Susobhan Chandra Sarkar (1900–1982) was an Indian historian.

Background and education

Sarkar, son of Suresh Chandra Sarkar, was born into a Brahmo family of Dhaka. He attended

Dhaka Collegiate School Dhaka Collegiate School is a secondary school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is one of the oldest schools in Bangladesh. The students of collegiate school are called Collegiatian. History The school was established in Dhaka on 21 June 1835 as Dhaka E ...

, studied history at

Presidency College, Calcutta Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly known as Presidency College, Kolkata) is a second major public state aided research university located in College Street, Kolkata. Considered as one of best colleges when Presidency College was affili ...

and continued his higher education at

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship St ...

, from 1923 to 1925. His daughter Sipra Sarkar was a professor of history at

Jadavpur University Jadavpur University is a public state university located in Jadavpur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was established in 1905 as ''Bengal Technical Institute'' and was converted into Jadavpur University in 1955. In 2022, it was ranked fourth am ...

, Calcutta and

Sumit Sarkar Sumit Sarkar (born 1939) is an Indian historian of modern India. He is the author of ''Swadeshi Movement''. Early life, education and career He was born to Susobhan Sarkar. His maternal uncle was Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. He completed h ...

was professor of history at

Delhi University Delhi University (DU), formally the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate Central university (India), central university located in New Delhi, India. It was founded in 1922 by an Act of the Central Legislative Assembly and ...

Career

He returned to India as a

Lecturer Lecturer is an List of academic ranks, academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. T ...

in History at

Calcutta University The University of Calcutta (informally known as Calcutta University; CU) is a public collegiate state university in India, located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Considered one of best state research university all over India every year, C ...

before being appointed

Reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

in History at

Dhaka University The University of Dhaka (also known as Dhaka University, or DU) is a public research university located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It is the oldest university in Bangladesh. The university opened its doors to students on July 1st 1921. Currently i ...

in 1927. Through the 1920s he was involved in the administration of

Visva-Bharati Visva-Bharati () is a public central university and an Institution of National Importance located in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, India. It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it ''Visva-Bharati'', which means the communion of the w ...

Santiniketan Santiniketan is a neighbourhood of Bolpur town in the Bolpur subdivision of Birbhum district in West Bengal, India, approximately 152 km north of Kolkata. It was established by Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, and later expanded by his son ...

, still under the active tutelage of its founder,

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...

. In 1932, he was appointed

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of History at Presidency College, Calcutta. He will be remembered as a long serving professor of the college who inspired generations of students from both science and arts streams.Amartya Sen, ''Autobiography'' (The Nobel Foundation, 1998)
/ref> He moved to

as Professor in 1956. He returned to

for his final academic post from 1961 to 1967. Sarkar, whose work was influenced by his

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

and

Gramscian Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a fou ...

ideas, taught the history of modern Europe, particularly the development of constitutional history in Britain and political thought in Western Europe. He also wrote from the 1930s about the

Bengal Renaissance Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

. His ''Notes on Bengal Renaissance'' sparked an interest in nationalist Indian historiography. He also wrote the manifesto of the

CPI A consumer price index (CPI) is a price index, the price of a weighted average market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. Changes in measured CPI track changes in prices over time. Overview A CPI is a statistic ...

Legacy

The Paschimbanga Itihas Samsad, in collaboration with Presidency University,

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

(erstwhile Presidency College), has been organizing a lecture series in Sarkar's memory since 1994.Noted scholars, such as Ashin Das Gupta, B.N. Mukherjee, Goutam Chattopadhyay,

Gautam Bhadra Gautam Bhadra ( bn, গৌতম ভদ্র) is a historian of South Asia and was a member of the erstwhile Subaltern Studies collective. Bhadra was born in Kolkata in 1948. He obtained education at Presidency University, Kolkata, Presidency ...

, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya,

Partha Chatterjee Partha ( sa, pārtha) may refer to: * Partha, an epithet of Arjuna, a warrior in the Mahabharata * Partha, an ancestor of the Shah Mir dynasty of Kashmir * Partha, a given name (for a list of people with the name, see ) * Partha See also * Parth ...

Sukanta Chaudhuri Sukanta Chaudhuri (born 1950) is an Indian literary scholar, now Professor Emeritus at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata and the University of Oxford. He taught at Presidency College from January 1973 ...

, D.N. Jha, Jasodhara Bagchi,

Rajat Kanta Ray Rajat Kanta Ray ( bn, রজত কান্ত রায়) is a historian of South Asian history, specializing in Modern Indian history. Background He is the son of Kumud Kanta Ray, ICS who was a Home Secretary of West Bengal in the 196 ...

, and

Sugata Bose Sugata Bose (born 7 September 1956) is an Indian historian and politician who has taught and worked in the United States since the mid-1980s. His fields of study are South Asian and Indian Ocean history. Bose taught at Tufts University until 2 ...

, have delivered this lecture. The Itihas Samsad brought out a collection of these lectures, from 1996-2016, in a volume (edited by Ramkrishna Chatterjee) entitled Sahitya Samaj Itihas (Bengali সাহিত্য সমাজ ইতিহাস). This volume was released by Sarkar's son,

, on 24 January 2018 at the venue of the 34th annual conference of the Itihas Samsad, held at the School of Women's Studies,

. The volume also includes a translation, in to Bengali, of the obituary written by

Barun De Barun De (30 October 1932 – 16 July 2013) was an Indian historian. He served as the first professor of social and economic history of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, founder-director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sci ...

, which was published in the 'Social Scientist', as well as a report of the proceedings of the first seminar held in Sarkar's memory at Presidency College in 1994

References

External links

Notes on the Bengal Renaissance
(1946) People's Publishing House, Bombay. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sarkar, Susobhan 1900 births 1982 deaths 20th-century Bengalis Bengali Hindus Bengali-language writers Presidency University, Kolkata alumni University of Calcutta alumni Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Bengali historians Indian historians Indian academics Indian writers Indian male writers Indian lecturers 20th-century Indian writers 20th-century Indian male writers 20th-century Indian historians Brahmos Academic staff of Presidency University, Kolkata Academic staff of the University of Calcutta Historians of India Indian Marxist historians Indian political writers People associated with Santiniketan People from West Bengal Scholars from West Bengal People from Dhaka