historical Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. His life in Delhi, ever since he went there in 1991, has exposed him to various sections of Indian intelligentsia. After masters, he has worked in book publishing since 1994. He has focussed on social science publishing and children’s books. He was an educational publishing consultant to an NGO in Dhaka, Bangladesh where he helped build a list of children’s books relevant to children from less advantaged economic backgrounds. Since late 1998 he has started his own publishing enterprise called Sampark. He edits and publishes Sampark Journal of Global Understanding which focuses each issue on a particular country and gives the reader, between two covers,  an intellectual slice of the nation that the issue is focussed upon. Sampark also publishes literature by Indian authors as well as by writers from various parts of the world.

Presently, Sunandan is also engaged in a research on the roles of university educated intelligentsia in societies in four different countries in two regions of the world. Sunandan’s intellectual interests are nation and state, western modernity and non-western modernity, pluralism in its philosophical and cultural dimensions, technology and belief systems. He is also politically committed to people’s democratic power as widely as it can be achieved. Sunandan travels around the world and is always comparing notes on comparative lifestyles and societal structures. He tries to engage with minds in various continents and monuments are not his priority when he travels around.
 

And, here is a more straight forward c.v. of this International Policy Fellow of the Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary.
 
 
 

                                                                                            Curriculum Vitae
 

                                                                                    Sunandan Roy Chowdhury
 
 

Education:
    *  Jawaharlal University, New Delhi, India
              Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Indian History, 1993

   *   Presidency College, University of Calcutta
                   Bachelor of Arts in History, 1991

Engagement:
Open Society Institute, Budapest Hungary                                                                                 January 2002 - present
International Policy Fellow: Conducting research project entitled ‘Role of Universities in Social Transformation,’ examining role of university-educated intelligensia in social change in Eastern Europe and South Asia.

Sampark Journal of Global Understanding, New Delhi                                                             1999-present
Editor/Publisher: Produce an interdisciplinary human sciences journal that focuses on the intellectual life of a different nation state in every issue. Issues since publication began in 1999 so far have included Bangladesh, Israel, Italy, Slovenia and Sweden.

Gana Sahajjo Sangstha (Organization for People’s Aid), Dhaka, Bangladesh                            1997
Consultant: Advised large non-governmental organization on developing and marketing interesting, reader-friendly educational marketing for rural and working-class children in Bangladesh.

National Book Trust, New Delhi, India                                                                                     1994-1996
Editor: Developed children’s books and academic titles for India’s premier multi-lingual publishing house. Also responsible for fostering networks between the intellectual and publishing communities of various language regions of India, and between India and the international literary and publishing world.
 

Political Activities:

 Calcutta, 2001: Contested state legislative assembly elections as candidate from Calcutta for newly formed Party for Democratic Socialism, a breakaway from the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist.
1988-1991: Active in the formation of a citywide, independent students movement, unaligned with any existing political parties and free from their intervention.
Since 1986: Participated in a wide range of democratic rights and civil liberties movements.

Journalism:  Contribute articles to dailies and magazines in India and abroad.

Travel:        In South Asia: Bangladesh, Nepal and most major Indian cities. In Southeast Asia: Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and Cambodia. In the Arab world: Dubai and Sharjah. Israel, and in Europe: Italy, Germany, Holland, Slovenia, Sweden, Hungary, Poland and the United Kingdom.

Personal Data:
Date of Birth: January 11, 1969
Nationality: Indian
Profession: Academic Publishing and Research
 
 

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