THE immense popularity of journalist-author-activist Mr. Tarek Fatah in India was obviously because of his lifelong mission of showing Pakistan the mirror and asking it to correct its terribly twisted narrative of history and help create harmony in the South Asian neighbourhood. In his passing away at 73 in Canada following a long battle with cancer, thus, marks a moment of sadness that a voice of sanity is gone, and that the rational narrative of correct history has one votary less. For, Mr. Tarek Fatah was a one-man institution that earned a fantastic fan-following across the world because of his courageous stand against the current idea of Pakistan.

There may not be many personalities internationally at that height to keep telling that India has been a land of equal opportunity to everybody beyond religion, caste, creed and that carving out of Pakistan is not a practical and good idea. Mr. Tarek Fatah was one of such persons who did not mince words while telling the truth to Pakistan in no uncertain terms. For that display of consistent courage, he suffered in Pakistan decades ago, and felt compelled to move out -- finally to Canada that became his base thereafter. He never went back to Pakistan, no matter the requests to that effect from many of his admirers.

Mr. Tarek Fatah called himself a son of India, and kept underlining the importance of being originally an Indian, no matter his birth in Karachi in Pakistan in 1949. He was a Punjabi and a proud one at that, he said of himself. And his biggest grief was that Pakistan rejected its Indian history and linked itself to the history of Middle-Eastern cultures. He also rued the fact that Pakistan made every effort to erase the fact that before its formation, it was a part of India that has an ancient civilisation and a distinctive cultural identity. This mad effort would one day be the very reason for Pakistan’s destruction, Mr. Fatah often said, joining the few intellectuals with Pakistani background to issue the warning. That Pakistan had no time and inclination to listen to such voices of sanity proved to be its own undoing. No matter the sound rejection by Pakistan, Mr. Tarek Fatah -- and also some others -- did not stop speaking up truth. This explains the tweet his daughter Natasha posted following his death: “Lion of Punjab. Son of Hindustan. Lover of Canada. Speaker of truth.Fighter for justice. Voice of the downtrodden, underdogs and the oppressed ...”

It was obvious -- and quite in tune with Pakistan’s nature -- that the country he finally quit never respected him. In India, however, he was a people’s darling, often appearing on media shows with a rare candour and stated his view-point without mincing words. Many Muslims asked him pointed questions, raised issues with his stand and often derided him. But Mr. Tarek Fatah never worried about all that. He was certainly a follower and believer of Islam, but did not appreciate the manner in which many Muslims conducted their lives completely out of tune with the positive reality of India. No matter the acrimony on television debates, Mr. Tarek Fatah always remained an unabashed upholder of truth of India.

Professionally, he was a journalist-turned author, and wrote books that carried the stamp of his beliefs -- candid and straight-forward. That earned him a truly international fan-following as an intellectual of rare merit. Mr. Tarek Fatah’s study of history was of a very high order and he always presented a point of view that made even his detractors sit up and take notice. With his demise, a genuine intellectual whose range of thinking went beyond ideology has been lost to time.