August 13, 2026
Sumit Sarkar, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Delhi, passed away on
August 13, 2026. Sarkar specialized in the Indian independence movement and was a
founding member of the Subaltern Studies collective, later becoming one of its most
important critics. He transformed how modern Indian history was understood, bringing
ordinary people and their experiences to the center of historical scholarship, a true “history
from below.” He brought class, caste, gender and popular politics into the historical
narrative while teaching generations to question neat conclusions and remain open to
complexities.
Sarkar completed his BA in History at Presidency College, Calcutta and MA and Ph.D. in
the same subject at the University of Calcutta. He taught for many years as a lecturer at
the University of Calcutta, and later as a reader at the University of Burdwan. He
completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. He was Professor of
History at the University of Delhi between 1974 and 2004.
Sarkar’s seminal publications were The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-
1908 (1973), Modern India:1885-1947(1989), and Writing Social History (1998). He also
published Modern Times: 1880s-1950s (2014), Towards Freedom: Documents on the
Movement for Independence in India, 1946 (2007), A Critique of Colonial India (2000), and
Beyond Nationalist Frames: Post-Modernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History (2002). He
also co-edited with his wife Tanika Sarkar, Women and Social Reform in Modern India
(2008) and Caste in Modern India (2015).
In remembering Sarkar, his former student and colleague Charu Gupta wrote: “This is
perhaps what I shall remember most: the unusual unity between intellectual and personal
modesty. In an academic world not innocent of vanity, he possessed astonishingly little of
it. The twinkling eyes, gentle sarcasm, and shy smile could coexist with a razor-sharp
judgement. He could have occupied a prestigious chair almost anywhere in the world. He
chose instead to spend three decades teaching at Delhi University, shaping successive
generations of students.”