Introduction

Stephen Jay Gould has argued that “the truly awesome intellectuals” have woven variegated tapestries of comprehensive coverage in their works. Yet, he also adds a caution: “In our harried world of sound bites and photo ops, we focus on anecdote rather than structure.”2 KM Panikkar, India’s foremost geopolitical thinker since Independence, is indeed one such “awesome intellectual.” He had played a formative role in redirecting the continental gaze of India’s strategic elites towards the Indian Ocean from a few years before freedom in 1947. While the re-appearance of the logic of sea power in contemporary geopolitics has rekindled interest in Panikkar’s writings, his geopolitical reflections have not been subjected to a holistic review.

Notwithstanding the enduring popularity of Panikkar’s best known work, India and the Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History, what has remained largely unnoticed is that there exist two editions of this book.3 The second edition, published in 1951, is remarkably different from the first (1945) edition. While the broad hypothesis about the preponderant influence of the sea in shaping India’s destiny remains unchanged, both editions significantly diverge on the assessment of India’s geopolitical environment and strategic prescriptions for India’s sea power.

For example, in the first edition of India and the Indian Ocean, Panikkar had argued that “only in co-operation with Britain is oceanic defence based on India possible in the circumstances of today.” Since the development of requisite naval power for India would take “another half a century at least,” the safety of the Indian Ocean could be assured, “only on the basis of a regional organisation comprising of Britain, India, South Africa and Australia.”4 During the six-year interregnum between the two editions, Panikkar reassessed Indian Ocean geopolitics and in the second edition, he argued that “the defence of India’s shores cannot be left any longer to the British Navy.” 5

The differences in the two editions of India and The Indian Ocean are not an isolated example of his evolving geopolitical perceptions and the resultant shift in the strategic policy prescriptions. A review of his geopolitical writings, spanning over four decades, highlights numerous shifts in his geopolitical perceptions and geostrategic policy advice. Establishing a coherent sense of the whole, or even parts of the whole is, indeed, a complex task.

Alan Henrikson has provided a concept of “mental maps” to explain how geopolitical actors (statesmen and soldiers) see, interpret and act within their political and strategic surroundings.6 He argues that just like the prisoners in the allegorical Plato’s cave knew their world through shadows, statesmen understand their world as

imagined and perceived reality, which may not be the way the world really is. In order to navigate their way through this uncertainty, they must rely on their geopolitical ‘mental maps.’ The maps are a composite of past experiences, present observations and future expectations. These are as much a temporal cross-section as a spatial one that needs to align with the changing underlays of the geopolitical environment. In other words, a mental map means an ordered, but continually adapting structure of the mind.

This paper is organised in three parts and attempts to decipher and contextualise Panikkar’s evolving geopolitical mental maps through a review of his works on geopolitics. The first part explores Panikkar’s early works to discern his formative geopolitical ideas and influences. The second part provides an overview of Panikkar’s geopolitical blueprint before India’s Independence. The third section examines Panikkar’s geopolitical writings post-1947 and highlights key shifts in his geopolitical prescriptions.

Geopolitical Ideas and Influences

Panikkar’s “idea of India” and the conception of this idea in the consolidated categories of ‘nation,’ ‘national identity’ and India’s future relation with ‘the empire’ were shaped by his experiences in his student years at Oxford during First World War from 1914 to 1918.7 His geopolitical perceptions were influenced not only by the academic moulding in history at Oxford, but also by the political discourses surrounding India’s national movements and geopolitics of what was then called the Great War.

A precocious intellectual, he regularly wrote for nationalist publications such as The Indian Review, The Modern Review and The Commonwealth. Even in his early writings, Panikkar’s “idea of India” reflected multiple complexities and his astute approaches are evident. In his efforts to grapple with Indian peculiarities, his nuanced arguments sometimes seem ambiguous or even contradictory. He was attached to Indian cultural roots, but at the same time, he emphasised the importance of modernity. While he pitched for immediate home rule, he also advocated maintaining a connection with British rule and argued for the preservation of native princely states.8

Panikkar strongly refuted the idea that Indian unity was a product of the British conquest. In his view, the conception of ‘India one and indivisible’ has always had at least a latent life, notwithstanding wars and political division.9 He remained sharply critical of the role played by Christian missionaries and western historians in the forced acculturation of a native population.10 These arguments became even more prominent in his later writings.

Panikkar joined Aligarh College in 1919 as a history professor, but the tameness of academic life bored him. His interest in politics found a calling in journalism as an editor of Swarajya in Madras (now Chennai) and as a founding editor of the newspaper, Hindustan Times.11 He returned to England to study law at the Middle Temple in September 1925.

