SUSOBHAN SARKAR 15 Sipra Sarkar (who carries on his tradition of fine scholarship and teaching of European history, of the USSR in particular, at Jadavpur University) has told me that in addition to his personal memories of Tagore in Bengali {Prasan^a Rablndranath), published this year, he had started putting together the reminiscences of the first 25 years of his life. It only remains to mention that the official honours, which had been his due, many years before, came too late in his life, an honorary D. Litt. of Burdwan University, the Rabindra Puraskar of the West Bengal Government, in 1981 for his old writings On the Bengal Renaissance. Through the 1960s, Sarkar, aided by his children, had endeavoured to build informal forums (first the Janasiksha Parishad and later the Marx Club), which met in his friends' houses in South Calcutta fairly regularly, for intellectuals across factions to debate in their mother tongue, on a friendly plane, about issues in contemporary cultural and political life. Minutes were kept of these meetings which, if published, would make a fascinating record. These were small efforts, indeed, restricted to a city circle. But by no means were they elitist. If Left and democratic unity appears in the 1980s to be more of a possibility among all those who look back with pride on the heritage of the old Communist Pany of India, then it is due not only to the indubitable ground swell from the present rank and file, but also to untiring efforts by people like Sarkar, who have contributed to the cause by their patience and catholicity, their capacity to create a common national discourse which placed Marxism in the forefront, in a humane and democratic way, and by their coupling of scholarship about the past with the endeavour to understand the roots of problems of the present. In this work of building a democratic and activist heritage for Marxist thought in India Susobhan Chandra Sarkar will be remembered in the same rank of people, as different in their outlook, but as similar in their welding of scholarship with national commitment and political consciousness, as DDKosambi orP C Joshi. 1 Vide articles by Barun De (with bibliography of Sarkar's writings, composed with the assistance of Enakshi Mukherjee), P C Joshi, Chinmohan Sehanavis and Shyamal Krishna Ghosh, n Essays in Honour of Prof. S C Sarkar, New Delhi, People's Publishing House, 1976. 2 Susobhan Sarkar, "Sukum^r Ray: Ja Maney Parhey" (Sukumar Ray: Reminiscences) Jn the Bengali monthly, Baronws, Autumn Festival Number, 1982, V. 1-3. 3 Chinmohan Sehanavis, "Communism at Oxford", Essays in Honour of Sarkar, p 14. 4 Susobhan Sarkar. Supplementary Note 1. On the "Notes on the Bengal Renaissance", On the Bengal Renaissance, Calcutta, 1979, p 164. 5 PC Joshi, "A Dedicated Teacher—Some Memories", in Eassays in Honour of Sarkar, pp 7-8. 6 Sarkar, loc cit, pp 164-165. 7 Joshi, loccit, pp 8-9. 8 Sarkar, hccit, pp 145-146, 9 Ibid, p 148.