Ranjana Ash (6 December 1924 – 10 August 2015)[1] was an Indian-born writer, literary critic, academic and activist, who was a leading advocate of south Asian and African writing.
Born Ranjana Sidhanta in Birbhum, West Bengal, she spent her early years in Lucknow, attending the local women's college.
[1] She had also begun broadcasting to schools,[1] and meeting a BBC correspondent to India would change her life,[2][3] as described by Alastair Niven in The Guardian: "In 1952, while on a riding holiday in Kashmir, she met William Ash, a left-wing American broadcaster who had been a pilot and war hero, and was one of the originals for Steve McQueen's character in the 1963 film The Great Escape.
"[1] Living in London, England, she wrote for the pacifist magazine Peace News,[4] was active in the Movement for Colonial Freedom, joined, with her husband, the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist, and joined with such activists as Marion Glean, David Pitt and C. L. R. James in the 1960s Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD).
[6] Ash was particularly concerned with translation from South Asian languages,[7] publishing Short Stories from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in 1980.