Benoy Kumar Sarkar

Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887 to 1949), sometimes written Binoy Kumar Sarkar, was an Indian social scientist, professor and nationalist, born in Malda in the Bengal Presidency. He entered the University of Calcutta at thirteen, graduated with dual degrees in English and history at eighteen, and took his master degree the next year. He taught in the Department of Economics at the University of Calcutta from 1925, became its head in 1947, and founded several institutes in Calcutta, among them the Bengali Institute of Sociology. He wrote in Bengali, English, German, French and Italian, producing 53 books and booklets in English alone, including The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology. His 1919 and 1921 studies set out a Hindu theory of international relations and of the state, work later described as among the first major contributions to international relations theory by an Indian. His record is contested: he praised Nazism as a benevolent dictatorship and urged a fascist dictatorship for India, while also arguing for Hindu-Muslim unity and an Asia that would not trust Western powers. He died in Washington in 1949 during an American lecture tour.