New Delhi, Aug. 14 -- Historian, academician and author Sumit Sarkar, whose pioneering work on the Swadeshi movement and modern India shaped generations of history students and scholars, died on Thursday evening at the age of 87. He died around 7pm due to aspiration pneumonia after a prolonged illness, his wife, retired professor Tanika Sarkar, said. "He had been hospitalised for a long time and was undergoing treatment for aspiration pneumonia. He was on a ventilator, and his condition showed no signs of improvement so the doctors advised us to take him home. He passed away on August 13 around 7pm," Tanika Sarkar told HT. Born into a Brahma family in Bengal, Sarkar graduated from Presidency College, Kolkata, and completed his master's and PhD at the University of Calcutta, where he also taught. He later taught history at the University of Delhi for several decades and also headed its Department of History. His scholarship focused particularly on colonial India, the freedom struggle and social history. He was widely respected among historians, teachers and students. Professor Anirudh Deshpande, the current head of DU's history department, described Sarkar as a towering figure in post-colonial Indian historiography. "He was the greatest historian of modern Indian history in post colonial India. His pioneering research on the Swadeshi Movement paved the way for the rise of creative Marxist historiography in India and his other works have enriched our understanding of history as a discipline in myriad ways," Deshpande said. Nilanjana Roy called Sarkar a "great believer in pluralism, staunchly anti-fascist" who explored history "as a democratic project"....