Aroon Tikekar, a quiet but powerful voice to be heard no more

A few days before he passed away on January 19, scholar, editor, historian, columnist and author, Aroon Tikekar, addressed a gathering of journalists in Thane. In his speech, the septuagenarian took a hard look at contemporary journalistic practices. For a generation hopelessly dependent on Google and Wikipedia for information, Tikekar belonged to a different world. A world where books were the chief source of knowledge and scholarship had to be earned the hard way. Tikekar strayed into journalism, and scripted a long, illustrious career as a fearless voice opposing regressive forces of identity politics. He had worked with all the frontline Marathi dailies, his rise in the profession coinciding with the Shiv Sena-BJP coming to power in Maharashtra for the first time. A true liberal, Tikekar took on the saffron forces. What distinguished his writing was subtlety, clarity of thought and objectivity. He would never go overboard but yet pack enough punch to rile up the reactionaries. From the time Balasaheb Thackeray saw himself as a roaring tiger in Maharashtra politics, and later when Raj Thackeray borrowed his uncle’s confrontational politics to emerge as a leader of the Marathi manoos, Tikekar had been unsparing in his criticism for both. So much so that there was a phase in his career where he had to live under police protection.

To understand Tikekar’s vision and progressive outlook, one needs to trace his roots. Born into a family of littérateurs and journalists in Solapur, he grew up with an academic bent of mind. Before taking up journalism, he was first teaching in a college and later joined the US Library of Congress in New Delhi. His personal library, a huge collection of rare books on British India and the Bombay Presidency, was a matter of immense pride for him.

Tikekar is regarded as a foremost authority on the socio-political-cultural history of Maharashtra in 17th-18th-19th centuries. He wrote in both English and Marathi and had authored 20 books, seminal among them being Ranade: The Renaissance Man, The Kincaids, which was his PhD thesis on two generations of a British family in the Indian Civil Service, and The Cloisters Pale: A Biography of the University of Mumbai. His concern about the decay of what was once a vibrant, multi-cultural metropolis found articulation in Mumbai De-intellectualised: Rise and Decline of a Culture of Thinking. The compilations of his columns in the Marathi daily Loksatta, where he had worked as an editor between 1992 and 2002, came out in two books, Taratamya and Jana-Mana. His critics might have disagreed with his views, but they could never disregard his erudition. People who had worked with him in the newsroom recount fondly how the editorial meetings he chaired turned into engaging lessons in history and politics. 

Tikekar’s other significant contribution was during his stint as the President of Asiatic Society. He had been the principal force behind the preservation and conservation of old and rare books. In the six years he was at the helm of the Society, Tikekar emphasised upon the need for scholarly research and led the way by initiating several interesting projects.

Throughout his life, he had been a guiding force and a mentor to his colleagues and students. He touched lives in ways that seem impossible now. Journalism is going through a trough, and a man like Tikekar would have been invaluable in these trying times. The staid, incurious and almost mechanical life of a scribe would have benefited from his sagacity and brilliance. People would remember him as a scholar and a pucca Englishman who was mighty proud of his secular credentials. In Tikekar’s death we have lost a towering intellectual. 

The author is the Editor-in-chief of dna and Zee24Taas