Draft talk:Pramada Ranjan Ray

Who is Pramada Ranjan Ray?

Pramada Ranjan Ray (1875–1947) was one of British India's most decorated provincial surveyors, a Bengali prose writer of exceptional clarity, and a noted cricketer — a man who spent over two decades mapping the unmapped frontiers of the subcontinent entirely on foot, through the jungles of Burma, the Chin Hills, the Lushai Hills, the Khasi Hills, Assam and Balochistan, in conditions of genuine physical danger, with no roads and often no settlements within twenty-five miles (Ray, Pramadaranjan, Baner Khabar, Signet Press, Calcutta, 1956, preface; Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.22186). He rose through the ranks of the Survey of India to Class I officer — the senior-most civilian grade (Survey of India General Report 1924–25, Survey of India, 1926, p. 5) — and was honoured with the title of Rai Sahib in June 1913 (Who's Who in India, Supplement 2, Newul Kishore Press, 1914, p. 100; Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Who%27s_Who_in_India_Supplement_2_(1914).djvu/160) and elevated to Rai Bahadur on 13 June 1929 (Survey of India General Report 1928–29, Survey of India, 1929, p. 8), documented in five independent British Indian government publications spanning seventeen years. An examination of the same Survey of India General Reports shows that among Provincial Officers of equivalent grade listed in those same reports, he appears to be the only one to receive both successive honours — indicating distinction exceptional even by the standards of his own department. His prose, written a century ago, reads with the directness and lucidity of the best contemporary Bengali writing — a quality explicitly noted by an independent critic in Parabaas 62, March–April 2016 (ISSN 1563-8685; https://www.parabaas.com/PB62/LEKHA/brShreyosi62.shtml).

His literary standing — a century of readers

His travel accounts from those surveys were serialised in Sandesh — at the time the most important children's magazine in South Asia, confirmed as such by Sukumar Ray in his published biography (Sukumar Samagra Rachanabali, Vol. 1, chapter "Jibani", Asia Publishing Company, Calcutta, 1960; Bengali Wikisource: https://bn.wikisource.org/wiki/সুকুমার_সমগ্র_রচনাবলী_(প্রথম_খণ্ড)/জীবনী) — and later published as Baner Khabar (News from the Forest) by the prestigious Signet Press, Calcutta, in 1956 (Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.22186). The book has been in continuous print for nearly seventy years. A completely independent critical essay devoted entirely to the book appeared in the ISSN-registered Bengali literary journal Parabaas (ISSN 1563-8685) as recently as 2016 (Chakraborty, Shreyosi, "প্রমদারঞ্জন রায়ের 'বনের খবর'", Parabaas 62, March–April 2016; https://www.parabaas.com/PB62/LEKHA/brShreyosi62.shtml), written by a critic with no connection to the author or his family, describing him as one of India's earliest and most fearlessly courageous surveyors and characterising his prose as carrying "the scent of dry leaves crunching underfoot in the forest." This independent critic, writing a century after the original stories first appeared in Sandesh, arrived at precisely the same conclusions about the book's quality and importance that generations of Bengali readers had been arriving at since the 1910s — testament to a prose style that has never dated. A peer-reviewed international academic journal article discusses his direct influence on his daughter's literary career (Bagchi, Barnita, "Ar konakhane/'Somewhere Else': Utopian Resonances in Lila Majumdar's Autobiographical Writing", Cracow Indological Studies XX(2), 2018, pp. 163–178, doi:10.12797/CIS.20.2018.02.08). An Oxford University Press academic monograph devotes multiple pages to him by name (Sengoopta, Chandak, The Rays Before Satyajit: Creativity and Modernity in Colonial India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-946475-3, pp. 31–35) — a single such source satisfies WP:GNG without any further sources being required. The British Library's own Endangered Archives Programme names him explicitly as a translator of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle alongside his brother Kuladaranjan Ray (https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP1104-7). A peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (Roy, Gautam Chando, Vol. 73, 2012, pp. 898–905, JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156287) — now obtained in full text — names Pramadaranjan explicitly as a contributor to Sandesh alongside Sukumar Roy, Sukhalata Roy and Abanindranath Tagore (p. 899), and devotes a dedicated passage to his writing: "Roychaudhuri's brother, Pramadaranjan Roy the surveyor, regaled readers with his own experiences in the forests of Assam and Burma... with humans regularly coming in contact with tigers, elephants, boars, and snakes, and slashing their way through deep forests and navigating uncharted and turbulent rivers, it was really a dangerous undertaking" (p. 901). Footnote 10 of that article further documents the original Sandesh serialisation of Baner Khabar across nine instalments in Bengali year 1320 (1913), at pp. 125–128, 155–159, 190–195, 230–232, 259–261, 286–288, 319–320, 347–352, 387–390 — the earliest known bibliographic record of the work's first publication, now independently verified by a peer-reviewed academic source.

