Dharma Kumar (1928 – 19 October 2001) was an Indian economic historian, noted for her work on the agrarian history of India. Her Ph.D at Cambridge on the agrarian history of South India was awarded the Ellen MacArthur Prize, and was published as Land and Caste in South India (Cambridge University Press, 1965).She is noted for the position that many of the social structures of agrarian India, particularly the large class of landless labourers pre-dated the British era. This challenged the earlier view that the class of agricultural labourers had been formed as a result of British exploitation in the nineteenth century.
From Wikipedia
“Instead of regarding India as a failed or deformed nation-state we should see it as a new political form, perhaps even as a forerunner of the future. We are in some ways where Europe wants to be, but we have a tremendous job of reform, of repairing our damaged institutions, and of inventing new ones”
