Nature Talk
Professor Pradipta Kishore Das
(b.24.10.1951-d.05.06.2016)
Professor Pradipta Kshore Das, member of the Editorial Board of The Tribal Tribune, is no more. He passed away on 5th June 2016 morning succumbing to the Meyloma (Bone marrow cancer), which he was valiantly fighting for almost five years. His death was untimely as he was hardly sixty-five. With his death the fraternity of Biological Anthropology in India has become poorer. But he was beyond the confines of Biological Anthropology as, according to many leading Indian anthropologists, he primarily aimed at deriving a meaningful relationship between biological and socio-cultural anthropology. He served his alma mater The Department of Anthropology, Utkal University with exemplary devotion. He was instrumental in persuading the state government of Odisha to institute a Chair in the Department in the memory of Prof. JBS Haldane. He held this Chair with aplomb and befitting to the interest of Prof. Haldane, led research in biological anthropology with emphasis on molecular anthropology. He was an extremely efficient organizer and an able team leader, which he amply demonstrated as head of the department and coordinator of UGC Department of Special Assistance (DSA) programme. It is a tribute to his able management of the academic programmes of the department that the department could be recognized as a Centre of Advanced Studies in Anthropology. He was very popular among his students and colleagues. He was a great company in the circle of his friends. Every body wanted him to live longer. Naturally they are heard bemoaning: “Why did you have to leave us Pradipta.”
The Tribal Tribune pays its homage to Professor Pradipata Kishore Das by reproducing, in its current issue, his report on skeletal material recovered from Golabai, in Khurda district of Odisha, which he had co-authored with Prof. S.K.Ghoshmaulik, his teacher and currently Editor of The Tribal Tribune. This report is an unignorable document in Orissan archaeology and biological anthropology because Golabai excavation is the first of its kind in Odisha, which led to the finding of a human skeleton.
