Prof Emeritus Vishwa Nath Datta dead at 94

Renowned historian Vishwa Nath Dutt, Professor Emeritus, Kurukshetra University, and former President of the Indian History Congress, died at his residence on Monday.

Dutta was a visiting professor at several universities including Moscow, Leningrad, and Berlin, and was a resident fellow at the College of Physitium, Cambridge. Born in an illustrious family in Amritsar in 1926, he was the son of a prominent businessman and famous Urdu-Persian poet and Padma Shri awardee Brahma Nath Datta ‘Kasir’.

Several academicians from the Kurukshetra University, including Vice-Chancellor, Som Nath Sachdeva and Professor Bhim S Dahiya mourned the demise of the distinguished historian.

Sachdeva said Datta had an illustrious career as an outstanding academic and with his death the Kurukshetra University has lost a guiding figure.

Vishwa Nath Datta studied at Government College in Lahore, at Lucknow University and Cambridge University in the UK.

Author of several pioneering books on modern India, his most notable works include on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, Amritsar: Past and Present, and a biography of freedom fighter Madan Lal Dhingra.

Datta is survived by his wife and three daughters. PTI CORR SUN VSD NSD NSD