Sunil Kumar Changed How Historians Think About Islamic Rule in Medieval India
Kumar s well-constructed historical account shed light on how military slavery and Turco-Mongol tribal identity and cultural heritage are the key to understanding social relations and political formations in the medieval period.
Sunil Kumar. Photo: The Wire
History17/Jan/2021
In a blow to the academic history community, beloved professor Sunil Kumar passed away earlier this morning. Kumar was a leading historian of medieval India who had worked extensively on the Delhi Sultanate and wrote about its political and administrative history, social formations, architectural past and religious-mystical networks.
Kumar held a number of prestigious positions: between 2008 and 2010 Kumar worked as reader, Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; in 2008 he had served as the Townsend Professor in Residence, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, Universi
Robert Clive of the East India Company at the siege of Arcot. | Ernest Wallcousins (1883-1976) [Public domain]
Manan Ahmed Asif’s new book,
“Across the subcontinent we now confront a crisis of the past, with an explicit understanding of difference as destiny…
The majoritarian Sunni or Hindutva projects ask that we, as historians, consider them inevitable and immutable. Yet, this cannot stand…
The history I have sketched here is a prompt to imagine ways forward that do not yield to the majoritarian present, that do not inherit the past as certainty, and do not romanticise that which is lost. It is essential that, as historians, artists, activists, and thinkers, we turn to the medieval period and recognise the ways in which it continues to organise how current prejudices are rearticulated…