One after the other, star after star, they fall, and leave the Humanist sky dimmer.

Prof. Sib Narayan Ray, who died on 26 March 2008 at the age of 87 in Bengal, was one who lit that sky till the very last minute of his life, illuminating and enriching those around him. Hailed as an important thinker by Bertrand Russell, warmly appreciated by M.N. Roy, held in awe by his colleagues, appreciated for his profound scholarship and universal vision, Sib Narayan Ray’s departure marks the end of an era in Indian Humanism. He had just completed his monumental and authoritative 4-volume biography of M.N. Roy’s extraordinary life, In Freedom’s Quest, and had started to write a book on his own thoughts and his interpretation of and disagreements with Radical Humanist ideas.

Sib Babu first attended a Study Camp of the Indian Renaissance Institute at Dehradun in northern India when he was 25; the independent minded young intellectual was affectionately received by M.N. Roy and his wife Ellen Roy. Ray stayed on with the Roys after the Study Camp to co-author with Ellen Roy In Man’s Own Image –an exposition of the principles of Radical Humanism. M.N. Roy was a founder Vice President of IHEU, his wife Ellen was a member of the IHEU’s Executive Committee in the 60s, and Sib Narayan Ray succeeded her in 1961. In 1962 he was, along with Raymond Aron, a keynote speaker at the IHEU’s World Humanist Congress, and spoke on the Mature Personality which to him, of course, was the Humanist personality.

Prof. Ray wrote mostly in Bengali in which language he also edited a journal of repute, Jijnasa (Inquiry). He was Chairman of Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation, the largest and the most important in India. Prof. Ray firmly believed that the cherished and desired Humanist Renaissance could be brought about in Indian society uniquely through the people’s language – not through English. Yet, perhaps his most distinguished service to the Humanist movement was in the English language when he edited for Oxford University Press the Selected Works of M.N. Roy. It would be no exaggeration to say that Sib Narayan Ray was the only individual qualified to undertake this monumental task – of doing detective work to unravel the writings of one who wrote under 17 noms de guerre, in 3 continents and in 4 languages. Travelling to and entering into correspondence with leaders, scholars and researchers in a dozen countries, he painstakingly rebuilt the life of M.N. Roy for posterity.

Working with CSSC, IHEU is proud to have sustained his research efforts through the IHEU-HIVOS funding programme at a crucial phase in this research work. In 2000, IHEU organised two well-attended and hugely appreciated lectures by him at Conway Hall in London in collaboration with South Place Ethical Society. He spoke on ‘Tagore’s Humanism and Our Humanism’ and ‘What is Radical Humanism?’.

His fame and influence was lasting and wide reaching. He held with distinction the Chair of Indian studies at Melbourne University – people in Australia remembered him a full 30 years after his return to India. Warren Allen Smith, New York, the author of Who is Who in Hell puts the responsibility of turning him into a Humanist squarely on Sib Narayan Ray. Many others have benefited from association with him too.

As a 19-year old I met him in Dehradun at the M.N. Roy Centenary Study Camp in 1987. This stern looking intellectual of international stature wrote to my father even before I returned home from the study camp, giving him an account of my participation and an elaborate list of books which he suggested I should read. My life changed entirely because of some things he did.

Dabbling with ideas, but relating to people at a personal level, Sib Narayan Ray was a writer, a poet and a painter; a concerned father, a caring partner to Mrs. Geeta Ray, but also a tireless campaigner for Human Rights. In his last years he campaigned for the rights of prostitutes and sex workers, for those dispossessed of their agricultural lands because of India’s relentless and heartless industrialisation. Despite the desperate situations he tried to address with his pen, he pointed out with some optimism the assertion of their rights by the marginalised sections of society, including the Dalits.

That was partly the renaissance he was hoping for, and worked for, through a long life rich in ideas and activism.

Babu Gogineni