Most significantly: Sukumar Ray — widely regarded as one of the world's greatest nonsense poets, comparable in the Bengali literary tradition to Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll in English, and the subject of his own Wikipedia article — wrote about Pramadaranjan Ray by name in his published biography (Sukumar Samagra Rachanabali, Vol. 1, 1960, Bengali Wikisource) and made a remarkable literary judgement: that Leela Majumdar's incomparable achievement in Bengali children's prose was "the continuation of this very talent" — meaning her father Pramadaranjan's talent. In other words, one of the greatest Bengali writers of the twentieth century explicitly traced the literary lineage of another of its greatest writers directly back to Pramadaranjan Ray's prose. Sukumar Ray also echoed Pramadaranjan's famous Ngapi anecdote from Baner Khabar directly in the title poem of his own collection Khai Khai (Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dli.scoerat.2707khaikhai): "বর্মার ঙাপিতে বাপ রে কি গন্ধ" (Good lord, the smell of Burma's Ngapi) — a line that generations of Bengali children have grown up reciting without knowing its origin lay in their great-uncle's jungle surveys a century earlier. Leela Majumdar herself, winner of the Rabindra Puraskar — West Bengal's highest literary honour — returned to the same anecdote in Kheror Khata (Ananda Publishers, 1982) and wrote about her father directly in both Pakdandi (Ananda Publishers, 1986; Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.299251) and Aar Konokhaney (Mitra o Ghosh, 1968, itself a Rabindra Puraskar winner), as well as in her published Leela Majumdar Rachanabali, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 (Ananda Publishers). Satyajit Ray — recipient of the Academy Honorary Award and India's most celebrated filmmaker — recalled the family household where Pramadaranjan was a regular presence in his childhood memoir Jakhan Chhoto Chhilam (Ananda Publishers, 1982). Nalini Das — daughter of Upendrakishore's daughter Punyalata Chakraborty — recalled Pramadaranjan's children at family gatherings in her posthumously published memoir Satyajiter Chhelebela (2016). The chain of literary influence runs unbroken from Pramadaranjan's surveys in the 1890s through Sukumar Ray's poetry to Leela Majumdar's memoirs and Satyajit Ray's recollections — across four generations and over a century of Bengali cultural memory. The family history is independently confirmed by Raychowdhury, Hitendrakishore, Upendrakishore O Moshua Ray Poribaarer Golposholpo, Firma KLM Private Limited, 1984. The subject's own career is also independently reported in The Statesman of 6 April 2007 in the context of the obituary notice for Leela Majumdar.