While Oxford experience shaped Panikkar’s “idea of India”, his second sabbatical in Europe had a profound influence on Panikkar’s geopolitical vision. During this period, a global network of Asian nationalists and revolutionaries was gaining prominence in the West with an objective to unshackling Asia from European Imperialism, primarily the British in India and South-East Asia, the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia), the French in Indochina and those of assorted European powers in China. Modernist and radical circles in metropolitan centres such as London and Paris provided networking opportunities to Asian political activists and their collective consciousness through co-presence.12 Panikkar’s regional consciousness of Asia, state of nationalist movements and intricate political landscape of the Asian rimland were shaped by these interactions.13 In addition, his scepticism of western historiography and a rather unfavourable portrayal of Asia through a Eurocentric prism led him to explore the precolonial history of Asia, intra-Asia civilisational connects and India’s historical connections and influence in the region.

His research in tracing Dutch and Portuguese connections to the West Coast of India led him to explore contours of colonial expansion in Asia and the strategic relevance of the control of the sea that had made it possible in the first place. His two volumes i.e “Malabar and the Portuguese” and “Malabar and the Dutch” resulted from his research during the sabbatical. He considered the arrival of the Portuguese fleet on the west coast of India in 1498 as an epochal event. In his view,

“Indian rulers had not realised the possibilities of sea power and the political strength that it can bring. Vasco da Gama created for India a new frontier and with it new political and commercial problems. The effect of this was not immediately recognised in India. Indian Powers, accustomed to looking only to dangers from land forces, did not realise the menace to their security implied in the two ships which had reached the Malabar shore.”14

He continued to reflect on his preliminary hypotheses and research material to fashion broader and sharper narratives about the great influence of maritime communication and sea power on geopolitics in his later works, especially, the Future of South East Asia, India and the Indian Ocean and Asia and Western Dominance.

Panikkar’s Geopolitical Blue Print

If the First World War catalysed his “idea of India”, World War II perhaps was a defining period in developing his geopolitical blueprint. It was becoming clearer to British officials in Delhi and London that India’s progress towards independence, which got stalled due to the outbreak of war, could no longer be delayed after the end of the war. At the same time, there was also a concern among colonial officials that India’s national leaders, in their clamour for India’s ‘independence now’ had not grasped the hard realities of her external defence and it was “most desirable that their importance should be impressed on political thinkers” in India.

In their reflections about future strategic challenges of Asia’s defence, the Viceroy Study Group (VSG) under Sir Olaf Caroe saw the “concept of India at the centre of an Asiatic system” and viewed “India as a lynchpin of security in Asia” in a post-colonial version of the Great Game. Since no one in India seemed to be giving much thought to future strategic challenges to India’s external security, the VSG considered fostering a geopolitical discourse among nationalist elites for enhancing strategic awareness. Since it was unlikely that British officials could meaningfully influence the strategic outlook of an Independent India, it was necessary to find an Indian strategic voice. Caroe found in Panikkar - then the Dewan (Chief Minister) of the princely state of Bikaner - the most sophisticated exponent of India’s security and foreign policy. 15

Panikkar was sought out by Caroe for his strategic reflections on Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and his conceptions about Independent India’s sea power and her role in the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean and Asia in the post-colonial period. In The Future of South-East Asia, Panikkar sketched a comprehensive geopolitical blueprint for the region, which was long known as ‘Further India.’16 This book was later published with a revised title The Future of India and South-East Asia in 1945. In his view, the problem of security in the region was essentially connected with the problem of freedom and there could be no return to the old system.17 His key thesis emphasised the strategic connection between India and Southeast Asia and argued that,

“The future of South-East Asia could not be divorced from India and the security of countries like Burma, Siam (now Thailand) and Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore) had to be linked with India if their independence was to be guaranteed against interference by other powers; that if the Europeans tried to maintain their imperialist hold on these countries after the War, it would lead to serious unrest; that, consequently these countries had to be liberated and their economic and defence policies should be coordinated with India’s.”18

In addition, he also emphasised the danger posed to India by China’s future military power in Southeast Asia. While he discounted a direct threat of invasion of India from China, he considered “her mere existence as great military power on the borders of Burma” would “create grave complication in India’s foreign policy.”19 His framework for collective security architecture was based on the cooperation with America and Britain with local authorities shared mainly between India and Indonesia.

In 1944, Panikkar critically evaluated the Indian Ocean’s strategic environment in the post-war period in a short pamphlet titled The Strategic Problems of the Indian Ocean.20 He presciently observed that World War II has brought the Indian Ocean into “the vortex of International Politics” with the Pacific Ocean “becoming a scene of naval rivalry.” The old maxim of the Vasco da Gama era that “he who controlled the Atlantic also controlled the Indian Ocean” was no longer valid. The entry of Japan into the Straits of Malacca and her control of the Bay of Bengal rim and islands had “demonstrated that the threat to the ocean from the side of the Pacific is a real one.” While the defeat of Japan would address the immediate threat, the strategic position of the Indian Ocean would have to be reconsidered “in the light of what has happened and the changes in the balance of power that the post-war world may bring.” He argued that “renovated and triumphant China,” with her southward thrust from Tonkin to Singapore, “may become a greater menace to the defence of the Indian Ocean than Japan.” Besides, he also believed that the United States could also “force an entry into the Indian Ocean.”

