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Historian Sumit Sarkar died in New Delhi on 13 August 2026 at the age of 87 after a prolonged illness.
Born in Calcutta in 1939, he was a Marxist historian of modern India.
His best-known works are 'The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908' (1973) and the textbook 'Modern India: 1885-1947' (1983).
He taught history at the University of Delhi from 1974 to 2004.
He returned the Rabindra Puraskar in 2007 in protest against the events at Singur and Nandigram.
An approach that writes history around peasants, workers, tribal communities and other non-elite groups rather than around leaders, parties and high politics. Sarkar's 'Modern India: 1885-1947' is the best-known Indian textbook shaped by it, and he was associated with the Subaltern Studies collective in its early years before parting ways with its later direction. His work argued that the nationalist movement cannot be understood only through its leadership.
Simple Analogy: Instead of telling the story of a battle through the general's despatches, you tell it through the soldiers who fought and the villages they marched past.
GS Paper 1 > Modern Indian History and Historiography
General Awareness > Books and Authors, Persons in News
Approach that studies peasants, workers and other non-elite groups rather than elite leadership
The 1905-08 agitation in Bengal against the partition of the province, involving boycott of British goods
Literary award conferred by the Government of West Bengal