Guwahati: M.S. Prabhakara, a veteran journalist, academic, and author of works in English and Kannada breathed his last at the age of 87 on Thursday at his residence in Kolar of Karnataka.
Prabhakara worked as a reporter for The Hindu in South Africa and Assam for many years.
He was born in Kolar in 1936 and lived in Assam for almost 30 years. He started out as a teacher at Gauhati University before becoming a South African reporter for The Hindu.
He left Gauhati University in 1975 and started working for Economic and Political Weekly. He returned to Guwahati in June 1983 as the Special Correspondent of The Hindu and, later, also Frontline, covering developments in Assam and Northeast as a whole.
He left Guwahati in June 1994 to travel to Johannesburg, and he came back in April 2002. He left his job a month later.
Kuduremotte (1971), which won Prabhakara the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award and was adapted into a movie by G.V. Iyer, is one of the author’s most well-known works.
Later, he released the book in Assamese under the name Ghorar Dima.
Prabhakara was regarded as an authority on the Northeast and wrote extensively about the region’s ethnic unrest and insurgent issues.
His body has been sent to MS Ramaiah Memorial Hospital in accordance with his desires.