Rebati Mohan Dutta Choudhury

Rebati Mohan Dutta Choudhury (1924–2008) was a noted Bengali litterateur, Sahitya Akademi Award winner and an academician from Gauripur in Assam, India. Popularly he is known as Sheelabhadra, his pen name.

Born in 1924 at Gauripur in Dhubri District, Dutta Choudhury pursued his graduation from Carmichael College, Rangpur (now in Bangladesh). He obtained his post-graduation in Pure Mathematics from Calcutta University in 1946, with a first class and silver medal.

After his Post graduation, he joined Cotton College, Guwahati as a lecturer in Mathematics. Subsequently, he became a contractor, a sub-editor with the Assam Tribune and assistant manager in a tea estate for some time and finally he restarted his teaching career in the Assam Engineering College, Guwahati in 1957 as a lecturer. And he retired in 1982 as a professor in mathematics.

He died on February 29, 2008 at a hospital in Guwahati.

Dutta Choudhury started writing at the age of 40 and actually his literary journey begun based on some provocative comments and ridicules that he faced at his early years as a lecturer at the Assam Engineering College for his Bengali pronunciation and later he proved that he was not apart from what is regarded as "Assamese", and he virtually placed Dhubri in the literary map of Assam. Dutta Choudhury's major literary works are Madhupur aru Tarangini, Agomonir Ghat, Anahatguri, Abichinna, Prachir, Godhuli and Anusandhan (all novels) and Baastab, Beer Sainik, Samudrateer, Tarua Kadam, Pratiksha, Uttaran, Mezaz, Sheelabhadrar Kuria Galpa, Nirbachita Galpa, Madhupurar Madhukar, Anya ek Madhupur, Uttar Nai, Dayitya aru Anyanya Galpa, Biswas aru Anyanya Galpa, Lagaria and several other collections of short stories. Many of his literary works have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu and Oriya by the National Book Trust, the Sahitya Akademi and the Bharatiya Jnanpith. Smriticharan is his autobiography.

Dutta Choudhury was honoured with the 1994 Sahitya Akademi Award in Assamese for his short stories collection, Madhupur Bahudur, the Assam Valley Literary Award in 2001, the Bharatiya Bhasa Parishad award in 1990 and the Assam Publication Board award in the same year.