Overview
- He died Wednesday evening in Pune; public homage is at the Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal on Thursday morning with a funeral at Vaikunth crematorium, and reports differ on whether he was 77 or 78.
- An authority on Maratha history, he authored major studies including a 1,000‑page English volume on Shivaji and a 2,500‑page Marathi treatise that together cited nearly 7,000 sources.
- He paired command of Persian, Modi script, French, German and English with rigorous archival method to separate documented history from folklore.
- He reported as a war correspondent during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, spending time with Mukti Bahini fighters and interviewing Indian Army officers.
- He left large ongoing projects, including a nearly 5,000‑page Second World War manuscript nearing publication, and drew tributes from scholars and public figures such as Uday Kulkarni and Raj Thackeray.