Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Said became stateless in childhood after a ghastly colonial machination created the Jewish state in the land of Palestine in 1948 by dispossessing a whole nation. The sordid childhood memory kept him glued to the politics of his nation, making him a member of the Palestinian National Congress (PNC) in 1977.

Said had the intellectual gift to realise, perhaps during his interactions as a student in the US, how the misperception and stereotype about the Oriental people blurred the rationality of Western scholars and policy-makers. The backdrop to his most famous literary work, the Orientalism (1978), was coloured much by such a perception as he strove to expose the nexus between popular enlightenment and colonialism in the Western thoughts and discourses.

Said believed that colonialism was the most unfortunate thing to have happened to the people of the Orient and to their faith, culture and living. While this was reflected in his writings and utterances, seldom did he allow his emotions to spice up his academic and scholarly discourses. This lay at the centre of his huge universal popularity.

He relentlessly opposed Israeli brutality against his people, only to incur the wrath of the influential pro-Israeli lobby in the US. Undeterred, he kept opposing every aspects of Israel's human rights violations and opposed US policies toward Palestine.

The Jewish lobby tried to corner him in the 1980s, but he squarely neutralised his enemies in the 'Politics of Dispossession' (1994), the second book on the plight of his people. This treatise acknowledged the reality of the Jewish persecution under the Nazis, but argued against using that history as a rationale to make the Palestinians dispossessed. Ever since, he advocated a two- nation solution for the two distinct peoples of historic Palestine.

His resignation from the PNC in 1991 demonstrated the magnitude of frustration that this global scholar endured in silence. 'Culture and Imperialism' (1993), was his penultimate book and it contained an incisive analysis of the colonial mindset that stood as a stumbling block to subduing liberation struggles around the world. Said then emitted a strong message in the 'Out of Place' that displacement and dispossession of a people is the worst form of rights violation.

He was hurt more than many Americans after the 9/11 attacks on the US. But that was a time when he chose to immerse his pent-up emotions in the tune of music; busying himself with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he founded in 1999. His death leaves the Orient in a state of shock. He was rare and someone hard to replace.