1930 - 2007
Lived and struggled for a better India. A silent man, finally gave up his dream in great pain and suffering. Born in Rangoon of Bengali parents, his early schooling was in a French private school in the city. Moved to Dhaka in 1942, studied in St. Gregory's School. Shifted in 1947 to Calcutta. Studied Applied Psychology for his Masters from Calcutta University. He was elected the president of the students' union, due to his popularity, especially, among the women students. He declined Fulbright scholarship to go the USA for research, as he considered the award of Indian Manpower scholarship more important. After a brief stint as an Indian Educational Service recruit, he first joined the University of Gorakhpur in 1958. Married Swarnalata Bose in 1960. His wife, who too was a university teacher, died in 1982 at Gorakhpur. He had two sons, Dhruvashish and Anadish. Dhruvashish died in his infancy, not even a year old. After the death of his first born in June 1962, his distraught wife advised him to seek another appointment. As a consequence, he started teaching in Delhi University since 1962. However, his wife failed to get any job in Delhi and was stuck with her university position at Gorakhpur. Initially, Ajit Kumar Pal's little earnings as a university teacher were spent mostly on sending a monthly remittance to his father Chitta Ranjan Pal in Calcutta. He spent rest of his earnings on books. He was an avid collector of books. In a peculiar travesty of fate, his only surviving son Anadish after dropping out received his formal education mostly from the family collection of the books collected by his father.
He was always considered a very gentle person. He liked to call himself an observer of human behavior. He had a deep insight about his own life and the future of mankind in general. His end marks the end of an era in India -- the sad end of gentle values. Many found his advocacy of radical social change very unlike his gentle personality. However, he was quick to realize the futility of any rapid efforts to bring about any social change in Indian society. As a psychologist, his experiments with real life situations engrossed him and he could never give enough attention to his earlier laboratory activities. The social experiment that he undertook was surely too vast on scale; and his lifespan proved to be very short compared to the scale of his experimental attempts. Nevertheless, if any improvements are ever to be seen in collective human behavior in future, a little bit of share would always go to experimental social psychologists like him.
2004 - At his Delhi home
12 Years after his retirement
1962 - Department of Philosophy and Psychology, Delhi University
From left: C. K. Basu, N. V. Bannerjee, Margaret Chatterjee, Ajit K. Pal