While he considered the Indian Ocean as a vital area for India’s freedom, he also considered Western Pacific as an area of strategic salience. In his view, the first pre-requisite for oceanic defence for India was the freedom of Indo-China and Thailand and its guarantee by the Commonwealth. He considered India’s sea power as a critical requirement for independent India since it could be easy prey for any predatory power with sufficient strength to blockade her coastline. His strategic prescription of Indian Ocean defence involved ring-fencing all approaches into the Indian Ocean through naval collaboration between India and Britain.

A year later, Panikkar further expanded his thesis on India’s sea power imperatives in his better-known geopolitical work, India and the Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History. In his autobiography, Panikkar highlights that the book was written to challenge western historiography, which argued that “European countries were the first to develop a navy and that at no time in history did India wield power in the sea.” The book was meant to settle his debate on this issue with Guy Wint, who was a key member of the VSG and an established expert on the history and politics of Asia.21

Highlighting the strong seafaring traditions in India from the Vedic period, he argued that the leadership of the Indian Ocean devolved from ancient times upon India. Revisiting his earlier thesis from Malabar and the Portuguese, he posited the arrival of Vasco da Gama anchored at Cochin in 1498 as a marked epoch of history.22 He also felt that India lost her independence “in the first decade of the sixteenth century” when she “lost the command of the sea.”23 He further argued that “the firm foundation of the European mastery of the Eastern seas” continued for over 400 years. In that sense, they were “fundamentally more important than Plassey or Buxar for the future history of India.”24 While he was critical of Moghuls for their markedly land centric view, he also criticised official minds of British India for their obsessive preoccupation with continental geopolitics of the Great Game and the apparent neglect of oceanic problems in defence of India.

It is quite necessary to highlight that Panikkar’s thesis of India’s vibrant maritime past was not unique but rather consistent with other Indian historians viz. Kalidas Nag and Radhakumud Mookerji.25 Similarly, his conceptualisation of Independent India as the locus of regional security was coterminous with the views of Nehru who had perceived India as “a centre of economic and political activities in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.”26 Where Panikkar diverged from the nationalist thought of the time was in his explicit and insistent advocacy of realist geopolitics as the foundation of independent India’s foreign policy.

Through his retrospective historical analysis, Panikkar deduced that “the future of India will undoubtedly be decided on the sea.”27 While Panikkar advocated the creation of a modern Indian Navy for the protection of India’s strategic interests from Aden to the South China Sea, he anticipated eventual challenges in the Indian Ocean from both the Soviet Union and China. At the same time, he was also apprehensive that the United States could emerge as a rival. Given the fact that India’s naval power development would take some time, he argued for “closest collaboration and association with Britain.”

He proposed a council of regional powers chaired by India which would include Britain, Australia and South Africa, other Commonwealth units for the control of the Indian Ocean “with the primary responsibility lying on the Indian Navy to guard the steel ring created by Singapore, Ceylon, Mauritius and Socotra.”28 He sketched a comprehensive framework for a regional organisation of commonwealth countries in three appendices of his book.

Panikkar was worried that the publication of India and the Indian Ocean would run foul of British censorship due to some of his sharp and critical observations on European colonialism in general and British imperialism in particular. 29  Not withstanding these critical observations, Panikkar’s reflections on the post-war security scenario broadly resonated with the views of the VSG. Caroe not only circumvented censorship requirements by sending the manuscript by diplomatic post, but also pressed authorities in London for its publication despite wartime scarcity of printing paper. He had written to Lord Emery, the India Secretary that Panikkar’s book contained “a number of ideas which are not very far removed from” the views of his study group and Panikkar’s independent voice could draw attention to Indian Ocean defence in a way that Caroe, as a British official, could not.30 As expected, the book stirred up a storm of arguments both in India and England and was prominently featured by major newspapers in India and abroad. The book was also a best seller of its time with three reprints in its first year of publication.

The end of the war in 1945 accelerated the pace of transfer of power from a British to an Indian administration. Panikkar soon got engrossed in the constitutional consultations for shaping accession of princely states and vexing issues related to creation of Pakistan. Notwithstanding his preoccupation with domestic politics, Panikkar continued to reflect on the issues related to India’s external security and the necessity of maintaining strategic linkages with Britain even after India’s independence.

