UK
www.abplgroup.com - Asian Voice 7th June 2014
Leading Lights
Rani Singh, Special Assignments Editor
Daughter of Famous Activists Leading a Life of Activism and Music Dia is Political Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, a position she has held since January 2014. The TaxPayers’ Alliance campaigns for lower taxes and greater government accountability, with the Guardian calling it “arguably the most influential pressure group in the country”. Prior to joining the TPA, Dia worked at The Freedom Association, where she spent 16 months as Deputy Director, making the case for freedom of speech and expression and freedom of the press. She has extensive experience of engaging with the media as well as parliamentarians across the politician spectrum. Dia was born in Bangladesh. Having read Law at Oxford University, she started her career in the City as a tax consultant before moving into communications and public affairs. I was given an exclusive interview near to Westminster just by Dia’s
Dia Chakravarty
office; she generously gave me as much time as I wanted to ask her anything in the world!
Dia, an only child, has a remarkable pedigree that has directly led her to where she is today.
Her mother, Sultana Kamal, is a lawyer and a human rights activist who runs a legal aid organisation in Bangladesh. Dia’s father, Supriyo Chakravarty, is also a lawyer. One parent is Muslim, the other is Hindu. Dia told me that her parents raised her to have no inhibitions about being a girl; teaching her that she could achieve whatever she wanted. In Bangladesh, the state curriculum dictates that a specific religion must be chosen at primary school level. But the imposition of a rigid choice and the resulting one-religion system was not something Dia’s liberal parents would allow, so they set they up a school in Sylhet for Dia and other children from their circle of friends, teaching the British Council regulated O Level examination syllabus. The mothers mostly taught the classes. The school went up to age 14, after which Dia's schooling was mostly tutorial-based, learning different subjects with different teachers and involving an amount of self-teaching of some subjects. She achieved seven O Levels, then got a scholarship to a sixthform college in Oxford to board and sit her A Levels, before reading Law at Oxford University.
She planned to go home eventually and work with her mother. But she had met her future husband while still at school and decided to settle in England once she completed her University and Bar examinations. Dia is an accom-
“I connect through music. And I also love the idea of engaging with people and getting a message across.” plished singer, performing regularly in London and abroad. She specialises in Bengali music, having just completed recording her first solo album which is to be launched in August. I first met her at a Tagore event in Parliament where she was speaking on the world view of Tagore, sharing a panel with the Bangladeshi High Commissioner (who was fulsome in his praise of her) and the Indian High Commissioner. I asked Dia where her passion for music comes from. “I was fortunate enough to be born into a musical family;” she explained. “Music forms a large part of activism in
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Bangladesh, something which my family has been closely engaged in since the British Raj. On a more personal level, my father would play Tagore in the background as he put me to sleep as a child. So subconsciously, I associate music with home, safety and security.” So what Dia does now as a campaigner for greater government accountability and cutting out waste in the public sector is in a sense a logical extension of her upbringing, though she says that she is more libertarian than her leftleaning parents. “I do have an urge to make a difference, whatever way I can” she said. Dia’ album, “A Bloom in Vain and other songs.” will be released on August 22nd in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The album consists of songs of Rabindranath Tagore along with those of three of his contemporaries from the late 1800s/early 1900s. I had to ask Dia which she prefers, singing or her formal work in a busy pressure group. She replied,”There are similarities in both. I connect through music, and I also love the idea of engaging with people and getting a message across. Both are about communicating.”