Sumit Sarkar, the historian who didn’t lose hope

Although we met first in Calcutta, and later in Oxford, where Sumit and his wife Tanika were spending a year, we really became friends in the late 1970s when they spent some time with us in our Parisian flat and we had long chats in the evenings, very much in the tradition of addas, while listening to records of French revolutionary songs. When it was our turn to spend a year in Delhi, this friendship grew and we were constantly in and out of each others’ homes.

I have particularly fond memories of the few days Sumit and I spent together in Paris in the late 1980s. I was then trying to learn Bengali and, as a beginner, was finding my way through the famous primer written by Rabindranath Tagore, Shahoj Path.

In between visits to Parisian historical landmarks, about which Sumit was often more knowledgeable than an old Parisian like myself, we would spend time reading together through the text. Sumit was vastly amused at some of the stories recounted in the book, and at what it revealed of Tagore’s view of society. He even said it was worth having a closer look at the text, although he does not seem to have pursued that project.

Talking to him on any subject, whether history, politics or literature, was always enlightening, as he had a vast store of knowledge on a variety of topics, and was never boring. He did not take himself too seriously, the way many academics tend to do, and always applied a good dose of his particular brand of humour to even the most serious questions.

Raised in a Brahmo milieu with strong communist leanings, his father Professor Susobhan Sarkar being a stalwart of the Bengali intellectual left and a hugely influential teacher, Sumit remained a Marxist throughout his life, despite the growing unpopularity of that school of thought in India and elsewhere. An original contributor to Subaltern Studies with their then Thomsonian project of “history from below”, he parted ways with the group when they fell under the spell of postmodernism and postcoloniality. He wrote a famous article about the decline of the subaltern in Subaltern Studies, which his former co-authors preferred to ignore rather than attempt to refute. He still believed that some form of “history from below” was a feasible project, although he had lost some of his illusions about the possibilities of recovering the voices of the downtrodden.

For him, as for many progressive intellectuals worldwide, the collapse of the socialist bloc and more generally of the Left was painful to digest but he did not take refuge in nostalgia. He retained a hope that things somehow would correct themselves at some point, which they did not. He was particularly alarmed at the growth of the Hindutva brand of Hindu nationalism and the threat it posed to Indian society and democracy.

He wrote about this threat in a series of pieces that were polemical but lucid, and did not become invectives. He was alert to the fact that, by undermining belief in the existence of historical truths, postmodernism had unwittingly helped in the growth of Hindu historiographies of India which had little consideration for facts.

The last years of his life were darkened by a host of physical ailments which he bore with courage and stoicism, helped by the care of Tanika and their son Aditya, both fine historians. The last time I met him was in Leamington Spa in England, where Tanika and he were spending a holiday with Aditya. He was frail, but still lucid, taking full part in the conversation, and still capable of laughing at the absurdities of the world. He will be sorely missed by us, and we share the grief of Tanika and Aditya.

The writer is a French historian of India. His latest publication is India and the World: A History of Connections, c. 1750-2000