Remembering Prof. Sib Ray: The Radical

Remembering Prof. Sib Ray
The Radical Humanist

Prof. Sib Narayan Ray’s passing away on 26th February 2008, at the age of87, is a great loss to the intellectual movement in general and Radical Humanist Movement in particular. He was well known for his commitment to human values, courage of conviction, independent thinking, originality and simplicity. He wrote and fought towards building a New Human Civilization and for the development of New Human Culture. He edited collected works of M.N. Roy published by Oxford University Press. He wrote a Monumental biography of M.N. Roy published in 4 volumes for which he had done a great amount of research and travelled all over the world. He was Founder Editor of Jignasa, a cultural quarterly in Bengali.

I have been associated with the R.H. Movement and the Socialist Movement from my college days in 1954. My classmate Inturi Sambasiva Rao and I were inspired by M.N. Roy. We were very much fascinated by M.N. Roy and Dr. Rammanohar Lohia’s ideas. Both of us discontinued our college studies under the spell of M.N. Roy’s ideas. I became active in the Socialist Movement led by Dr. Lohia. My friend continued to be in the R.H. Movement. He attended R.H. Study Camp at Dehradun where he was introduced to the camp by Ellen Roy as Jesus Christ from Andhra.

I knew Prof Sib Ray when he was the Co-Editor of the R.H. along with Ellen Roy. In those days, I had correspondence with Ellen Roy seeking some clarifications regarding M.N. Roy’s New Humanism. I personally met Prof. Sib Ray in Mumbai in 1961 when he was a Professor in a College. After his first visit to Europe and Japan in 1962, he wrote an article in the R.H in which he expressed his inability to convince the intellectuals abroad regarding some ideas in New Humanism. The reasoning of M.N. Roy about “Man rising out of the ground of law-governed universe, is essentially rational and so moral” and the concept of ‘partyless politics’ were unconvincing to most of the intellectuals abroad.

Prof Sib Ray felt that those questions could be better understood from the angle of anthropology and Psychology instead of defining ‘man’ rising out of the ground of Law-governed Universe. I was very much delighted reading that article, because I too had posed the same kind of questions to Ellen Roy in my correspondence in 1955.

In 1962 Sib Ray published an article “May Man Prevail” by Dr. Erich Fromm in the Silver Jubilee issue of R.H. By then I had already read the famous book by Erich Fromm “Sane Society” and had become his admirer. I had correspondence with Ellen Roy, Erich Fromm and Sib Ray requesting them to comment on Dr. Lohia’s ideas. At the same time I was also in correspondence with Dr. Lohia, requesting him to comment upon M.N. Roy’s ‘Humanist Politics’ and Erich Fromm’s writings. I was in regular correspondence with Sib Ray when he was a Professor in Melbourne University in Australia.

The last time that I had met him was in 1998 during R.H. Association national convention at Hyderabad. I, along with, B.S. Ramulu and K.N. Ramdas interviewed Sib Ray about his views on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Later he wrote a thoughtful article on Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. He told me that he had read Lohia’s book on Caste system and found an affinity of thought between M.N. Roy and Dr. Lohia. But Lohia’s writings were not as systematic as M.N. Roy’s.

My friend Dr. Haridev Sharma, who was the Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, told me an interesting incident about Sib Ray’s courage, when he was the Director of Rabindra Bhavan at Shantiniketan. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited Rabindra Bhavan and took some paintings from there, assuring Sib Ray that they would be returned soon. But the Prime Minister did not keep her word. As the Director of Rabindra Bhavan, Sib Narayan Ray wrote a letter to the Prime Minister requesting her to return the paintings as promised by her. But the registrar was afraid to forward that letter but Sib Ray insisted saying they were not gifted to her, and more over Indira Gandhi herself promised that they would be returned. Finally the letter was sent, and the paintings were returned. That shows the courage of the man in dealing with the mighty of the land.

How many intellectuals have that kind of courage?