Remembering Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, Diplomat, Scholar and Friend [Video]

Chandrashekhar (Shekhar) Dasgupta, a diplomat of great distinction and my closest friend, died on the morning of March 2. He was 83 years old. I had known him for 65 of those years.

We met at St. Stephen’s at the most intellectual ragging session in the history of the college. All it amounted to was a question on whether I believed in democracy. I tentatively suggested I did, but hardly had I got the word “Yes” off my lips than he thundered on about what a “bourgeois sham” it all was. I immediately began worshipping him.

He fed me endless articles from the China Economic Review about how brilliantly the Chinese were doing (actually some 50 million Chinese were dying of famine) and invoking the Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the World, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain.”

Very soon, however, by the time he appeared for the Indian Foreign Service exam, he …