Three recollections of Sunil Kumar, the historian who stood tall against majoritarian politics
In his book ‘The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate’, he argued that the sultanate was less a solid political entity than a fluid formation.
Sunil Kumar
Rukun Advani
Fourteen years ago, Sunil Kumar held a copy of his first big book in his hands:
The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192-1286 (Permanent Black, 2007). He had not bothered trying to publish it with any of the big American or British university presses, though they had all have taken it like a shot. It had been very long since anything substantially new and eye-opening had been written on the Delhi Sultanate, and Sunil, reckoned a dilatory perfectionist whose motto was much too fervently “better never than now”, was known to have been writing it for more than a decade. He could have had his pick of the publisher.