The complete list of twenty-two independent sources

Peer-reviewed and academic secondary sources: (1) Sengoopta, Chandak. The Rays Before Satyajit. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-946475-3. pp. 31–35. (2) Bagchi, Barnita. Cracow Indological Studies XX(2), 2018, pp. 163–178. doi:10.12797/CIS.20.2018.02.08. (3) Chakraborty, Shreyosi. Parabaas 62, March–April 2016. ISSN 1563-8685. https://www.parabaas.com/PB62/LEKHA/brShreyosi62.shtml. (4) Roy, Gautam Chando. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 73, 2012, pp. 898–905. JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156287. Names Pramadaranjan as a contributor to Sandesh (p. 899) and devotes a dedicated passage to his writing and survey experiences (p. 901), with footnote 10 documenting nine instalments of the original Sandesh serialisation in 1913.

Published works by independently Wikipedia-notable authors naming the subject directly: (5) Ray, Sukumar. Sukumar Samagra Rachanabali, Vol. 1, "Jibani." Asia Publishing Company, Calcutta, 1960. Bengali Wikisource: https://bn.wikisource.org/wiki/সুকুমার_সমগ্র_রচনাবলী_(প্রথম_খণ্ড)/জীবনী. (6) Ray, Sukumar. Khai Khai. Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dli.scoerat.2707khaikhai. (7) Majumdar, Leela. Pakdandi. Ananda Publishers, 1986. Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.299251. (8) Majumdar, Leela. Aar Konokhaney. Mitra o Ghosh, 1968. (9) Majumdar, Leela. Kheror Khata. Ananda Publishers, 1982. (10) Majumdar, Leela. Leela Majumdar Rachanabali, Vol. 2. Ananda Publishers. pp. 367, 376. (11) Majumdar, Leela. Leela Majumdar Rachanabali, Vol. 3. Ananda Publishers. (12) Ray, Satyajit. Jakhan Chhoto Chhilam. Ananda Publishers, 1982. (13) Das, Nalini. Satyajiter Chhelebela. 2016 (posthumous). (14) Raychowdhury, Hitendrakishore. Upendrakishore O Moshua Ray Poribaarer Golposholpo. Firma KLM Private Limited, 1984.

Archival and institutional sources: (15) Endangered Archives Programme, British Library. https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP1104-7. (16) The Statesman. "The beyond beckons Lila Majumdar." 6 April 2007.

Primary source: (17) Ray, Pramadaranjan. Baner Khabar. Signet Press, Calcutta, 1956. Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dli.bengal.10689.22186.

Official British Indian government records: (18) Who's Who in India, Supplement 2, 1914, p. 100. Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Who%27s_Who_in_India_Supplement_2_(1914).djvu/160. (19) Records of the Survey of India, Vol. V, 1914, pp. 26–27. (20) Records of the Survey of India, Vol. IX, 1916, pp. 31–32. (21) Survey of India General Report 1924–25, 1926, p. 5. (22) Survey of India General Report 1928–29, 1929, p. 8.

The numbered list for quick reference:

1. Sengoopta, OUP 2016
2. Sukumar Samagra Rachanabali Vol 1, Jibani (Wikisource)
3. Raychowdhury, Hitendrakishore, Firma KLM 1984
4. British Library Endangered Archives Programme
5. Bagchi, Cracow Indological Studies 2018
6. The Statesman, 6 April 2007
7. Leela Majumdar, Pakdandi (Internet Archive)
8. Leela Majumdar, Aar Konokhaney
9. Satyajit Ray, Jakhan Chhoto Chhilam
10. Nalini Das, Satyajiter Chhelebela
11. Ray Pramadaranjan, Baner Khabar (Internet Archive)
12. Who's Who in India Supplement 2 (Wikisource)
13. Survey of India General Report 1928–29
14. Leela Majumdar, Kheror Khata
15. Chakraborty, Parabaas 2016
16. Leela Majumdar Rachanabali Vol 2
17. Records of Survey of India Vol V 1914
18. Records of Survey of India Vol IX 1916
19. Survey of India General Report 1924–25
20. Leela Majumdar Rachanabali Vol 3
21. Sukumar Ray, Khai Khai (Internet Archive)
22. Roy, Gautam Chando. "Upendrakishore Roychaudhuri's 'Sandesh': An Exploratory Essay on Children's Literature and the Shaping of Juvenile Mind in Early 20th Century Bengal." Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 73 (2012), pp. 898–905. JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44156287. Full text confirmed: names Pramadaranjan as a contributor to Sandesh alongside Sukumar Roy and Abanindranath Tagore (p. 899), devotes a dedicated passage to his survey writing (p. 901), and documents nine instalments of the original Sandesh serialisation across Bengali year 1320 (April 1913–March 1914), i.e. within the very first year of the magazine's existence (footnote 10, pp. 125–388).

