After 20 years, teacher’s PhD goes global

VADODARA: A thesis submitted by a retired teacher of M S University’s Department of English is catching global attention nearly 20 years after it was published.
It was in 1998 that Dr N K Dakorwala, who was serving as a reader had submitted his PhD work on nationalism and contemporary African-American drama.
Recently, MSU officials were pleasantly surprised when they were informed by ProQuest, a US-based global database, that this PhD work is one of the 25 most-accessed graduate work of 2017 from amongst 2.25 million graduate works, cutting across all subject areas including science and technology.
Interestingly, Dakorwala, now 70, retired seven years back from the university.
“We were informed by ProQuest that they have recognised the thesis submitted by Dakorwala as among 25 most-accessed dissertations and thesis. This graduate work is one of the most-accessed of all the 2.25 million full-text graduate works across all subject areas based on the total PDF downloads in their global database,” said MSU librarian Dr Mayank Trivedi.
“This is a big achievement considering that dissertations and thesis of researchers from globally reputed universities Oxford and Harvard are also submitted in this global database. Being ranked as top 25 most accessed work from across the globe shows the quality of research done at MSU,” he said.
US-based ProQuest shares more than two lakh new dissertations and masters thesis every year. Its database includes 4.5 million graduate works of which 2.25 million works are in full text that are accessed by researchers of more than 3,000 education institutes across the globe.
“This news is intriguing to me also,” said Dakorwala, who had completed his PhD under guidance of the then head of Department of English professor P C Kar.
About the thesis: Dr NK Dakorwala’s PhD work was on the plight of the African-American people in the US, from their past to their present status – right from the beginning of slavery to the movement which led to black nationalism that raised their consciousness about their rights in the US.
The research, which later got converted into a book focused on contributions of black nationalist writers especially playwrights from the 1960s onwards. “The rise of the black nationalism gained momentum thanks to works of dramatist, novelist and poet like Imamu Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins, Ntozake Shange and August Wilson. All of them have a significant contribution to the rise of the movement which made blacks in America conscious about their condition and inhuman treatment by the white majority,” he said.
Dakorwala had visited the US in 1983 on the invitation of students from US-based varsities whom he had taught Gujarati language during a semester abroad programme at Gujarat Vidyapeeth.
“It was after that visit that I had started working on this research area which I felt was an area unexplored,” he said.