Harishankar Vasudevan, a professional historian who was a specialist on Russian and European history, and Indo-Russian relations, died after contracting COVID-19 on May 10, 2020, at a private health facility in Kolkata, India. He was 68.
Son of an aeronautical engineer at the Defence Science Organisation (later Defence Research and Development Organisation) Methil Vasudevan and Sreekumari Menon, Professor Vasudevan — “Hari” to all — grew up in many places in India, Europe and Africa. He had just finished a memoir, largely focussed on life of his mother, who passed away recently.
After completing studies at Cambridge University in the early 1970s, Prof. Vasudevan settled in Kolkata as a Reader in European History at Calcutta University. He set up the Central Asia programme at Jamia Millia Islamia, worked as the chief of the Textbook Development Committee for the Social Sciences at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and, later, as the Director of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies from 2007.
He was involved in projects on Indo-Russian relations, and the Radiating Globalities project initiated by Gayatri Spivak of Columbia University. At the Observer Research Foundation, he was evaluating the overlap between the Look East and Look Far East policies of India, and the relationship between the Greater Eurasia ideas of the Russian establishment and the Chinese establishment.
One of Prof. Vasudevan’s latest engagements was to initiate a process so that a museum-cum-research centre could be developed at the spacious south Kolkata residence of another early 20th century historian Ramesh Chandra (R.C.) Majumdar. In an interview to this correspondent, hitherto unpublished, Prof. Vasudevan said it was a pity that when there is so much of discussion on India’s policy to “look east”, no one “either in the Centre or the State is interested to look into a Bengal-pioneered process to study ancient India’s roots in southeast Asia”.
“There were many scholars who, sitting in Kolkata, studied Indian connections and remains in southeast Asia. There was this Great India Society which has been explored but R.C.’s work stands out among the scholars [in] exploring Indian roots and connections in [for example] ancient Champa [Vietnam],” he had said.
“R.C.’s books and studies on ancient Indonesia, Myanmar, Malayasia, Cambodia and perhaps the entire southeast Asia are pioneering works on ancient India in southeast but no one cares to restore those or bring all his works and collections together, in one place. I always felt, R.C.’s south Kolkata house could be a great place to set it up as a museum as he was one champion of modern Indian history,” the he had regretted last winter.
Prof. Vasudevan has seminal works on Indo-Russian trade and military cooperation to his credit, and his works range from early European and 15th century Russian trader Afanasy Nikitin’s journey in India to the recent, as yet unpublished memoir with his mother titled Memoirs of a Malabar Lady.
Eminent city personalities, including Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, condoled Prof. Vasudevan’s untimely demise. Many regretted that they could not participate in paying him tribute in person as the family was in a quarantine and Prof. Vasudevan was taken on his last journey to the crematorium from the hospital.