Osmania University’s former Dean of Humanities and head of the English department professor Radhe Shyam Sharma passed away on Monday after a brief illness. Born in Tinsukia, Assam, Prof. Sharma graduated from Gauhati University in 1962 in the throes of the Chinese aggression in India’s North East.
Through a special provision of the Central government, which facilitated students from Assam to pursue studies in Indian universities, Prof. Sharma obtained his post graduate degree in English Literature from OU and bagged the William Shakespeare Gold Medal in 1965.
He joined the university as a lecturer in English in 1965, was instrumental in organising the Young Lecturers’ Association and later completed his PhD. A recipient of the British Council Scholarship in 1973 and the scholarship of the American Council of Learned Societies under the Fulbright programme, he lectured in several American universities and in Mexico.
He was also proactive in restructuring the former American Studies Research centre going through a financial crisis by planning inter disciplinary courses. Prof. Sharma will be missed by generations of scholars and students and all others whose lives he touched so deeply and lovingly and left everlasting impressions of the best in humaneness.