JU’s revered professor Sajni Mukherji (Sajnidi) no more, her wisdom lives on
Telegraph | 12 March 2025
Sajni Mukherji, a revered professor and much loved “Sajnidi” to generations of Jadavpur University students, breathed her last early on Monday.
Sajni, who would have turned 80 this June, battled a protracted illness with unsurprising bravery.
She is survived by her daughter, Ankita.
“What do you say about a mother who was more friend and co-conspirator than parent? ...The tomboy who was happier playing cricket and football and whose two-finger whistle could put any roadside Romeo to shame? The trailblazer who won a scholarship to Oxford in the 1960s,... and insisted on attending a Beatles concert in a saree,” Ankita wrote in a Facebook post.
Sajni was born in Karachi in 1945. By then, her family had already settled in Calcutta, and her mother had gone there for a short while.
As an undergraduate, she studied English literature at the erstwhile Presidency College. She did her master’s at Calcutta University and went to Oxford on a state scholarship. She studied at St Hilda’s College there.
She came back and taught at Lady Brabourne College for a few years. She got married to Saugata Mukherji, who taught history at Jawaharlal Nehru University and then became a faculty member at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, from where he retired in 2001.
Sajni moved to Delhi and taught at JNU for a while before returning to Calcutta. She joined JU in January 1976 and retired in December 2007.
Her husband passed away in 2017.
JU English professor Abhijit Gupta said: “She was my teacher. When I started teaching at JU, I took my first class with her, a double period. I have vivid memories. It was February 1999.”
“It is almost impossible to find such a large-hearted and student-friendly teacher. She never took her erudition very seriously. She wore it very lightly and very playfully. She always championed the cause of students,” said Gupta.
Sajni founded a special needs centre to make JU a more inclusive space. Her classes on Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, author and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales, were legendary. She taught Chaucer with great enjoyment and took delight in the “smutty references”, said Ankita.
Sajni wrote a fortnightly column, Autumn Flush, for The Telegraph.
As the news of her death broke, tributes flooded social media. Her warm hug and dazzling smile will be sorely missed, said admirers.
“In the spirit of Chaucer’s pilgrims, Sajnidi’s journey may have ended but her stories and wisdom will live on,” a Facebook user commented on the wall of Jayant Kripalini, actor-director and brother of Sajni.