Suniti Kumar Chatterji is an educationist, litterateur, and linguist from India.
He attended Presidency College in Kolkata and obtained his Majors in English Literature. He was appointed as a lecturer in English at the renowned Vidyasagar College, Kolkata. Later, he was an assistant professor of English at the University of Calcutta. He moved to London to pursue further studies in Prakrit, Persian, Gothic, Phonology, Old Irish, and other languages. He later moved to Paris to do further studies on Slav, Indo-European, Indo-Aryan linguistics, Latin, and Greek. On his return to India, he was appointed as the Khaira Professor of Indian Linguistics and Phonetics in 1922. Further, in 1965, he became the National Research Professor of India in Humanities.
He accompanied Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore during his expedition to the foreign land. Suniti Kumar Chatterji was the chairman of West Bengal Legislative Council for the period of six years. He also became the President of Sahitya Akademi in the year 1969.
Some of his important literature works include ‘Bengali Phonetic Reader’, ‘The Origin and Development of The Bengali Language’, ‘Dwipamaya Bharat’, ‘Bharat Sanskriti’, ‘Indo-Aryan and Hindi’, ‘Language and Literature of Modern India’, ‘World Literature and Tagore’, and ‘Ramayana: its Character, Genesis, History and Exodus: A Resume. Calcutta: Prajna’.
For his contribution, he has been felicitated with Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan by the government of India in 1955 and 1963 respectively.
