11 Facts About Amalendu De

Amalendu De was Guru Nanak Professor of History at Jadavpur University, where he specialised in the history of the Indian independence movement.

Amalendu De served for some time as president and as secretary of the Asiatic Society and in 1982 was president of the Indian History Congress at its meeting in Aligarh.

Amalendu De taught at Uluberia College and Murlidhar College before joining the faculty at Jadavpur University.

Amalendu De was a Marxist historian and a humanist, promoting the ideals of a society without communal divisions.

Amalendu De supported closer ties between India and China, and was general-secretary of the West Bengal branch of the Indo-China Friendship Society.

Amalendu De was involved with the state heritage commission, the road renaming committee and some other bodies.

Amalendu De's work led to the discovery in Sodepur of the grave of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, a pioneering Indian rationalist thinker and human rights activist.

Amalendu De died on 16 May 2014; his wife died a few weeks later, on 3 June.

Amalendu De's remains were donated to R G Kar Medical College.

Amalendu De argued that the rise of small pockets of jihadists around the border with Bangladesh might eventually lead to major security problems and he was in particular critical of the rise of unregistered madrassas.

Amalendu De had to settle for publication by a small publisher and was accused by his opponents of facilitating the Hindutva agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal.