Rajat Neogy, the Ugandan-born founder of Transition, a magazine that became influential in Africa, died on Dec. 3 at his home in San Francisco, where he settled two decades ago. He was 57.
He had been in declining health and had inflammation of the pancreas, his daughter Renu Neogy said.
Mr. Neogy (pronounced Nee-OH-ghee) was of Indian origin and grew up in Kampala, Uganda. After studies in London, he returned to Uganda, where, in 1961, he became Transition's editor as well as founder. The magazine swiftly became the leading journal of freely expressed opinion among the newly independent countries of Africa.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, said on Saturday: "This man created an African-based journal of letters that everybody in the intellectual world, it seemed, was excited about. He fought fascism in blackface, and that was rare and courageous."
In 1968, Mr. Neogy was arrested and charged with sedition for criticism of the Ugandan Government in Transition. After half a year in detention, he was acquitted and released.
He left Uganda in 1969 and in 1970 moved to Ghana, where he published Transition for several years. Then he ended his connection with the magazine and moved to the United States. He did some writing in San Francisco and also founded a short-lived neighborhood newspaper.
Transition was edited and published in the mid-1970's in Ghana and England by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. The magazine ceased publication when funds ran out, but in 1991 it was revived as a quarterly international journal, published in the United States, with Africa as its focus.
The magazine's revival was organized by Professor Gates, Mr. Soyinka and Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian essayist and novelist who also teaches at Harvard. All three had been profoundly influenced by the magazine in earlier years.
Mr. Neogy's daughter Renu, of Oakland, Calif., said his 1960 marriage to Charlotte Bystrom ended in divorce in 1965. His marriage to Barbara Lapcek later in 1965 ended in divorce after a decade. Ms. Neogy said that after moving to the United States he was married and divorced a third time, under Muslim but not secular law, to and from Djamilla McNutt.
Ms. Neogy said his other survivors include four sons, Gardar Larusson of Reykjavik, Iceland; Siddharta and Erisa Neogy of Pondicherry, India; and Kamal Neogy of Sonoma, Calif.; and two other daughters, Tayu Neogy of Manhattan and Ayisha Neogy of Sonoma; a granddaughter; and his mother, Sumitra Neogy of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
ラジャット・ネオジーは1938年にウガンダ・カンパラに生まれました。ロンドンで学び、帰国後1961年に文芸文化誌「Transition（トランジション）」を創刊、編集者となりました。同誌は「アフリカに関する事柄をアフリカの視点で論議し」、ポール・セローやウォレ・ショインカの作品がしばしば誌面を飾り、ネオジーも詩やエッセーを同誌に寄稿。
1968年、政府に批判的な記事が同誌に掲載されたため逮捕され、扇動の容疑で告発されるも、1年半後に無罪釈放。ガーナへ移住し同誌の発行を続けました。
1970年代初頭、トランジション誌をウォレ・ショインカの手に委ね、米国に移住。拘置中の生活により、「ラジャットの繊細な魂の中で、何かが壊れてしまったようだ・・・まるで悪魔の心の中を覗いてしまったがために、存在のハーモニーが永久に不協和音を奏でているかのように」（ショインカ）と言われたように健康状態が悪化し、1995年の今日、12月3日、サンフランシスコで亡くなました。
作家で友人のポール・セロー：「たった小さな一雑誌が広大な大陸全体に影響を与えるなどとは考え難いが、それがトランジション誌なのだ。（中略）何年もの間続けてきたウガンダ政府への批判のせいで、扇動の嫌疑をかけられ投獄の憂き目にあった。拘禁されたことで彼は壊れてしまったかもしれない。いや、それとも壊れ去ったのは彼の理想だったのだろうか？」（英国インデペンデント紙）
PEN International
En Uganda, Rajat Neogy, director de Transition, apenas acababa de llegar a la conclusión de que el daño a su revista sería "incalculable", cuando fue arrestado y encarcelado.En 1962 en Makerere, una “conferencia de escritores africanos en inglés“, considerada un hito en la literatura africana, se reunió toda una generación de escritores: Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, John Pepper Clark, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Bloke Modisane, Lewis Nkosi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (entonces James Ngugi), Robert Serumaga o Rajat Neogy que discutieron, entre otros, sobre el dilema de cómo debe ser comunicada la literatura africana. Han pasado más de 50 años.
