OBITUARY – R. Champakalakshmi (1932–2024)

On 2 February 2024, a Tamil-speaking IT professional based in the United States, who produced and edited Wikipedia pages in his free time, called me over phone. He had read the obituary I had written in The Wire for historian Radha Champakalakshmi, who died on the night of 28 January, a few months before turning 92. The caller wanted to know what the deceased’s real name was, for he thought that a Tamil Brahmin woman born in 1932 is unlikely to have such a name. He wanted some ‘reliable’ information to edit the page on her.