Ram Sharan Sharma
Ram Sharan Sharma (26 November 1919- 20 August 2011) was a historian of Ancient and early Medieval India. Ram Sharan Sharma, known for his trenchant observations on institutions in ancient Indian society and his report on the Bihar-Bengal boundary dispute.
Born in a poor family in a village near the township of Barauni in Bihar's Begusarai district, Dr. Sharma commenced his vocation as a teacher at Ara's H.D. Jain College.
He had taught at Delhi University (1973–85) and the University of Toronto and was a senior fellow at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; University Grants Commission National Fellow (1958–81) and President of Indian History Congress in 1975. It was during the tenure of Professor R. S. Sharma as the Dean of Delhi University's History Department in the 1970s that major expansion of the department took place.The creation of most of the positions in the Department owes to Professor Sharma's efforts. He is the founding Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and a historian of international repute.
To date he has written 115 books published in fifteen languages. As head of the departments of History at Patna and Delhi University, as Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, as an important member of the National Commission of the History of Sciences in India and UNESCO Commission on the history of Central Asian Civilizations and of the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, and, above all, as a practising historian he has been influencing the major decisions relating to historical research in India. At the instance of Dr. Sachchidanand Sinha, when Professor Sharma was in Patna College, he worked as special officer on deputation in the Political Department in 1948 where he was deputed to prepare a report on the Bihar-Bengal Boundary Dispute which he prepared in right earnest. His pioneering effort resolved the border dispute forever which has been recorded by Dr. Sachchinand Sinha in a letter to Rajendra Prasad.
Dr. Sharma headed a stellar cast of historians like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Bipan Chandra and Aditya and Mridula Mukherjee, vociferously speaking out against the rampant “communalisation of Indian education,” especially over deletions made in NCERT history textbooks during the tenure of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA government between 1999 and 2004.
Dr. Sharma was the founding Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) in 1972 and he served as President of the Indian History Congress in 1975.
He was a recipient of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1989 and was earlier awarded the Campbell Memorial Gold Medal by the Bombay Asiatic Society in 1987.