Man who moved mountains for tigers dies at 73

The mainstream discovered Valmik Thapar courtesy a BBC documentary on tigers that provided many people with their first sight of a giant, bearded man, at home in the wild, and a passionate spokesperson for tigers.

- Jayashree Nandi

The mainstream discovered Valmik Thapar courtesy a BBC documentary on tigers that provided many people with their first sight of a giant, bearded man, at home in the wild, and a passionate spokesperson for tigers.

That was in 1997, and by then, Thapar had been working on tiger conservation for over two decades.

He continued to do so till Saturday morning, when he died at his residence in Delhi at the age of 73. Thapar was diagnosed with cancer last year. Thapar is best known for his long and deep association with the legendary Fateh Singh Rathore, his work in Ranthambore, his books (he wrote over 30), and his philosophy of tiger conservation, which was different from that of several others. "My fight was always for inviolate spaces," he wrote in one of his books, summing up an approach to conservation that many are now realising is probably the only way of protecting not just tigers, but all wild flora and fauna.

Thapar was born into a well-connected family of intellectuals in Mumbai in 1952. His father, Romesh Thapar, was the founder of Seminar magazine, and associated with the CPI(M), although he (Romesh Thapar) and his wife Raj were close to Indira Gandhi in the period before the Emergency. His sister, Malavika Singh, ran Seminar until the magazine paused publication in 2023.

His brother-in-law (Malavika Singh's husband), Tejbir Singh, is the nephew of writer and journalist Kushwant Singh. Historian Romila Thapar is his aunt. And he is married to Sanjana Kapoor, the daughter of actors Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal.