K. A. Nilakanta Sastri

Assessment

Nilakanta Sastri is regarded as the greatest and most prolific among professional historians of South India. Tamil historian A R Venkatachalapathy regards him as "arguably the most distinguished historian of twentieth-century Tamil Nadu".

In 1915, Bengali historian Jadunath Sarkar, writing in an essay Confessions of a History Teacher in the Modern Review, regretted the lack of acclaimed historical works in vernacular languages and stressed that efforts should be made to write history books and teach history in vernacular languages. Nilakanta Sastri, who was then a young teacher in Thirunelveli, wrote a letter to the newspaper opposing Sarkar's suggestion by saying that "English serves me better as a medium of expression than Tamil – I mean in handling historical subjects. Perhaps the vernacular is not so well off in this part of the country as it should be". Sastri's comments evoked sharp criticism from the nationalist poet Subramanya Bharathi. According to Venkatachalapathy, Sastri's Tamil proficiency was not good and he relied on Tamil scholar S. Vaiyapuri Pillai for understanding Tamil literary works. Thus he was not able to analyse the changing meaning of words over time. Venkatachalapathy says, "In the professional historiography in Tamil Nadu practised in the age of K. A. Nilakanta Sastri there was rarely any interrogation of sources (except in terms of authenticity and chronology)."

Sastri's A History of South India is a recommended textbook for university students of Indian history. In a preface to the 2013 reprint, historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam describes the book thus

... a classic work, which retains its importance and has never quite been replaced. It shows the author's mastery over a huge set of sources, which placed him head and shoulders above other South Indian historians of his time

Historian Noboru Karashima, who edited A Concise History of South India (2014), describes Sastri's A History of South India as an excellent book, and praises Sastri's examination of sources of south Indian history as "thoroughgoing and meticulous". However, Karashima also states that being a Brahmin, Sastri was inclined to emphasize the role of "North Indian and Sanskrit culture in the development of south Indian society", which resulted in occasional bias. Karashima notes that Sastri's book remained the only authoritative scholarly book on the south Indian history for a number of reasons: nobody could match Sastri in bringing out a similar work; attacks from Tamil nationalists deterred historians from writing such a book; and new trends in history writing made composition of works on general history more difficult.

Ganapathy Subbiah (2007) of the Indian History Congress describes Sastri as "the greatest" of all South Indian historians. During Sastri's period, strong language-based movements had emerged in various regions of South India. Subbiah notes that Sastri attempted to portray South India as a distinct geocultural unit, and was keen to dissolve the growth of regionalism in South Indian historiography. Subbiah adds that Sastri's macro-level view of the South Indian history "revolved around Aryan-Dravidian syndrome", and this view changed with his age: in his 20s, Sastri asserted the existence of "an independent Tamil culture which flourished for centuries before it was touched by extraneous influences"; a few years later, he wrote that the culture of the Sangam period was a composite of two distinct "Tamilian and Aryan" cultures; and a decade later, he declared that "Sanskrit is the pivot of our whole culture, and [...] Tamil culture is no exception to this rule". According to Subbiah, Sastri's views should be analyzed in the context of the rise of the anti-Brahmin Dravida Nadu movement in the mid-20th century: his assertions overemphasizing the importance of Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit influence in south Indian history can be seen as "his angry and desperate response" against the Dravida Nadu secessionists.