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K. M. Panikkar
‐
Diplomat, educator, writer and editor
Other names
Kavalam Madhava Panikkar
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
OX1 1DP
United Kingdom
Place of death
Mysore, India
Date of time spent in Britain
1914–18, 1925–6, 1930
About
K. M. Panikkar was a Dixon Scholar at Christ Church, University of Oxford. He went to England in 1914 with the help of his elder brother, who was studying medicine in Edinburgh at the time. He became a member of the Oxford Majlis and was friends with the Suhrawardy brothers. Panikkar began to write articles whilst at Oxford, which he sent to periodicals in India. He also read a paper on 'The Problems of Greater India' to the East India Association.
Panikkar returned to India in 1918. His ship was hit by a German torpedo but the passengers escaped and were taken by another ship. He joined Aligarh Muslim University in 1919 to teach history and political science. He became the first editor of the Hindustan Times from 1924. Panikkar then decided to read for the Bar and returned to England in 1925 for a year. He enrolled in Middle Temple.
Panikkar then entered the Princely Service and served as Foreign Minister of Patiala and Bikaner. He participated in the Round Table Conferences as a representative of the Princes of India. He held various diplomatic posts for India after 1947.
E. M. Forster, Basanta Kumar Mallik, Bhupinder Singh (Maharaja of Patiala), Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Edward Thompson.
The Problems of Greater India (Madras: T. K. Swaminathan, 1916)
Educational Reconstruction in India (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1920)
Indian Nationalism: Its Origins, History, and Ideals (London: Faith Press, 1920)
Sri Harsha of Kanauj (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., 1922)
(with K. N. Haksar) Federal India (London: Martin Hopkinson, 1930)
Asia and Western Dominance (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954)
The Afro-Asian States and their Problems (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959)
A Survey of Indian History (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960)
An Autobiography (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977)
Banerjee, Tarasankar, Sardar K. M. Panikkar: The Profile of a Historian (Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 1977)
Copland, Ian, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Rahman, M. M., Encyclopaedia of Historiography (Delhi: Anmol, 2005)
Ramusack, Barbara N., The New Cambridge History of India, vol. 3: The Indian Princes and Their States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
MS Eng c.5308, correspondence, Edward Thompson Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Image credit
Kovalam Madhava Panikkar by Bassano Ltd, whole-plate glass negative, 22 September 1931, NPG x150109
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
