Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (March 16, 1929 – July 13, 1993) also known as A. K. Ramanujan was a scholar of Indian literature who wrote in both English and Kannada. Ramanujan was an Indian poet, scholar and author, a philologist, folklorist, translator, poet and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Sanskrit, and English. He published works on both classical and modern variants of these literature and also argued strongly for giving local, non-standard dialects their due.[1] Having been a lecturer in English at Quilon and Belgaum, he taught at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda for about eight years. In 1962, he joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor, where he was affiliated throughout the rest of his career, teaching in several departments.
However, he did teach at several other U.S. universities at times, including Harvard, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, and Carleton College. At the University of Chicago, Ramanujan was instrumental in shaping the South Asian Studies program. He worked in the departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Linguistics, and with the Committee on Social Thought. In 1976, the government of India awarded him the honorific title Padma Shri,[3] and in 1983, he was given the MacArthur Prize Fellowship (Shulman, 1994).[2]
In 1983, he was appointed the William E. Colvin Professor in the Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations , of Linguistics , and in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and, the same year, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. As an Indo-American writer Ramanujan had the experience of the native milieu as well as of the foreign milieu. His poems like the “Conventions of Despair” reflected his views on the cultures and conventions of the east and the west. A. K. Ramanujan died in Chicago, on July 13, 1993 as result of adverse reaction to anesthesia during preparation for surgery.
The Review on The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established when its Charter was formally adopted on 8 December 1985 by the Heads of State or Government of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The idea of regional cooperation in South Asia was first mooted in May 1980. The Foreign Secretaries of the seven countries met for the first time in Colombo ...
