Personal website

Sanjay Ray

Software engineer, digital humanist and independent researcher.

About

Computing, history, and the paths between them.

Looking towards the past

Recovering histories

These days, much of my attention is directed towards the past. I am researching, digitizing and preserving the work and legacy of my great-grandfather, the physician and Ayurvedic scholar Jamini Bhushan Ray (1879–1926).

Through the JBRay Digital Humanities Project, I work with historical documents, photographs and publications—using everything from archival research and OCR to Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia and the open web to make this material accessible again.

A life with computers

Programming since 1985

The tools may be contemporary, but my relationship with computers goes back much further. I began programming in 1985 and moved into professional software development in the 1990s, after studying at St. Xavier's College and earning a degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

Programming has remained a constant ever since, even as the places, technologies and problems have changed.

So, in an unexpected way, two seemingly different strands of my life have converged: computing and history.

The same fascination with technology that began decades ago now provides many of the tools I use to recover, organize and preserve material from more than a century ago.

Across three continents

Places along the way

Those places have spanned three continents. I was born and raised in Calcutta (Kolkata), where my early professional work included software for the Vidyasagar Setu toll plaza.

From there came Ipswich, England and British Telecom; Cedar Rapids, Iowa and MCI Communications; and eventually Canada. I arrived in Canada in 2001, lived first in Mississauga, and have called Burlington, Ontario home since 2002.

My Canadian career has included Great Gulf, Manulife, the LCBO, the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ontario Ministry of Education .

Other threads

Beyond code and archives

There are other threads too. I enjoy thrillers, the cinema of Satyajit Ray and Indian classical music, particularly the sitar and sarod. I also have a longstanding interest in Vedic Jyotish.

Digital Humanities

Recovering a history through research and technology.

The JBRay Digital Humanities Project brings together historical research, archival preservation, digitization, OCR and open knowledge. Its focus is the life and legacy of my great-grandfather, the Ayurvedic physician, educator and institution-builder Jamini Bhushan Ray.

Portrait of Ayurvedic physician Jamini Bhushan Ray — Jamini Bhushan Ray (1879–1926), physician, Sanskrit scholar, educator and founder of the Ashtanga Ayurveda College and Hospital.

From family archive to public history

The project began with family photographs, publications and institutional records. It has grown into a wider effort to locate, interpret, restore and share historical material connected with Jamini Bhushan Ray and the development of organised Ayurvedic education in Bengal.

The work includes scanning and image restoration, searchable OCR, transcription, source verification, Wikimedia Commons uploads, Wikipedia research and the preparation of freely accessible digital editions.

Read the Wikipedia biography

Historic view of the Ashtanga Ayurveda Hospital on Raja Dinendra Street in Kolkata in 1964 — The Raja Dinendra Street hospital building in 1964. Mahatma Gandhi laid the foundation stone of this campus in 1925.

Cover of Prosuti Tantram by Jamini Bhushan Ray — Prosuti Tantram, one of Jamini Bhushan Ray's works on Ayurvedic medicine.

Research & Digital Editions

Read online or download the project materials.

Wikipedia article · PDF

Jamini Bhushan Ray

A researched biography covering his education, medical work, publications, philanthropy and institutional legacy.

Read online Download PDF

Wikipedia article · PDF

J. B. Roy State Ayurvedic Medical College and Hospital

The history of the institution founded in 1916, its hospitals, educational work and transition to state administration.

Read online Download PDF

Wikipedia article · PDF

Mahatma Gandhi at Ashtanga Ayurveda Vidyalaya

The story and historical context of Gandhi's foundation-stone ceremony and address of 6 May 1925.

Read online Download PDF

Wikisource edition · PDF

Speech at Ashtanga Ayurveda Vidyalaya

A transcribed and proofread digital edition of Gandhi's address delivered in Calcutta on 6 May 1925.

Read online Download PDF

Featured Digital Edition

Gandhi's 1925 address

The embedded reader below displays the transcribed and proofread Wikisource edition. A direct download remains available for browsers that do not display embedded PDFs.

Unable to view the embedded document? Open the PDF directly .

Programming & Technology

Four decades of making computers useful.

From school-lab BASIC to C#, Python, web development and digital humanities, programming has remained a constant thread through changing languages, tools and places.

Now

Still programming

Programming has been part of my life for more than forty years, but the fascination has changed remarkably little: start with a problem, understand it, and make a computer do something useful.

Today, C# and Python are the languages I work with most closely. My interests also extend to web development and the technologies behind this website—HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Bootstrap, together with Git for version control and Cloudflare for deployment.

One technology I hope to explore much further is Dart and the Flutter framework. The prospect of building applications for both Android and iOS from a single codebase is particularly appealing.

1985

Before the Web existed

My programming story began considerably earlier than my professional career. In 1985, while still in middle school, I would go to the school computer lab and write programs in BASIC for fun.

That beginning eventually led through BASIC, Pascal and FORTRAN to C and C++, followed by ColdFusion, C# and Python, and frameworks including .NET and Django. Languages, operating environments and development tools have changed enormously along the way, but programming itself has remained a constant.

Real-world software

Software in the real world

One of my early professional projects brought software into a particularly tangible setting: the toll-collection and accounting system for the Vidyasagar Setu in Calcutta, the bridge across the Ganges.

My subsequent career took me through software development and technology work associated with British Telecom, MCI Communications, Great Gulf, Manulife, the LCBO, and Ontario's Ministry of Community and Social Services and Ministry of Education.

The technologies changed from one period to another, but the most interesting projects were always those where software had a concrete purpose beyond the computer itself.

Digital humanities

When programming meets history

That idea has resurfaced in an unexpected form through the JBRay Digital Humanities Project.

Historical research might seem far removed from software development, yet much of the work involves problems that lend themselves naturally to computation: processing digitized material, organizing archival sources, transforming images, working with OCR, managing documents and building tools and workflows around historical collections.

It has become one of the most satisfying applications of programming in my life—not because the technology is the subject, but because the technology makes something else possible.

Constant

What hasn't changed

The machines are different. The languages are different. The Web arrived, development environments evolved, and software moved from isolated computers to globally connected systems and mobile devices.

What has remained remarkably consistent since those afternoons in the school computer lab is the attraction of programming itself: solving problems, building things and making computers do something useful.

Journey

Places change. Some threads don't.

Calcutta, Ipswich, Cedar Rapids, Reston, Houston, Washington, Mississauga and Burlington. A life lived across four countries and three continents, with computing providing one of its continuities.