India, May 27 -- The last time I met Shereen Ratnagar, I asked her about the political clamour surrounding India's first Prime Minister. She glanced at the cello-taped image of Jawaharlal Nehru fixed to her door and offered a feisty response. "Charlatanism and an unceasing ability to chatter cannot be mistaken for intellect," she declared. Such opposition to entrenched power, whether political or academic, was the hallmark of one of India's most distinguished archaeologists who died in Mumbai on Monday aged 82.

Ratnagar studied at Mumbai's JB Petit High School and at Deccan College in Pune where Professor Hasmukh Dhirajlal Sankalia, the founding father of modern Indian archaeology and her mentor, insisted she pursue rigorous scientific t...