Nilufa Yasmin, a research scholar at the University of Burdwan, has topped the UGC NET JRF June 2025 examination in the Bengali discipline, securing an all-India rank of 1 with a 100 percentile score.
Her achievement, following two previous attempts, marks a triumph of perseverance and academic rigour.
Hailing from Katwa in Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, Yasmin is currently pursuing a PhD on the intersection of devotional music and medieval Bengali poetry under the supervision of Professor Ramen Kumar Das.
Her journey to the top was anything but overnight. After two earlier setbacks, she devoted a full year to strengthening her command of the general paper — particularly in English and mathematics — while delving deeper into medieval Bengali texts.
“I had hoped to do well but never imagined I would top,” she told The Indian Express. She credits her success to relentless practice and steady encouragement from her academic guide.
Yasmin completed her master’s and MPhil in Bengali literature from the University of Burdwan. Her research interests span folk kirtan traditions, manuscript preservation, and the use of digital archives for textual analysis.
Outside her formal studies, she maintains a routine that combines six-hour blocks of text study with regular drills for the general paper. Each Sunday is reserved for mock tests and error analysis.
She also uploads recordings of folk songs to social media, a habit that, she says, keeps her grounded in her research theme.
Raised in a modest household on Palita Road in Katwa, Yasmin attributes much of her success to the moral and financial support of her parents, who run a small business, and her elder brother.
Her accomplishment was publicly lauded by West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who called it “a matter of pride for West Bengal”.
Yasmin plans to convert her Junior Research Fellowship into a full-time doctoral grant and hopes to publish a monograph on medieval Bengali musical poetics.
In the longer term, she aspires to teach at a state university and work towards digitising rare lyrical manuscripts to make them more accessible to the public.
Her story stands as a testament to the power of persistence, particularly in fields often overlooked by the academic mainstream. It also challenges assumptions about competitive success, offering a compelling example of how regional scholarship, rigorous discipline and community support can outmatch more privileged routes.
Yasmin’s perfect score — achieved without the backing of expensive coaching — makes her not only a standout scholar but also a role model for students from India’s small towns.
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