His 1946 monograph, The Basis of Indo-British Treaty, outlined a framework for cooperation between India and Britain based on an equal partnership and common interest. Panikkar believed that it served the interests of both countries that there be a political and military treaty. Britain would enable India’s rapid development of industrial capability for economic development and quick build-up of necessary military power, while India would help Britain in the preservation of her economic and trade interests in the region. He also envisioned a collective regional security organisation, centred on India, for the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia as a key element of this treaty that could “transform the present vacuum in Southeast Asia into a great centre of dynamic power.” This monograph was essentially a distillation of strategic prescriptions from his earlier publications into a comprehensive proposal. Notwithstanding rather strong emotions prevalent in domestic politics of the time, Panikkar had envisaged that it would be possible to integrate India and Pakistan in a single unit for purposes of defence through a tripartite treaty with Britain.31

In addition to the oceanic dimensions of India’s security, Panikkar had also very closely examined the geopolitical significance of the Himalaya and Hindukush in his 1947 essay, The Himalayas and Indian Defence and had argued that “there are no mountain ranges, which have so completely dominated the history of a country as the Himalayas have dominated Indian history.”32 In his view, the life of India is truly dependent on the Himalayas as every stream and rivulet, from Indus to Brahmputra, has its origin in the Himalayas. The Himalayas had been indeed the most effective land barrier and apart from inconsequential forays, there had not been any invasions for conquest.

He also strongly refuted the notion that Hindukush has not been effective as a protective chain and contested the view of western historians about India being one of the most invaded countries by wrongly categorising “frontier raids or plundering expeditions” as invasions. Rather, he argued that “properly examined, it will be seen that India is one of the least invaded countries in the world.”

The protective barriers of the Himalayas, he argued, together with the subsidiary mountains of the Hindukush and the Lushai ranges, had ensured the continuity of Indian civilisation in the face of periodic foreign invasions. At the same time, this geographical insularity constrained geopolitical awareness of the world beyond. Her only immediate neighbour was Afghanistan, which except during short periods, never had been organised into a single state. The interest of Persia was limited and China was altogether inaccessible. Natural geographical barriers provided “a false sense of security, a ‘Maginot-line’ mentality” and Indian rulers often encountered invading forces well in the interiors.

The protective barrier of the Himalayas had not only politically isolated India from the rest of the continent, but had also shaped India’s geopolitical introversion. In his view, the reason for this phenomenon was the obvious lack of geopolitical awareness about the neighbourhood. Indian rulers began their hasty preparations for defence only when invaders had crossed the Hindukush and marched into Punjab. These hastily organised defences often proved inadequate and disastrous defeat followed. In respect of the defence problems of the future, Panikkar argued that the Himalayas remains a formidable barrier even for airpower. The Himalayan range and its uplands make India an air island, an area safe from air attacks from the North. In his view, airpower could menace India only from the seaward, if India is unable to retain control of the Indian Ocean.

In spite of his earlier preferences for a regional Security Council of commonwealth countries under the aegis of Britain and an Indo-British treaty, Panikkar strongly differed with British proposals in the San Francisco Treaty for the establishment of regional bodies for maintaining international peace and security under broader supervision of the UN Security Council. He opposed the idea of entrusting regional councils with security functions. He thought these might become merely another instrument for the effective assertion of the supremacy of the Great Powers.33 In his view, regional organisations should be considered as agencies for dealing with special problems of local interest, and not as institutions usurping the security functions of the world organisation.

Panikkar’s incisive geopolitical analyses played a major role in shaping strategic discourse in pre-independent India. He was frequently consulted by national leaders and also by British officials. Nehru and Mountbatten regularly sought out Panikkar for his views on political, constitutional and strategic matters.34 As highlighted earlier, Panikkar had reconciled with the creation of Pakistan as a separate political identity by 1944 and discussed this issue in his book, The Future of Southeast Asia.35 In his view, India was like an elephant with Pakistan as its two ears and the elephant could live without the ears.36 However, the political unity of India, post-partition, remained a non-negotiable geopolitical imperative for Panikkar. He was instrumental in facilitating accession to India by a large majority of princely states.37

Panikkar’s intellectual output was a major factor in explaining his career trajectory after Independence. He was appointed Ambassador to China in April 1948, when its government was headed by Chiang Kai-shek. A year later, the communists took over and he was again designated as India’s Ambassador to the Peoples’ Republic of China in May 1950. Panikkar’s account of his China years is appropriately titled In Two Chinas.38 His role in shaping India’s relations with Communist China has remained a subject of controversy and continues to linger like a dark shadow over his geopolitical acumen.39

Charting the Twists and Turns in Panikkar’s Geopolitical Mental Map

Panikkar’s tenure in China from 1948-1952 appears to be the crucial inflexion point in his geopolitical frame of reference. This period was contemporaneous with the intense geopolitical tumult of the Cold War, which comprehensively reconfigured the geopolitics of Europe and Asia. With the Korean war, the possibility of a domino-spread of communism in Asia became a defining feature of the strategic discourse. At the same time, India’s strategic geography had also undergone considerable change. The Chinese occupation of Tibet had brought the Chinese military to India’s Himalayan border. Panikkar progressively revised many of his geopolitical articulations, strategic assessments and prescriptions since the evolution of post-war geopolitics, post-colonial regional order in Asia and Independent India’s strategic environment had significantly diverged from his earlier conceptions.

