Sankarshan Thakur (1962–2025), a veteran journalist and long-time columnist at The Telegraph, was renowned for his incisive political reporting, from Kashmir to Bihar, and for books that became definitive texts on Indian politics.
Known for blending literary finesse with sharp political insight, he used his celebrated Lazy Eye column to weave art, poetry, and metaphor into journalism—remaining steadfast in his belief that words must always speak truth to power.
Sankarshan Thakur (1962-2025) was one of India’s most incisive journalistic voices, wielding his pen with both precision and lyrical grace. A long-time editor and columnist at The Telegraph, he began his career as a journalist for the Sunday magazine. He went on to hold senior editorial roles at Tehelka and The Indian Express. Skilled at ground reporting, Thakur covered conflict zones and major political churnings, sharing dispatches with readers from Kashmir, Kathmandu and Bihar.
His book on Bihar’s influential political figures, such as Single Man and The Brothers Bihari, are considered definitive works on contemporary Indian politics. A lover of literature and art, he was a painter himself and took pride in his sartorial style, sporting a beloved black coat, an owl brooch, and an upturned collar—his signature fashion statement in the newsroom and outside it. Since the start, Thakur steered his journalistic course with the abiding belief that words are powerful tools to speak truth to power. Neither the dictates of the powers-that-be nor the changing winds of politics in the country ever made him deviate from that course.
Tehzeeb shadowed Sankarshan like an inheritance. Virasat ki tarah. The idea that intellectual refinement and grassroot politics can cohabit and be brutally honest while speaking truth to power was his hallmark. Underplayed sharpness, whether reporting on Gujarat 2002 or from the more recent streets of Bihar, his pen never lost the precise incision that divides a successful cataract from certain blindness.
All done with directness, courtesy and humour. Always the insight. The peeling to the core of the injustice being reported. No invective of the kind that the tu tu main main of current-day ‘abusives’ also known as ‘politicians’ indulge in.
A journalism that was still a calling and not a clever ploy to wield power. A questioning that looked you in the eye and did not indulge in game playing.
Nowhere is this more evident then, the column he made his own as the Lazy Eye for The Telegraph. Art, poetry, subtle metaphors; innuendos using wit and humour; fables of a political kind, music, drama, even conjuring historical nuances to hit home the truth of contemporary Indian politics as it unfolds.
I remember when we first met through a shy and ever polite connection made by his Sunday pages colleague, the sensitive Upala, over tea at Seagull and he said would you consider reading my collected Lazy Eye pieces and mull the possibility of publishing them. I said I would indeed read them but will first say ‘yes’ to putting them between the covers of a Seagull book.
That’s all it took for him to entrust his words to us.
Who was to know that it in less than seven months it would become a race against chemo sessions and possible surgeries and that damned devil of a task master: Time.
I leave you with this last message from him on receiving the page proofs and the cover design:
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What a gift you and Sunandini have dropped on me! This is joy. That pure thing called joy. Warm regards.
Sankarshan
