The Administrator, the Board of Professors and the entire Collège de France community are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Gérard Fussman, Honorary Professor at the Collège de France and holder of the History of the Indian World Chair from 1984 to 2011. They pay tribute to a professor who, during the twenty-seven years he held the chair, profoundly renewed his discipline. With particular reference to the centuries that stretched from Alexander's invasion to the emergence of the Gupta dynasty, he challenged the historical syntheses on which we had been living since the post-war period, by studying at first hand the considerable epigraphic and archaeological material that was constantly emerging, both in North India and Pakistan, and in the territories then marked by the influence of Indian civilization (Afghanistan, ex-Soviet republics). In contrast to a contemporary historiography all too often contaminated by nationalist ideologies and religious bias, he has brought to bear the great tradition of humanism and objectivity of French Indianism.
Collège de France
