His daughter Sipra Sarkar was a professor of history at Jadavpur University, Calcutta and Sumit Sarkar was professor of history at Delhi University.
Through the 1920s he was involved in the administration of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, still under the active tutelage of its founder, Rabindranath Tagore.
He will be remembered as a long serving professor of the college who inspired generations of students from both science and arts streams.
Sarkar, whose work was influenced by his Marxist and Gramscian ideas, taught the history of modern Europe, particularly the development of constitutional history in Britain and political thought in Western Europe.
His Notes on Bengal Renaissance sparked an interest in nationalist Indian historiography.