A retired professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Rajat Datta has died at the age of 65. He was known for his expertise on the 18th Century Indian history. He died of throat cancer on Saturday morning. He was being treated at a private hospital in Pune. After retiring from JNU in January, Datta was diagnosed with cancer in September.
He had graduated from St Stephen’s College and postgraduation from JNU. He also went to King’s College, London for his PhD. His research area focussed on the economic history of India with special reference to the 18th-century problems of the transition to the early‐colonial in India, the British Empire in India, crises in early modern India, etc, JNU wrote on its official website.
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Professor Najaf Haider of the Centre for Historical Studies, where Datta taught, said he was “a very conscientious teacher”, reported The Indian Express. “He was also an active member of the centre. Every Wednesday, we have a meeting and important decisions are taken after detailed discussions, not solely by the chairperson. Rajat’s role was very prominent in that. He never compromised on his principles. In the last five years, with the new administration, he had taken a strong stand against what he said was a compromise in academic excellence and spoke out many times against them. He also paid the price for it,” said Haider.
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Historian Harbans Mukhia who knows Datta ever since he was a MA student at JNU, says, “He was a bright student who was constantly questioning any notion or theory he came across, including from me. He was a historian in the sense that he never accepted anything just because it was written in books or said in lectures. He had an inquisitive mind. He was recasting the whole image of the 18th Century in India, in terms of modernity. The economic, social, and cultural dynamism is what he was recapturing.”
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