In 1928 he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under
Surendranath Dasgupta (1885-1952), a Cambridge educated Bengali,
professor at the University of Calcutta
He returned to Bucharest in 1932 and successfully submitted his
analysis of Yoga as his doctoral thesis at the Philosophy department in
1933
After the Second World War, during which he served with the Romanian
delegation in the UK and Portugal, Eliade was unable to return to the
newly communist Romania because of his connection with the right-wing
Eugène Ionesco.
In 1958 he was invited to assume the chair of the History of Religions
department in Chicago. There he stayed until his death on 22 April
1986, publishing extensively and writing largely unpublished
fiction.
Since the 1970s he has been criticized for his pre-war sympathies for the Iron Guard, a far right, antisemitic and fascist political organization that carried out brutal pogroms during WWII in Romania.