The subject meets WP:GNG on the OUP monograph alone (source 1). He meets WP:NBIO as a decorated senior government officer documented in five official publications (sources 18–22). He meets WP:NBOOK as the author of a book in continuous print for nearly seventy years with sustained independent critical coverage across multiple decades. He is named directly in published works by four independently Wikipedia-notable authors — Sukumar Ray, Leela Majumdar, Satyajit Ray, and Nalini Das, daughter of Punyalata Chakraborty — and confirmed by the British Library's own Endangered Archives Programme and a peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. Pramadaranjan Ray is notable entirely and completely in his own right, as a surveyor, as a writer, and as a man whose prose has delighted Bengali readers across five generations and over a century, and continues to do so today. I would be grateful if you could review the updated draft and reconsider. — Dr.saptarshi (talk) Dr.saptarshi (talk) 00:08, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Multiple things are looked at when reviewing an article. Verifiability, reliability and above all notability. You have provided sources, yes but most are problem with verifiability but maybe that is something you can help by either find a google book link or some other that helps reviewer doing the search to verify the content. Sources should not just have a passing mention or just a small paragraph on the subject but should have significant coverage on the life, career and achievements of the subject. Sources should also come from scholars in related area, modern scholars would be the best who did significant study on the subject's role as surveyor. (If you think I missed this, please share source). Some wikipedia notable authors you mentioned are notable for own biography and does not mean that their opinion with automatically be considered reliable on another author's work. WP:AGEMATTERS. For notability as an author, I do see the subject authored Khabar and not able to verify multiple peer reviews by modern scholars. If you can find such sources that helps me verify through search, please do share. I understand that seeing an article declined can be frustrating and you do have right to disagree and that is why you are always welcome to resubmit the draft for another reviewer to look at. RangersRus (talk) 12:05, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Dear RangersRus, thank you for engaging further. I will address your points directly.

WP:AGEMATTERS concerns whether older sources reflect current scholarly consensus — it applies to rapidly evolving fields like medicine or science where knowledge changes. It has no relevance to a historical biographical subject whose life and career ended in 1947. A memoir written in 1960 about events in 1913 is not rendered unreliable by the passage of time — it is a primary witness account, which is exactly what Wikipedia values for biographical subjects.

On the question of "significant coverage": the OUP monograph by Professor Chandak Sengoopta of Birkbeck, University of London (The Rays Before Satyajit, Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-19-946475-3, pp. 31–35) devotes multiple pages to Pramadaranjan Ray by name. WP:GNG states explicitly that a single reliable source with significant coverage is sufficient for notability. This source alone satisfies the threshold without any other source being required.

On verifiability via Google Books: https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Rays_before_Satyajit/GHxJDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=pramadaranjan+ray&pg=PT441&printsec=frontcover — the OUP monograph, searchable, with Pramadaranjan Ray named on multiple pages. Also: https://books.google.co.in/books?id=soOuHL3TQ5MC — Satyajit Ray's published English memoir Childhood Days (Penguin Books India), page 35, naming Pramadaranjan explicitly and describing his survey career and character.

On modern scholarly coverage of his role as a surveyor: Roy, Gautam Chando, BJHS: Themes Vol. 3, 2018, pp. 43–72, Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/bjt.2018.6 — a peer-reviewed Cambridge University Press journal article on Bengali juvenile magazines 1883–1923 by a scholar at Vidyasagar University, discussing Pramadaranjan's contributions to Sandesh in the context of colonial-era science writing for children. This is precisely the modern scholarly coverage in a related field that you requested.

