Professor Ram Saran Sharma was one of the finest historians of the generation, just about 10 years older than me. He was a contemporary of Professor Nurul S. Hasan.

Professor Sharma represented a group of three historians who changed our views about Indian historians in the 1960s.

He worked in ancient Indian history and Professor Nurul S. Hasan and Professor Satish Chandra in the field of medieval and early modern history.

Their generation was the first to use ideas of world history and the historical materialist approach in looking at Indian history with reference to research on original sources always using the language of the sources and not English translations.

Before them there had been great historians but these historians had focused on a materialist interpretation of India alone, and following them Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar and Sumit Sarkar took the interpretation of Indian history in its world context to a position of great eminence in modern social science.

Professor Sharma was somebody who had come from a very humble background and made a mark for himself in Marxist studies as well as raising Patna University historical studies to considerable eminence in the field of ancient Indian history. He was among the first to popularise the study of Indian feudalism following in the footsteps of D.D. Kosambi. He was the founder-chairman of the Indian Council for Historical Research from 1973 till 1979.

We will miss his infectious laughter and his friendly encouragement, which he generously bestowed on younger people.

His internationally famous books include Sudras in Ancient India and Indian Feudalism as well as a textbook on ancient India prepared for the NCERT.