Sumit Sarkar (born 1939) is an Indian historian of modern

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

. He is the author of ''Swadeshi Movement''.

Early life, education and career

He was born to

Susobhan Sarkar 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, studied history at Presidency College, ...

. His maternal uncle was

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis OBE, FNA, FASc, FRS (29 June 1893– 28 June 1972) was an Indian scientist and statistician. He is best remembered for the Mahalanobis distance, a statistical measure, and for being one of the members of the fir ...

. He completed his BA (Honours) in 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 MA and Ph.D. in the same subject at the

University of Calcutta 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 yea ...

. He taught for many years as a

lecturer Lecturer is an 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. They may also conduct re ...

at the University of Calcutta, and later as a

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 ...

at the

University of Burdwan The University of Burdwan (also known as Burdwan University or B. U.) is a public university in Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India. It was established by the West Bengal Government as a teaching and affiliating university on 15 June 1960 with ...

. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at

Wolfson College, Oxford Wolfson College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with around sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research a ...

. He was

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

of history at the

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

Awards

He was awarded the

Rabindra Puraskar The Rabindra Puraskar (also Rabindra Smriti Puraskar) is the highest honorary literary award given in the Indian state of West Bengal. This award is named after the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and is administered by the Government of W ...

literary award for his book Writing Social History by the

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

government in 2004. He returned the award in 2007 in protest against the expulsion of farmers from their land.

Controversy

He was one of the founding members of the

Subaltern Studies Collective The Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) or Subaltern Studies Collective is a group of South Asian scholars interested in the postcolonial and post-imperial societies. The term ''Subaltern Studies'' is sometimes also applied more broadly to others who sha ...

, but later distanced himself from the project. He noted that arguments made in the later issues of the journal as well as in books by

Partha Chatterjee Partha ( sa, pārtha) may refer to: * Partha, an epithet of Arjuna Arjuna (Sanskrit: अर्जुन, ), also known as Partha and Dhananjaya, is a character in several ancient Hindu texts, and specifically one of the major characters of t ...

blanketly criticized Enlightenment, the nation-state and secularism lined up with indigenist critiques that were at home with the Hindu right. In his view this error was traceable to a basic confusion in the early project that posed an absolute separation between the elite and subaltern domains. He contributed a volume to the ''Towards Freedom'' project of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), publication of which was blocked in 2000 by the ICHR under the influence of then Indian government administered by the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major List of political parties in India, Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the List of ruling p ...

as alleged by Sarkar. The publication of the volume was eventually allowed by the Government of India once the Congress party came to power after the general election of 2004.

Publications

* ''Modern Times''(Ranikhet, 2014) *''Towards Freedom: Documents on the Movement for Independence in India, 1946'', (New Delhi, 2007) *''Beyond Nationalist Frames: Post-Modernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History'', (Delhi, 2002) *''Writing Social History'', (Delhi, 1998) *''Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right'', (with Tapan Basu, Pradip Datta,

Tanika Sarkar Tanika Sarkar is a historian of modern India based at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Sarkar's work focuses on the intersections of religion, gender, and politics in both colonial and postcolonial South Asia, in particular on women and the Hindu ...

and Sambuddha Sen; Orient Longman, 1993). . *''Modern India: 1885-1947'', (Basingstoke, 1989) *''The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908'', (New Delhi, 1973)

References

External links

The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies

"Delhi Historians Group's Publication "Communalization of Education: The History Textbooks Controversy", A report in 2002, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarkar, Sumit 1939 births Bengali Hindus Bengali-language writers 20th-century Bengalis Presidency University, Kolkata alumni University of Calcutta alumni University of Calcutta faculty University of Burdwan faculty Delhi University faculty Jawaharlal Nehru University faculty Bengali historians Brahmos Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford Historians of South Asia Historians of colonialism 20th-century Indian historians Living people Indian Marxist historians Indian political writers Writers about Hindu nationalism Indian lecturers Indian male writers 20th-century Indian writers 20th-century Indian male writers Indian writers Indian historians Indian scholars 20th-century Indian scholars Scholars from West Bengal English-language writers from India People from Kolkata district