Dr Probal Roy Chowdhury is a Kolkata based independent researcher and consultant. Dr Roy Chowdhury has had an education steeped in the Indian culture. He studied in Vivekananda Mission School, Kolkata, followed by Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College, Chennai, and he worked in Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amma’s university in Kerala. His PhD thesis was based on the seminal work done by Gandhian thinker and historian Dharampal (1922-2006).
Dharampal wrote a seminal book called “The Beautiful Tree” which documented the crucial fact that even in 1825, one-third of the boys of school-going age were studying in the indigenous school system and almost seventy per cent of these students were from what we call the ‘backward classes’. It was only under the colonial education system under the British rule, that educational deprivation started emerging among these communities.
Dr Roy Chowdhury is currently engaged in scholarly explorations on the history of indigenous education in the Bengal presidency region, and on cultural and ritual traditions of Bengal, especially the Durga festival.
