Professor Emeritus Damodar SarDesai passes away

Professor Emeritus Damodar SarDesai passed away peacefully in his sleep on Jan 16 following a fight with cancer. He is survived by his wife Bhanu and two daughters Dr. Vandana SarDesai and Dr Archana Bindra, his son-in-law Sanjay Bindra and grandson Arnav Bindra. A well known figure in SoCal’s Indian-American community to which he contributed in many ways, SarDesai  impacted the  life of community members, his colleagues in the academic world and hundreds of students whom  he mentored and passed on his immense knowledge during his decades long innings in the Department of History at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Among SarDesai’s stellar achievements was the Sardar Patel Award . He was instrumental in raising a quarter million dollars in 1999 to endow the Sardar Patel Award given by the UCLA Centre for India and South Asia to the best doctoral dissertation on any aspect of modern India awarded at any university in the U S.. At the end of his career and due largely to his active participation in the South Asian community in Southern California, SarDesai was responsible for bringing the ‘Navin and Pratima Doshi Professor of Pre-Modern Indian History’ chair to the department when the donors strongly urged him to inaugurate the named chair. He did so between 1998 and 2001 before recruiting and passing on the chair to the renowned scholar, Sanjay Subrahamanyam.