It will be very sad news for his many friends and colleagues in the South Asian Studies Association (SASA) to learn that Dr Denis Wright, another stalwart of the Association, died in Armidale on 7 December. Denis was one of those rare academics who shunned the limelight and was prepared to work tirelessly and unheralded behind the scenes as a productive scholar, highly-rated teacher and valuable colleague. It is therefore fitting that tribute be openly paid to the many contributions he made during his 35 years of service in the field of South Asian studies.
Denis joined the Department of History at the University of New England (UNE) in 1976 as part of Prof. Sinnapah Arasaratnam's efforts to turn the study of South Asia into one of the department's areas of academic expertise, excellence and recruitment. Carl Bridge and Ian Bruce Watson followed later to add their weight to this enterprise. Denis came to Armidale from the University of Queensland, where he completed an MA and began his PhD on the newly-formed state of Bangladesh under the supervision of Prof. D.H. Singhal and his wife, Dr Devahuti. As was perhaps fitting for a student of Singhal's, Denis agreed to take on the critical role of constructing the foundation platform at UNE for the study of the history, culture and civilisation of South Asia. In 1980, he turned it into his broader signature course—‘The Great Traditions of Asia’—which attracted consistently high enrolments until 2007 when he decided to retire. His former students continue to speak in awe and affection of those units, which introduced them, always through cutting-edge technology, to the beliefs and practices of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam in the region at large. Sadly, when Denis left UNE, he was not replaced and all that the School of Humanities was able to save of his archived study of Asian civilisations has been a single unit, renamed ‘Asian Pasts’.
As a scholar, Denis especially carved out an international reputation as an expert on Bangladesh, publishing two books on the subject in quick succession, Bangladesh: Origins and Indian Ocean Relations (New Delhi, 1988) and Indo–Pakistan Relations 1962–69 (New Delhi, 1989), as well as many articles over the years dealing with aspects of Bangladeshi history and politics. Denis typically asked that the royalties for the books, which were simultaneously published in Bangladesh and India, and reprinted several times by more than one publisher, be distributed to charities and foundations in the two countries. Jokingly referred to as the ‘white Bengali’ by his Bangladeshi friends—a title that chuffed him greatly—he probably rightly believed that he understood the Bengali mentality as well as anyone. That he was invited to give the keynote speech to the inaugural Bangladeshi Psychological Association of the University of Dhaka in 2001 would ostensibly confirm this, and he had to use his street Bengali to get him out of a very tight corner while he was on the way to the airport during an attempted coup. His many articles include two other related specialisms: child labour and the trafficking of women and girls in Asia. In a report on the subject for the Australian government, he wrote the chapters on child labour in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Arguably, it was his unselfish contribution to South Asian studies that characterised Denis's professional life and that set him apart from those he worked with. That contribution began when he took on the role of treasurer of SASA in 1983—a position he held until 2004—at a time when its future and especially that of its scholarly journal, South Asia, were by no means certain. Suffice to say that when he stood down from this position, both SASA and South Asia were in much stronger, even robust, financial health. Some rather inventive accountancy at first, and the astute decision to keep the books separate from those of UNE, certainly helped achieve this. In 2000, Denis was awarded life membership of SASA while he was still at its financial helm.
As with the Association, so too with the School of Classics, History and Religion at UNE: he devoted much of his free time to making it run efficiently. It was fortunate for his colleagues that he was there at the beginning of the desktop computer age to help pilot them through the mysteries of computerisation and instruct them in the new technologies, particularly in teaching distance education students. In fact, he turned himself into such an expert on computers that the Faculty of Arts later appointed him as its official trouble-shooter when it came to solving the then mysteries of desktop printing, data collection and electronic composition. It came as something of a shock when he retired and left us to fend for ourselves with outsourced and always never at hand IT technicians.
Denis had numerous other strings to his bow, many of which did not really become apparent until quite recently. A firm believer that students should acquire a feel for the countries they studied, he conducted a number of educational tours across China and was especially fond of travelling the old Silk Road. He used to amuse his Australian friends with a myriad of stories about harrowing encounters with the secret police and disagreements with so-called ‘official’ tour guides. For almost two decades, he was one of just three directors of the international aid agency, BODHI, which raises and distributes thousands of dollars to charities, mainly in South and Southeast Asia, bringing health and education to many underprivileged people. In 2010, BODHI established four annual scholarships in Denis’ name for girls in Bangladesh. Denis also assisted ANTaR—Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation—with graphic design and layout for their regular newsletters.
The last very telling category of activities involving Denis, and which helps to put any appreciation of him into perspective, arose as a result of his future second wife, Tracey James, joining him in Armidale in 1999. Her passion for music and the theatre opened up a whole new area of interest for Denis. He started to make films of productions by the Armidale Drama and Musical Society and, after his retirement, he continued to film, edit and produce DVDs so successfully that he and Tracey set up Tabbycat Productions, a small filming and editing business. Denis quickly mastered the intricacies of digital editing and production and was getting ever more enthusiastic about the venture when his illness was diagnosed. Denis was made a life member of the Society and an award was set up in his name. It is a fitting acknowledgement of everything Denis stood for that the chief criterion in selecting recipients for the award is that their commitment to the Society outweighs their desire for self-promotion.
Lastly, there was his blog, ‘My Unwelcome Stranger’ [http://deniswright.blogspot.com.au/], which he maintained practically on a daily basis for almost four years. This was a public portal for not only patients and their carers who were confronting and having to cope with a rare brain disease, but also his friends who were thus able to follow his medical progress without having to intrude on him. The blog, which received well over 100,000 hits, was such a source of information and inspiration that the Australian National Library selected it for preservation in its Pandora Archive. Monitoring his illness in this way cannot have been easy, but it enabled Denis to serve others to the very end.