One of the doyens of modern cultural and social history, K.N. Panikkar passed away at Thiruvananthapuram at the age of 89 years. His long and accomplished life is an example of what role a teacher and a public intellectual can play in these challenging times. K.N. Panikkar was born on April 26, 1936 at Guruvayur, Kerala and completed his graduation from Victoria College, Palakkad, and completed his post-graduation and PhD at Rajasthan University. He grew up in a milieu when peasant resistance against colonialism and the communist movement was gathering momentum. The ideas and experience of these movements influenced his life and writings to a significant extent. But, perhaps more than anything else, it brought out the importance of the dynamic and complementary relationship between teaching, research and activism. I witnessed this as a student of the Centre for Historical Studies (CHS), JNU, which Panikkar had joined as an associate professor in 1973. The period of late 1980s, when we enrolled for the postgraduate programme in Modern History, was a turbulent and confusing time. The crisis and eventually the fall of the Soviet Union, and the aggressive revival of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party (RSS-BJP), particularly, with L.K. Advani’s rath yatra and the movement for Ram Temple in Ayodhya. For radical and left-leaning student-activists, the situation seemed uncertain and hopeless. It was in this situation that Panikkar’s classes on ‘Intellectual History of Modern India’ were an eye opener for two reasons: first they taught us that though Marxism may have originated in Europe and the West, its development and radical edge came from the intellectual legacies of the anti-colonial movements of the South. This was the first time that budding historians were introduced to Amilcar Cabral’s Unity and Struggle and other writings from Africa and South America. In this way his perspective linked the intellectual history of India to the anti-imperialist movements of what we now know as the Global South. Second, the classes were not only academic, but a lesson on how Marxism evolves through praxis and not through teaching or research which is distant from its own context. Third, the choice of readings was also the unassuming manner in which the importance of the politics of knowledge was brought home to students. He emphasised that it was important to consider universities and history writing as a site of struggle. The ideological position from which this struggle is undertaken influences whether you stand with or against oppressed masses. These lessons may have been difficult to comprehend for budding students but have framed the perspective of the scholarship and activism of many, including me, who were taught by Panikkar.It is important to recognise that Panikkar’s perspective on teaching and the politics of research also imbued his persona as a public intellectual. During the Ram Temple movement of the 1980s, the RSS-BJP brought out a pamphlet that rewrote the history of Ayodhya and tried to instigate communal polarisation against the Babri Masjid. The students of CHS were involved with the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan (SVA), which was countering this movement and urged the department to take a stand. And it was teachers like Panikkar, Romila Thapar, Shireen Ratnagar and Neeladri Bhattacharya, among others who supported this active participation of the students. Eventually the CHS brought out a pamphlet that was countered by the RSS-BJP ideologues in all national newspapers. It was clear that the sharp counter to RSS-BJP had ruffled the right-wing and by example, given the courage to many scholars to become active in such initiatives. The political perspective of progressive politics, secularism and democratic values was the core of Panikkar’s role in building educational institutions and influencing political movements. In the aftermath of the martyrdom of Safdar Hashmi, Panikkar became actively associated with the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) in the early 1990s, and later, became a founding trustee of ANHAD. In line with his understanding of the dialectic between scholarship and activism, Panikkar sharpened his attacks on impending fascism and rightwing politics in this period. Notably, his books Before the Night Falls: Forebodings of Fascism in India and An Agenda for Cultural Action are an honest introspection of the weaknesses of the Left and secular movement and the positive agenda that they should adopt to counter the RSS-BJP. Many of his writings were completed in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the advent of the BJP-led governments at the Centre. They served as a reminder that teachers, scholars and intellectuals should have the courage to speak out and participate in movements that are fighting to defend the pluralistic culture of the nation.The scholarly contributions of Panikkar as a renowned historian and educationist are too numerous to recount in this short article. However, I would like to emphasise that for fearless intellectuals like Panikkar and his contemporaries (some still active), anti-imperialist scholarship and intellectual activism were co-evolving together. In difficult times, the legacy of these organic intellectuals offers us hope and courage to carry the fight forward. Panikkar you will be sorely missed for your intellectual mentorship and courage. Archana Prasad is professor in the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University.