When Amar Farooqui started his career as a lecturer in history at Hansraj College in 1983, the Indian historical firmament was making sense of the jolts created by the Subaltern Studies Collective, which sought to focus on history as a study of the people rather than the elite. Farooqui had just completed his MPhil in History at Delhi University the previous year and would remain steadfast in his commitment to a pursuit of researching and teaching history that was not subservient to any pre-defined endpoint. His conviction and commitment to a communist politics and worldview and history writing free of...