4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST been deeply committed to social activities and influenced by political events. In his last article (posthumously published which he completed a few days before his demise)2 he wrote of his part, under the leadership of Sukumar Ray, the well-known Bengali composer of nonsense and metaphysical verse (and father of Satyajit Ray), and Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (later Sarkar's brother-in-law), in organising a 'fraternity' of young people who endeavoured, through study meetings, etc, to wake the slumbering, oligarchical conscience of the once democratic and reformist Sadbaran Brahmo Samaj of North Calcutta. A diary that he kept of his student years in Calcutta (1917-1923), which his son, Sumit Sarkar, spoke of after his demise, also shows how his national consciousness was being stirred by the Non-Cooperation Movement, as well as by the post-War popular challenge to imperialism. A nationalist to the core, he remained to the end of his days a staunch devotee of the unity in diversity of India's people. He was simultaneously inspired by the Soviet Revolution. At the end of a two year stint in Jesus College, Oxford (1923-1925), he was marked out as a socialist by a CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) talent scout, who quantified political opinions of the members of the Indian Majlis at the end of the 1925 Summer Term as follows: "ICS and IFS (pledged to support government) 20; Moderates 18; Swarajists 11; Socialists 5; Unclassified 12."3 A rational and critical exposition of nationalism as well as socialism shines through Sarkar's lectures on European history, first in the Calcutta University Post-Graduate Department of History, (1925-1927), then as Reader in History, Dhaka University (1927-1932), then as Professor of History, Presidency College, Calcutta, and ex-officio lecturer in history in the Calcutta University (1932-1956), then as Professor and first Head of the Department of History at Jadavpur University (1956-1961) and finally reappointed on a Government of India special scheme for distinguished scholars, back at Calcutta University (1961-1967). His teaching of various political aspects of European history was what made him a legend in his lifetime. In these lectures, he introduced us to works of close textual analysis, by men, like McKenzie or Maitland. He would have detested the currently snooty fashion of showing off the most inaccessible and recondite references, though he kept up with them in his own reading. He certainly brought the new journal of historical studies. Past and Present, which, till 1958, had as its sub-title, "a jouranal of scientific history", to the notice of those of us who became interested in new Marxist social and economic history, when it first appeared in the 1950s. In the classroom, he would train the students—all of them—in the use of solid texts— HAL Fisher's History of Modern Europe and Gooch's History and Historians in the 19th Century as an introduction, the Rivington series on Modern Europe as a companion for facts and dates, David Ogg's book, Matthiez's work on class forces and struggle in the