As mentioned earlier, Panikkar had conceptualised a regional organisation centred on India for the economic and defence needs of the region. In the spring of 1949, while stranded in Nanking during the internecine struggle between Nationalists and Chinese, he drew up a memorandum for instituting a regional organisation for preventing the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. The main argument of which was that “without immediate and adequate help in the economic field, the political structure of Southeast Asia would provide no more than a frail barrier to the expansion of communism.” Since he knew that the Indian ‘Government could not move in the matter effectively,’ he enlisted the British and Australian Ambassadors in advancing his idea.40 This formed the basis of what eventually became the Colombo Plan!41

In the second (1951) edition of India and the Indian Ocean Panikkar included a new ‘Chapter VII - The Indian Ocean after the Second Great War.’ With the geopolitical transformation he witnessed in the areas bordering the Indian Ocean, he crafted a new conclusion. He focused on three key factors impacting Indian Ocean geopolitics and implications for India’s security in the maritime realm: first, the splitting of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan; second, Britain’s withdrawal from mainland Asia; and third, the intensification of the Cold War.

While he accepted the eventuality of a split subcontinent, even in 1943, he thought that India and Pakistan, albeit politically independent, would continue to work together on trade, foreign policy and external security. In the 1945 edition of India and the Indian Ocean he had not only mentioned Pakistan, but had also highlighted Indian sea routes for trade “from Karachi to Chittagong.” This rose-tinted outlook was laid to rest in the post-partition acrimony and subsequent attempt by Pakistan to militarily wrest Kashmir from India in 1948. Under the changed strategic circumstances, India’s sea frontier now was “from Kandla to Calcutta.” Although he considered Pakistan’s long coastline and seafaring population as positive attributes of a potential naval power, he argued that the wide geographical separation between East and West Pakistan was a serious strategic constraint. It would compel Pakistan to maintain two navies, each self-sufficient and capable of independent operations without mutual support. He further argued that “the secession of Pakistan has not affected India’s vital interests on the Indian Ocean.”42

While the split into India and Pakistan with competing strategic interests was indeed a geopolitical complication, a more fundamental issue was the future of British naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Panikkar had earlier considered that Britain would continue to maintain its naval presence in the Indian Ocean and strategic linkages with her erstwhile colonies due to economic and strategic interest.43 By 1950, Britain had completely withdrawn from mainland Asia with a foothold in Malaya and naval presence in Singapore, Aden and Trincomalee. Even though the Indian Ocean was still an area of dominant British interest, it was becoming clearer that this would change. Revising his earlier arguments, he argued that instead of a British Empire dominating the Indian Ocean in all its stretches, the interests of newly independent states would become important and India would have to play a major part.

While in 1945 Panikkar had considered the potential presence of American and Soviet navies in the Indian Ocean along with the likelihood of Chinese naval resurgence, he included additional geopolitical developments in the second edition. For example, he considered Vietnam as a bulwark against further expansion of Communist China and argued that “this new State is of great importance since its position enables it to control the South China Sea - a true Mediterranean of the Pacific” and Chinese influence over Vietnam would have “far-reaching results on the defence of the Indian Ocean.” Regarding the implication of the Cold War on maritime geopolitics, Panikkar argued that wedded to “a policy of ‘containing’ communism everywhere, all sea coasts into which communism might penetrate have become areas of security for the United States. This rivalry is likely to transform the Indian Ocean again into a major strategic theatre.”44

In the 1945 version, Panikkar wrote that oceanic defence of India was “only in co-operation with Britain” and “it would be ridiculous in the extreme for India to pretend that within the course of at least another half a century, an Indian navy, however well organised, will be in a position to stand up to a major naval power like America or Japan.”45 However, six years later, given the potential absence of British Naval power in the Indian Ocean, he now argued that “the first question that faces us is whether India can, within a measurable time, become a naval power, independent of outside help.”