On the question of whether this required AfC review at all: you are correct to note I am a former administrator. The option offered by User:Fcom1212 was direct republication. I submitted for review voluntarily. I ask only that the review be conducted on the merits of the sources actually present in the article, rather than on an initial impression formed before the article reached its current form. I am happy to resubmit for a fresh reviewer. — Dr.saptarshi (talk) 23:37, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Dr.saptarshi here. The OUP reference clearly satisfies WP:GNG, and WP:AGEMATTERS doesn't apply to historical biographies. Dr.saptarshi, Please just click 'Resubmit' for a new reviewer. ―  ☪  Kapudan Pasha (🧾 - 💬) 23:27, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Dear 🧾 খাত্তাব ভাই for your kind support. I am over 10 years away from wikipedia editing. I am having difficulty finding the resubmit button. Can you please help update/check the review status and if required resubmit it on my behalf. I have inserted more than 38 references many of them over 4 times, now I am getting tired. Will be grateful if younger people could take over from here. For someone who didnot have any easily Googlable presence at all 5 days ago, I think this will make a difference and it will be our tribute to this lost hero--Dr.saptarshi (talk) 00:02, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

@Dr.saptarshi I have checked. Jayantanath already resubmitted the article. Don't worry. I hope it will work. I don’t see why agematters should be implied here. However, let's wait for the next reveiwer and see what happens. Thank you. ―  ☪  Kapudan Pasha (🧾 - 💬) 10:30, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I haven't had time to go through the new changes you made but will just give you some suggestion. For a subject to pass notability, significant coverage in secondary independent reliable sources is a must. Do the sources have significant coverage on the life, career and achievements, notable for a standalone article? These are carefully studied and analysed by reviewers. Always highlight three of your best sources with significant coverage on the subject for a reviewer to look at. Having 20 or 30 sources does not automatically guarantee notability and also creates doubt. Passing or brief mentions wont do. What is also looked at is who is the author and what are the academic credentials of that author. Are they professional in the area of study? Such as a source written by an engineer won't be accepted if the subject is a doctor. Leela Majumdar is the daughter of the subject and will not be reliable because she is not secondary or independent. Satyajit Ray is widely known as a film director as that was his main profession, so anything coming from him about the subject can be of concern for a reviewer. These are just examples from what I looked at from last review. Age of sources also matter by reviewers. I can understand your sentiment on how important it is to have an article published but a reviewer needs to dig into all the sources for verification, reliability and notability. Just give it time. If I have time to go over it again, I would but since the draft has been submitted, maybe another reviewer can look into it as well. Please do not be discouraged by decline. It is to help you improve the article and avoid being nominated for deletion. RangersRus (talk) 13:43, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

My Dear [User:RangersRus|RangersRus]], I will answer intermittently and I am also busy professionally. You seem to be defining Satyajit Ray's "Profession". These people were true polymaths. Can you define profession of someone like Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury https://www.facebook.com/reel/835307475888972 ? I must caution you that his biography page is grossly inadequate and my quick article on Pramadaranjan is already in better shape than this way more famous brother.. But just because Pramada's Second eldest brother was way more famous than most Bengalis of his time, and his 1 daughter and 1 nephew and 1 grandnephew, and may be few more relatives were somewhat more famous than him, doesnt mean that he does not stand out fairly well among most of the 53 or more people in those 3 generations of ray Family. And I am not proposing to write articles on them all. Though, possibly a lot many of them might have deserved articles than many WP biography pages of a fair %age of people born >100 years later that currently exist. --Dr.saptarshi (talk) 22:59, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

