Probal Dasgupta place of birth Kolkata
Probal Dasgupta (born 1953 in Kolkata, India) is an Indian linguist, Esperanto speaker and activist. Dasgupta's interest in linguistics started at a very young age. He published his first article in phonology at the age of eighteen in  Indian Linguistics the journal of the Linguistic Society of India His 1980 New York University PhD dissertation Questions and Relative and Complement Clauses in a Bangla Grammar is considered one of the seminal works in Bangla syntax.
Apart from syntax Dasgupta has worked and written a great deal on morphology and sociolinguistics. He has developed a new approach to linguistics, called Substantivism, in partnership with Rajendra Singh, whose approach to morphology (Whole Word Morphology) forms part of the substantivist programme.
Outside of formal linguistics Dasgupta has written extensively on topics in Esperanto studies, sociolinguistics and literary theory. In his many writings he has also been vocal about political and social issues. "The Otherness of English: India's Auntie Tongue Syndrome", in which he talks of the situation of English in India, has led to various debates on the social implications of the presence of English in India.Dasgupta has been a member of the Akademio de Esperanto since 1983. He served as the vice-president of the Akademio for five terms from 2001 to 2015. In February 2016 he was elected the Akademio's president for a term of 3 years ending in 2019 and has been re-elected to serve in the same capacity for another term that ends in 2022. Earlier, Dasgupta served as the president of Universal Esperanto Association for two terms, 2007–10 and 2010–13.
In 2006, he moved from the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies (CALTS), University of Hyderabad where he had been working as a professor of Linguistics to the Linguistic Research Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata where he was the head from 2008 until his retirement in 2018.Early life
Dasgupta was born in 1953 in Kolkata, West Bengal to Arun Kumar Dasgupta (1925-2007) and Manashi Dasgupta (née Roy, 1928–2010). His father Arun was a historian (PhD Cornell, 1962) who taught at several colleges and universities, including Presidency College (Kolkata) and Burdwan University. He retired as Professor of History at the University of Calcutta in 1985. Arun Kumar Dasgupta's work on trade and politics initiated a new line of work especially in maritime historiography. His textbook on the early history of Southeast Asia is still in use.Dasgupta's mother Manashi was a social psychologist (PhD Cornell, 1962) who served as the Principal of Sri Shikshayatan College (Kolkata). After taking charge of Rabindra Bhavan (Visvabharati, Santiniketan) in 1972, she upgraded its archiving and exhibiting practices, facilitated scholarly access to its holdings and augmented these holdings. She was one of the early students of Rabindrasangeet exponent Debabrata Biswas and became an Rabindrasangeet exponent herself. However, choosing to represent the diversity of Bengali music she focused on Tagore's contemporaries like Rajanikanta Sen, Atul Prasad Sen, Dwijendra Lal Roy. She went on to record a solo album of Atul Prasad Sen's songs in 1970. She also distinguished herself as a creative writer, publishing five novels and over twenty short stories, in addition to books on social psychology and feminist analysis.In 1957 Probal Dasgupta travelled to Ithaca, NY with his mother to join his father who was pursuing doctoral studies at Cornell University.  Probal's early schooling was at East Hill High School.  During this period the family travelled extensively in Europe where Arun was involved in academic research and archival work as part of his PhD.In 1961 the family returned to India. On the sea voyage back home Probal met an American who introduced him to the metric system. India had started adopting the metric system in 1957; by 1961 all the markets had big displays showing people how to convert between the old and the new weights and measures.  This encounter drew his attention to systematic convertibility between all codifications, not only quantitative.
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