Evaluating India’s maritime power with Mahan’s elements of sea power, he thought that Indian national characteristics favoured the growth of naval power and India needed to pursue institutional building, scientific achievement and industrial-strength along with its mercantile fleet in a time-bound manner. He favoured the development of a balanced regional navy capable of operating as a task force within its area and cooperating with the high sea fleets of friendly nations. Delving in to debate on coastal defence versus distant water operation, he argued that

“A navy is not meant for the defence of the coast. The coast has to be defended from the land. The object of a navy is to secure control of an area of the sea, thus preventing enemy ships from approaching the coast or interfering with trade and commerce and conversely, after securing the control, to blockade the enemy’s coast and destroy his shipping. So a navy merely based on the coast degenerates into a subordinate wing of the army. The Indian Navy whether it be large or small must learn this lesson. Its purpose is to protect the seas and not the land and if it cannot protect the sea vital to India’s defence, then it is better not to have a navy at all.”46

In 1953, Panikkar published a lengthy study entitled Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498-1945 chronicling a 450 year period of European colonialism in Asia. The two primary theses in this monumental book, had roots in his earlier works Malabar and the Portuguese, Malabar and the Dutch, and India and the Indian Ocean. First, control of the sea made it possible for European nations to spread the tentacles of their economic and political influence over the Asian states. Secondly, the colonial expansion in Asia was a concerted strategic design by European powers. In his words, the “blockade of Asia by the European sea powers is the first feature that gives the Da Gama epoch its unity.”47 Economic imperialism of the West slowly transformed into greed for territorial possessions. What made the book controversial was sharp criticism of Christian missionary activities in the forced acculturation of a native population through religious conversion.

While his Indian Ocean essays had reflected on India’s maritime geography, Panikkar’s Geographical Factors in Indian History, (1955), comprehensively examined the geopolitics of India from the perspectives of continental as well as maritime geography. He analysed India’s history from the earliest times down to the British period in the background of geopolitical insularity provided by the key geographical barriers i.e. Himalaya in the North and Indian Ocean to the South. This book explained his previously published geopolitical arguments. His main thesis was that while geographical insularity had saved India from cataclysmic geopolitical changes witnessed in other parts of the world, it had also constrained India’s geopolitical awareness of the world beyond. Lamenting the lack of geopolitical prescience in India, he highlighted that “worse than even our lack of interest in things historical has been our utter neglect of geography.” As a result, “we were neither maritime nor continental in our outlook.”48

Earlier, Panikkar had posited the Himalayas as an impenetrable barrier on the entire length of India’s northern boundary and affirmed its strategic relevance even in a future conflict.49 With the occupation of Tibet by Communist China, he considerably revised his earlier geopolitical assessment. He now argued that mountains are not “a perfect barrier against every kind of invasion,” particularly by “a determined enemy who has the resources of a powerfully organised state.” He presciently saw that “the Chinese were unable in the past to organise a strong military area in Tibet should not blind us to such possibilities in the future. It may not be a danger in the immediate future, but there is no doubt that an organised modern state in Tibet will alter the character of the Himalayan problem… the Himalayan boundary will no longer be the dead boundary that it has been since the beginning of Indian history.” Moderating his strident sea power advocacy earlier, he now argued for “both a continental view and an appreciation of sea power.”50

In the late fifties, India’s strategic landscape had comprehensively changed. Whereas British India never had any effective threat across India’s land frontiers, India now faced on her land frontiers, two powerful neighbours. Pakistan, now a SEATO member, had significant military assistance from the USA and had emerged as a serious military challenge on India’s western and eastern boundaries. China, having occupied Tibet had begun to menace India’s northern boundaries with expansive territorial claims. At the time when the world was largely divided in either of the Cold War power blocks, India had eschewed the option of security alliances and preferred a path of Non-Alignment. Against this strategic backdrop, Panikkar comprehensively reviewed India’s external security challenges in his book, Problems of Indian Defence published in 1960.51

In this book, Panikkar argued that after Independence India had witnessed the growth of new areas of sensitivity. While the partition created for India two unnatural boundaries in the east and the west, India’s northern boundary across the Himalayas has also become a sensitive border and these needed to be watched and protected. With two powerful adversaries on her land frontiers, Panikkar argued that India possessed sufficient material capabilities and national resolve to defend against the aggressive design of adversaries. In his views, rather than a quantitatively large standing army, the focus should be to build and create a qualitatively superior armed force around the most powerful weapon systems available. He considered dependence on imported defence equipment as a key weakness and emphasised the need for a focused approach for the development of scientific and industrial capabilities for progressively reducing dependence on arms imports.

Downplaying forward posturing and the resultant standoffs between Indian and Chinese troops along the McMohan line, he argued that these border standoffs had provided new strategic awareness about India’s defence problems and “helped to develop in the Indian mind a frontier-complex, the absence of which had helped foreign invaders in the past.” Notwithstanding, armed clashes between Indian and Chinese troops at Longju and Kongka pass, which had happened at the time of his writing, he still maintained that “a serious invasion of India’s territory or a penetration into Indian plains from across the high Himalayan ranges is no more than a chimera” (emphasis added). This geopolitical prediction proved fallacious just two years later and continues to cast a shadow on his geopolitical expertise in general and his assessment of India-China relations in particular.

