OBITUARY : Remembering Eric Hobsbawm and His Age

A Journey from Popular Front to ‘New Labour’

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was a renowned historian of his age. He was born in the year of the Russian Revolution, witnessed Hitler’s rise to power and the spread of fascism across Europe, served in World War II, and went on to join the academia which was beginning to reel under the pressures of a cold war-induced anti-communist mood and paranoia. Without a doubt, in many ways Hobsbawm was a product of his times. His grand life-span and intellectual moorings map much of the international working class movement’s own chequered path of development. On the sad occasion of his demise, it is perhaps best to remember not just the individual and his achievements (for this would possibly ensnare us in a form of historical recollection that Hobsbawm himself spent a considerable time challenging), but to use the moment to introspect about the legacy (the age) he represented.