Prof Emeritus Vishwa Nath Datta dead at 94

Datta was a visiting professor to a number of universities including Moscow, Leningrad, and Berlin, and Resident Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.

Well-known historian Vishwa Nath Datta, Professor Emeritus, Kurukshetra University, and former General President of the Indian History Congress, passed away at his residence on Monday.

Vishwa Nath Dutta was 94 and is survived by his wife and three daughters.

He was 94 and is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Datta was a visiting professor to a number of universities including Moscow, Leningrad, and Berlin, and Resident Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Born in 1926 into an illustrious family of Amritsar, he was the son of a leading businessman and renowned Urdu-Persian poet and Padma Shri awardee Brahm Nath Datta ‘Qasir.’

Author of several pioneering works on modern India, Dutta’s well-known works include Jallianwala Bagh, which was the first work on the massacre of 1919; Amritsar: Past and Present; Sati: A Historical, Social, and Philosophical Enquiry Into the Hindu Rite of Widow-Burning; Maulana Azad, Gandhi and Bhagat Singh; and a biography of the revolutionary, Madan Lal Dhingra.