While Panikkar conceded that India’s continental frontiers required immediate attention, he still maintained that attack from the sea was far more dangerous to the freedom of India than any threat from across her land frontiers. However, he also significantly moderated his expansive ideas about the contours of India’s naval power. He argued that a large navy fleet remained beyond India’s capability for at least two or three decades; naval requirement had to be considered in terms of the naval power of regional powers. In contrast to his earlier proposals for a navy capable of dominating the complete Indian Ocean, he now said that India’s naval preparations were not aimed at defending herself on her own “against a great power but in relation to the states of her own region.” Also, “so long as the Indian Navy is organised adequately to meet and to overcome any dangers from powers nears her coastline, her immediate purpose may be said to have served.”

In his view, the Indian Navy fleet with one or two aircraft carriers would be adequate for India’s limited needs: to defend her coast, to protect trade and to maintain communications. It is pertinent to highlight that he tempered his sea power aspiration only due to lack of adequate financial resources and industrial capabilities in India. He argued that unless India followed a time-bound policy for being able to “design and build the ships of her navy, the defence from the naval point of view will always be weak.”

Pannikar had earlier voiced his preference for security alliances.52 But he now argued that “it was through ‘subordinate alliances’ of unequal partnership that rulers of India lost their independence in the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century.”53 Besides, he also felt that unequal alliances bring, in their train, political influence, which not only weakens the internal social and economic structure of weaker partners, but also leads to its subjugation. Panikkar highlighted the deleterious impact of alliances on India and framed unequal security alliances as a causative factor for British colonial expansion in India. These historical lessons find no mention in his previous arguments favouring Indo-British alliances. In his view, “the decision of India to remain outside alliances in groupings, and to develop her defensive strength has not only been wise but is the only one suited to her conditions.” However, he also argues that “this does not mean that in case she is attacked she would not accept assistance from others.” And this unfortunately played out two years later during the 1962 war with desperate requests for American help.

Conclusion

KM Panikkar was indeed a lone voice during his time in raising maritime consciousness and influencing strategic elites through his pioneering geopolitical reflections. However, Panikkar’s characterisation by some as an ardent navalist, enthralled by some of Mahan’s early precepts, has overlooked the nuanced subtext of his later writings. Even though he does not cite Corbett directly, the grammar of his strategic inferences also reflects Corebettian wisdom. He astutely fused the maritime and terrestrial components of India’s strategic geography into a holistic geopolitical mental map and underlined the need for equibalance in India’s maritime and continental perspectives.

Like all strategic thinkers, Panikkar was a product of his time, influenced by ideas and traditions in his cultural and intellectual environment. Panikkar’s range of subjects was wide, his approaches to them diverse. His ideas were complex and nuanced. In his writing spread over more than four decades, Panikkar modified and even reversed his positions on matters great and small in the natural course of developing his thinking. Even though Panikkar’s geostrategic frameworks were conceived during intense geopolitical flux, he projected an attitude of certainty in his deductive inferences. While the changing geopolitical contexts led to a substantial course correction in his assessments, he could be faulted for seldom attempting to explain the context and rationale of such changes.

Due to the process of decolonisation at the one end and intensification of the cold war at the other, India’s external security became progressively complex with adversarial relations with China and Pakistan. Grygiel has aptly argued that geopolitics is distinct from, and independent of, the perceptions of strategists. Such perceptions, and the resulting decisions and actions, do not shape geopolitical reality, but only respond to it.54 The evolution of Panikkar’s mental maps and the resultant shift in his geopolitical articulations needs to be seen in this context.

The rediscovery of Panikkar’s geopolitical wisdom in the contemporary strategic discourse is rather fortuitous. In our own times, the geopolitical churning in the Indo-Pacific is pregnant with strategic uncertainty as it also was during the mid-twentieth century. Panikkar’s strategic pointers about the use of India’s geography to exert a measure of influence over the maritime commons holds plenty of lessons as India can capitalise on its interior position vis-à-vis a stronger “exterior” power viz. China. Panikkar’s conception of sea power was an intricate tapestry of a naval fleet, land-based airpower and India’s islands as nautical sentinels in the strategic design of archipelagic defence to exert a measure of influence over the maritime commons. Such a “joint” geo-strategic approach, in this writer’s view would well serve the needs of the future, and Panikkar might have agreed with it.

Endnotes

  1. “Media Release on ICWA International Conference on K.M. Panikkar and the Growth of a Maritime Consciousness in India, 23-24 March 2021,” Indian Council of World Affairs, 26 March 2021. https://www.icwa.in/show_content.php?lang=1&level=2&ls_id=5931&lid=4097,accessed 25 August 2021.

