Barun Sengupta

Barun Sengupta (Bengali: বরুণ সেনগুপ্ত) (23 January 1934 – 19 June 2008), the founder-editor of Bartaman newspaper, was a Bengali journalist and popular political critic. He is remembered for his bold and simple diction of political analyzing that made him extremely well liked among the common readers in West Bengal.

Life

Son of Nirmalananda Sengupta and Ranibala Devi, Barun Sengupta was born in Barisal (now in Bangladesh). Sengupta, along with his family, moved to Kolkata before the partition of India in 1947 and rented a house near Baithakkhana Market in north-central Kolkata.

His education started in B.M. School. Barisal. Later he was admitted to Town School, Kolkata. After graduating in commerce from City College, Kolkata, an undergraduate college affiliated with the University of Calcutta, he founded a periodical named Bhabikal which lasted a few issues. In 1957, he founded another weekly named Bartaman with the aid of Hemanta Kumar Bose, a popular leader of Forward Bloc. He joined Anandabazar Patrika in 1960 and became its first designated political correspondent in 1965. During the Emergency, he was sent to jail along with another reporter, Gour Kishore Ghosh.

In 1984, he left Anandabazar Patrika to start his own journal and launched Bartaman, a daily, on 7 December that year. Soon, for its straightforward and intrepid style, the journal became extremely popular among the common Bengali readers. Later Sengupta launched two more periodicals - Saptahik Bartaman, a weekly and Sukhi Grihokon, a monthly and this time too it was a success. These two journals are now widely read in West Bengal.

He wrote several books on India’s political situation–Pala Badaler Pala, Sab Chatitra Kalpanik, Bipak-i-stan, Andhakarer Antaraley and Netajir Antardhan Rahasya being some of them. One of his controversial book "Indira Ekadashi" was based on the 11-year tenure or rather "rule" of Late Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India (1966-77).

He died in a south Kolkata nursing home after a brief illness.