K M Panikkar: The visionary who shaped India's diplomatic and political landscape

K M Panikkar’s greatest contribution is his mind, says Narayani Basu, leaning into the question of how best to define the subject of her latest biography A Man for All Seasons. “And as for his most admirable qualities, I’d say they are his willingness to evolve and his openness to change.”

Independent India’s first and arguably most controversial ambassador to China, a member of the states’ reogranisation committee, and the founder of Hindustan Times, to list just a few positions, Panikkar was India’s go-to man for all reasons thanks to his undeniable influence on India and it’s politics extending across both World Wars, the British Raj and the Constituent Assembly.

“A thinker, he constantly probed, questioned, and put forward ideas about India’s identity, statecraft, and future. Ideas endure, and that is his true legacy,” says Narayani, whose recently published book on KM Panikkar is receiving rave reviews.

It was an ambitious undertaking, even for a historian and author like her, already celebrated for her biography of V.P. Menon. In Panikkar, she encountered a figure whose career spanned so many roles — lawyer, journalist, editor, historian, advisor to princes, architect of maritime policy, ambassador, poet — that even his friends called him “one of India’s impossible men.”

Writing on his life, the New Delhi-based author admits, was one of her most complex projects yet. “Sometimes I couldn’t keep up with him,” she laughs. “His mind was running constantly, and he was everywhere — roaming the world, straddling politics, law, diplomacy, and literature. Situating him against not just a changing India, but a rapidly changing world, was the hardest part.”

To that end, Narayani mined Panikkar’s vast writings, unearthing archives from India to England, Paris to China, Israel to the UN, and layering it all with conversations with his family to craft a portrait that crackles and pops with life, and the turbulent times that he lived and worked in.

What emerges is not just Panikkar, one of the most elusive and intriguing of India’s architects, but a charged, and constantly shifting world that he inhabited. From Nehru, Gandhi and Patel to Zhou Enlai, Mao and Nasser, A Man for All Seasons brims with power, drama and intrigue. It is at once the sweeping saga of a young man who, unbeknownst to himself, was carving a niche in the annals of Indian, and without doubt, world history. It is the story of a man too formidable to be forgotten, then or now.

The seed for this biography was planted in the most fitting of ways, through curiosity. Narayani was working as a policy analyst at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, specialising in Chinese foreign policy, where, inevitably, Panikkar cropped up in her research.

Later, while studying V.P. Menon, she ‘met’ him again, this time in his role as Secretary of the Chamber of Princes (a panel for rulers of Indian princely states to share their views with the British colonial government), and Diwan of Bikaner. “You could see both men intersecting in the years leading up to Partition,” she recalls. “That made me curious. I already knew about his role in China, but I wanted to know what he was doing in the Chamber of Princes. How did he get from there to China? Those questions pulled me down a rabbit hole, and I didn’t emerge until this book was written.”

That would take six years. The early months of the pandemic, when libraries and archives were shut, became crucial. “I relied heavily on digitised resources, especially the National Digital Library of India, which has preserved many old journals,” she says.

His memoir provided her with a wealth of information and a foundation to start her work. But Narayani quickly realised it left many silences. “Filling those gaps became some of my favourite parts of the book.”

So why bring Panikkar back into the public eye in 2025? “I think he’s incredibly relevant,” Narayani insists. “My area of interest has always been people working behind the scenes of the independence movement and the transfer of power. Nation-building wasn’t just about stirring speeches or dramatic moments. It was painstaking, invisible work that included drafting, negotiating, reimagining. Panikkar embodied that.”

She rattles off his many roles: historian, lawyer, editor, advocate of Federation long before independence, architect of India’s maritime policy, ambassador, prolific writer in Malayalam and English, even a poet. “His career mirrors the evolution of India itself in those crucial decades,” she notes. “What makes him relevant today is his constant engagement with the question: What does it mean to be Indian? He wrestled with it from his college days in 1914, through both World Wars, decolonisation, and the Cold War. He never stopped asking how India should adapt… and that kind of thinking is still vital.”

