Veteran journalist, academic and author in English and Kannada, M.S Prabhakara, has passed away at his residence in Karnataka’s Kolar on Thursday. He was 87.

Prabhakara had served as correspondent for The Hindu for many decades in Assam and South Africa.

Born in Kolar in 1936, he spent nearly three decades in Assam. He first worked as a teacher in Gauhati University and later as a correspondent of The Hindu in South Africa.

In 1975, he resigned from Gauhati University and joined 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 moved to Johannesburg in June 1994 and returned to Guwahati in April 2002. He retired a month later.

Prabhakara’s noted novel is Kuduremotte (1971), which got him the Karnataka Sahitya Academy award and was made into a film by G.V. Iyer.

He later published the Assamese version of the novel with the title Ghorar Dima.

Prabhakara was considered an expert on the Northeast, who extensively highlighted insurgency and ethnic problems of the region through his writings.

As per his wishes, his body has been donated to MS Ramaiah Memorial Hospital.