Barun Sengupta বরুণ সেনগুপ্ত |
|
---|---|
Born |
Barisal, British India |
23 January 1934
Died | 19 June 2008 Kolkata, West Bengal, India |
(aged 74)
Occupation | Journalist, founder-editor of Bartaman |
Nationality | Indian |
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.
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.