An important facet of Panikkar was that he was not a man trapped by ideology. Indeed, one of his most admirable qualities was his willingness to evolve. “His was a mind that never stopped evolving. He was open to change, and he lived in a world that encouraged debate and disagreement without shutting people down.”

His disagreements with Nehru are a case in point. “He often disagreed with Nehru, but those disagreements were rooted in respect and intellectual engagement. People didn’t cancel each other out then. There was space to argue, adapt, and evolve. That’s something we could learn from today,” says the author.

Tracing that evolution was both a challenge and a delight, she says, pointing out that Panikkar kept returning to the same themes of history, nationalism, and diplomacy but with fresh perspectives shaped by India’s shifting realities. “That’s what made him so fascinating. He didn’t hold on stubbornly to one moment or one idea. He moved with the times.”

Despite his many contributions, how come Panikkar remains a marginal figure in popular history? I ask her.

“Sometimes history just moves too fast,” says the historian and foreign policy analyst. Specialists in constitutional law or foreign policy may remember him, but the larger narrative tends to reduce the independence movement to a handful of iconic faces. “The sweep of Indian history is so vast that many contributors fade into the background.”

Yet Panikkar, she argues, had a highly visible role, especially with the princely states. From the mid-1920s onwards, he was deeply involved in bringing them into what he believed should be a modern Indian Union. “We often think of the princely states only in terms of their integration post-independence, forgetting the decades of groundwork that preceded it. Panikkar was central to that effort.”

Panikkar’s relationship with nationalism and Indian identity was quite complex. Did he find it difficult to reconcile his princely affiliations and Western education with the ethos of a new India difficult? I ask.

“He wrestled with it, especially when young,” Basu agrees. His early writings dismissed the princely states as decadent, but over time he recognised that no Indian Union could be built without them. “It was an evolution from dismissal to inclusion.”

For him, nationalism was grounded in Hinduism, but in a uniquely inclusive way. He described Hinduism’s “generous vagueness” as a framework that allowed for multiple religions, languages, and communities. “Unlike the harder, more exclusivist ideologies emerging at the time, his vision of nationalism was always inclusive, plural, and fluid.”

In today’s polarised climate, Narayani believes, that perspective feels refreshing. “His idea of nationalism was never supremacist, never militant. It was rooted in plurality. That set him apart.”

Biographies are as much about their times as their subjects. What does Panikkar’s story reveal about the evolution of Indian diplomacy? “A lot,” she says. “His idea of diplomacy still holds true. He was always projecting what a future India should look like.”

In the 1940s, while India was still a colony, Panikkar was already formulating an independent maritime policy. He argued that India needed to reassert its oceanic power, drawing lessons from Japan’s Pacific advances. He even proposed forward bases in Sri Lanka, Yemen, and Singapore, ideas that sound remarkably like the regional alliances of today.

“He believed India should lead Southeast Asia, not only because of history but also because of its geostrategic advantages. He was capable of looking forward while learning from the present, and that’s something our diplomacy could use more of today.”

Of course, he was not infallible. “He made mistakes, particularly in China. He was human. But that doesn’t diminish his foresight. If anything, it makes him more relatable.”

Even as you finish the 800-odd page (including some 200 pages of notes) biography what emerges most vividly from Narayani’s writing is a portrait of courage, the courage to speak truth to power.

The States Reorganization Commission is a case in point. Even as Nehru opposed reorganising states on linguistic lines, Panikkar co-authored a report supporting it because he believed it was right for the country. “He wasn’t swayed by authority, even when it came from Nehru himself,” Basu points out.

That independence of thought is what she believes we could emulate. “Biographies [of historical figures] remind us that it’s important to keep thinking about your country,” Narayani says. “To keep asking where it is going and what it should become. Panikkar never stopped doing that. That’s the lesson I hope readers take away, not to get stuck in one moment or ideology, but to evolve with the times. Just as he did.”