We must also remember that its easy to create corollaries of rules eg I can say only when Some nonhuman species write about a human the human is notable but when humans write about another human it is nepotism. But till that species start writing about humans that definition has to wait. The Characters here are all of historic, literary, sociologic and many other importance, and whatever they wrote have collectively as well as Individually become history in Bengal which was pioneering in the whole country if not the world, eg in making Worlds one of the first (and locally invented) Color illustrated Childrens Magazine (Sondesh) etc. This family made history after history. No Wonder Gokhale, a prominent Indian leader has been quoted to have said about Bengalis, "what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow." https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/TESTold/Mekhala.html And whatever the "Renaissance men and women" have written even when it is about each other is not only a primary reference but is of such quality/value that it has left six generation of Bengalis in permanent awe and their texts are still being taught even in multiple classes in Primary schools, as you can see Jogendranals Sarkars compilation of Boner khabar into bone Jangale in 1935 received British era School text status and so does it even today nearly 100 years later as you canm see in West Bengal Board of secondary education's class 4 text multi-page excerpt from Boner khobor (read the dense references in the worl section of the article, there is no point repeating references here if you can't read the article, it's not worth re discussing here). --Dr.saptarshi (talk) 22:59, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

Nothing to argue here, this article is definitely notable and I have cross-checked the sources, all are good to go.ARI (talk) 10:04, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

• NOTE. If any canvassing or meatpuppetry is being attempted here, I would highly suggest to please stop. It is very suspicious for people to directly come to this draft talk page for the day and add opinions. This is not going to help. Let AFC reviewers do their work. RangersRus (talk) 11:29, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

I definitely dont know Arijit. But Thank him sincerely for giving his valuable time efforts and opinion. It is not easy to verify 50 references. I was well known as the fastest and most relevant reference hunter at University of Chicago and even someof my teachers who were world number 1 pathologists/hematologists used to come to me for reference hunting helps and always went back satisfied. The picture from these 50 reference which emerged is a beautiful biography which was never in 1 place anywhere even in Ray Family collections I believe, in fact they probably had different dates of his birth and death dates than Govt records and some of them mistook him to be working in Forest Dept and Some mistook him to have worked in Geological Survey which are both wrong. I am a hard core academic researcher and have been totally away from Wikipedia editing for over 10 years. I dont know a single one the new generations (but would love to know). The very reason wikipedia beat Nupedia is the energy and tenacity of these energetic tireless researchers and contributors which includes RangersRus and ARI, 🧾 - User talk:খাত্তাব হাসান etc alike. What really inspired about RangersRus (initially negatively though) that RangersRus was convinced that my claims are false but finally he wrote "Please do not be discouraged by decline. It is to help you improve the article". Thank you RangersRus It actually did. It's mostly because of your strong undaunted criticism, though largely wrong, that I went ahead and picked 50 relevant references out of 100s I fished out or else I would have left it at 20 or 30 and would have surely become complacent as this article is already stronger than most of his family members eg even his brother Upendrakishore or daughter Leela (who lived a hundred years and was a prolific writers and dozens of people have done PhD on her work or possibly lived a lifetime doing research on her work), except possibly for Satyajit Ray which is definitely a much much stronger in reference availability as well as documentation. But it's more difficult to write a biography of Pramadaranjan than Leela and I took up the challenge. Hope I can continue live up to the challenge despite my busy professional schedule. --Dr.saptarshi (talk) 11:56, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Using Leela's writings is neither random nor a biased writing. She was one of the longest lived (99 years) and most prolific author of the whole brilliant family and one of the only one who wrote extensive biographies of most of the famous personalities of her family.. But being too humble didnt write her own father's biography except scattered lines here and there. Even News paper reporters writing report on their visit to Satyajit rays original Masua home have used Leela's writing as one of thei main information source: https://www.anandabazar.com/editorial/sukumar-ray-s-ancestral-home-was-in-masua-village-1.1223115 --Dr.saptarshi (talk) 17:48, 31 March 2026 (UTC)