Occupation Tibetologist, scholar Name Nirmal Sinha | Died August 3, 1997, Siliguri Known for Tibetology | |
Born 1911 Ranchi, Jharkhand, India Awards Padma Shri
Prema Dorjee award | ||
Nirmal Chandra Sinha (1911–1997) was an Indian tibetologist, author, the founder director of Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology (SIRT), presently known as the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Deorali near Gangtok. He was known for his contributions to Buddhism and the documentation of the history of Tibet and other states of the Central Asia. He was honoured by the Government of India in 1971 with Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award.
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Biography
Nirmal Chandra Sinha was born in 1911 in Ranchi in the Indian state of Jharkhand, formerly in Bihar. After securing a master's degree from the Presidency College, Calcutta, he joined as a member of faculty of Hooghly Mohsin College, in Chinsurah, West Bengal and later, as a professor of history at Behrampur College before joining the government service and was appointed as the cultural attache at the political office (residency) in 1955. Working as the attache, he toured Tibet in 1956 as a member of the Indian delegation that toured the country for inviting Dalai Lama. Thereafter, he worked at the Indian Archive where he had the opportunity to work under renowned educationist and former Union Minister of Education, Triguna Sen. In 1958, when the Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology, present day Namgyal Institute of Tibetology (NIT), was established, Sinha was appointed as its founder director. He worked there till his retirement in 1987 after which he moved to Siliguri and took up the post as the Centenary Professor of International Relations at the University of Calcutta.
During his tenure as the director of NIT, Sinha contributed significantly to the Bulletin of Tibetology, a bi-annual publication by the institute. He was a scholar of many languages such as Tibetan, Sanskrit, Mongolian and Chinese which helped him in his writings. He wrote several articles in Sikkim Express and Gangtok Times and his last article, Lenin and Biddhism, written in July 1997 was published in the latter. He also published a book, Indian war economy, in 1962, co-written with P. N. Khera. A recipient of Prema Dorjee award from the Chogyal of Sikkim, he was awarded the civilian honour of Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1971. Sinha died on 3 August 1997 at Sunrise Nursing Home, Siliguri, at the age of 86. Namgyal Institute of Tibetology honoured him by compiling his selected works which was published as a book in 2008 under the name, A Tibetologist in Sikkim.
Articles
List of articles published by Sinha in Bulletin of Tibetology.