ABSTRACT
Damodar SarDesai, in over five decades of research and writing, has produced a steady stream of publications in two major fields. They are the history of India and the history of Southeast Asia. These fields have overlapped when SarDesai has written on Indian foreign relations with regard to Southeast Asia and when he has written about the Indian cultural and religious influence on Southeast Asia. His first publication of 1960, published even before he received his doctorate, was a co-authored comprehensive history of India, and he returned to that subject nearly half a century later with a book published in 2007 with a copyright date of 2008, India: The Definitive History,1 a volume as part of Westview Press’ ‘The Definitive History’ series. Like his India: The Definitive History, he also produced a major and comprehensive assessment of the history of an entire area with his Southeast Asia: Past and Present2 which he supplemented with a book of readings, Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings.3 He also produced a volume with the subtitle of ‘Past and Present’; that was the fourth edition of Vietnam: Past and Present.4 Accordingly, this appreciation of SarDesai’s œuvre takes its title from a term chosen by SarDesai to reflect his intense interest in history as well as contemporary events and politics, ‘Past and Present.’
