Benoy Kumar Sarkar and Italy: Culture, Politics and Ideology

This book presents two lectures on Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887-1949). Professor of Economics at the University of Calcutta and one of the pioneers of Sociology in India. Benoy Kumar Sarkar spent nearly eleven years abroad from 1914 to 1925. He was to develop an original international perspective in the comparative analysis of social, political and economic phenomena. The first lecture discusses the philosophical dimensions of his researches. The second lecture, ‘Benoy Kumar Sarkar and Italy’, gives the book its title. B.K. Sarkar’s analysis is focused on Italy’s culture and society particularly after his second cycle of travels abroad (1929-31). While in Italy, in fact, he worked out the project of an Italo-Indian Institute for the economic cooperation, which met the opposition of some sections of the Italian bureaucracy. The aim of this book is to shed light on B.K. Sarkar’s international perspective and on his activities in Italy. The reconstruction of the controversy on the Italo-Indian Institute is based on Italian archival sources, brought to the Indian reader’s notice for the first time.