Sumit Sarkar, who passed away at 87 on Thursday, was a historians’ historian. Like his father Susobhan and sister Sipra, both eminent historians, Sumit set the bar high in assessing vast swathes of India’s past. His seminal work on the swadeshi movement—where he showed how resistance to the British Raj got electrified in the early 20th century when young Bengali men and women took to the cause—would have wide resonance today. Another work that speaks to the present is his social history of Sri Ramakrishna’s Calcutta, where salarymen flocking to the preacher morphed his sermons to address workplace anxieties. Apart from being éminence grise to generations of historians, Sarkar revolutionised global historiography by co-founding the subaltern studies—to look at times past through the eyes of the ruled, not just rulers.