  1. Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History (New York: Norton, 1994), 125.

  2. “Landmarks in Defense Literature,” Defense Analysis vol. 15, no. 1 (1999, April), 99-104. https://doi.org/10.1080/713604656, accessed 25 August 2021.

  3. KM Panikkar, India and Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1945), 92-94.

  4. KM Panikkar, India and Indian Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1951), 91-96.

  5. Alan K. Henrikson, “The Geographical ‘Mental Maps’ of American Foreign Policy Makers,” International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale de Science Politique vol. 1, no. 4 (1980), 495–530.

  6. The section on Panikkar student years, in this paper, is based on Rita Paollini's remarkable analysis of Panikkar's early writings.Rita Paolini, “An Indian Student in Oxford during World War I: Kavalam M. Panikkar between Nationalism and Princely States,” Monde(s) vol. 9, no. 1 (2016, October), 59-74.

  7. Ibid.

  8. KM Panikkar, Indian Nationalism: its Origin History and Ideals (London: The Faith Press, 1920), 13-14.

  9. KM Panikkar, “European war and Nationality,” The Commonweal vol. 4 (1915, July-December), 166.

  10. KM Panikkar: An Autobiography, trans. K Krishnamurthy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1964).

  11. “When a Fraternity of Revolutionaries Evolved across Asia,” The Economist, 28 November 2020. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/11/28/when-a-fraternity-of-revolutionaries-evolved-across-asia, accessed 30 August 2021.

  12. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.11, 59-65.

  13. KM Panikkar, Malabar and the Portuguese: Being a History of the Relations of the Portuguese with Malabar from 1500 to 1663 (Bombay: D.B. Taraporvala Sons & Co., 1929), 33.

  14. Peter John Brobst, The Future of the Great Game: Sir Olaf Caroe, India’s Independence and the Defense of Asia, Series on International Political and Economic History (Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2005), 10.

  15. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.11, 182.

  16. KM Panikkar, The Future of South-East Asia: an Indian View (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1943), 14.

  17. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.11, 183.

  18. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.17, 34.

  19. KM Panikkar, The Strategic Problems of the Indian Ocean (Allahabad: Kitabistan, 1944).

  20. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.11, 183-184. See also AG Noorani, “Caroe’s Lessons,” Frontline, 19 May 2006. https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/article30209403.ece, accessed 08 November 2020.

  1. KM Panikkar, Malabar and the Portuguese: Being a History of the Relations of the Portuguese with Malabar from 1500 to 1663.

  2. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 7.

  3. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 43.

  4. Kalidas Nag, India and the Pacific World (Calcutta: Book Company Ltd, 1941) and Radhakumud Mookerji, Indian Shipping: A History of the Sea-Borne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times (Calcutta: Longman’s Green & Co, 1912).

  5. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 536.

  6. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 16.

  7. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 95.

  8. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.11, 184.

  9. Brobst, Op Cit., n.15, 27-30.

  10. KM Panikkar, The Basis an Indo-British Treaty (Delhi: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1946), 11-18.

  1. KM Panikkar, “The Himalayas and Indian Defence,” India Quarterly vol. 55, no. 3-4 (1999, July), 73-90. https://doi.org/10.1177/097492849905500305.

  1. KM Panikkar, “Regionalism and World Security,” Regionalism and Security, ed. KM Panikkar (New Delhi: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1948), 1-6.

  2. Tarasankar Banerjee, Sardar K. M. Panikkar : The Profile of a historian- A Study in Modern Indian Historiography (Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 1977), 2 and See also Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1951), 308-310.

  3. KM Panikkar, The Future of India and South-East Asia (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1945), 31-33.

  4. Johnson, Op Cit., n.34, 50.

  5. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.11, 159-165.

  6. KM Panikkar, In Two China: Memoirs of a Diplomat (New Delhi: Lifespan Publishers, 2019).

  7. Karunakar Gupta, Sino-Indian Relations 1948-52: Role of KM Pannikar. (New Delhi: South Asia Books, 1987).

  8. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.38, 55-56.

  9. Daniel Oakman, Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2010). https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p52161/pdf/book.pdf, accessed 20 August 2021. see also Charles A. Fisher, “Containing China? II. Concepts and Applications of Containment,” The Geographical Journal vol. 137, no. 3 (1971), 281–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/1797268, accessed 20 August 2021.

  1. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 83-84.

  2. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.31 and Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 93.

  3. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.5, 82-87.

  4. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4, 95.

  5. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.5, 92-97.

  6. KM Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey of the Vasco Da Gama Epoch of Asian History 1498-1945 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1953), 13.

  7. KM Panikkar, Geographical Factors in Indian History (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1955), 18.

  8. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.32.

  9. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.48, 54-59.

  10. K M Panikkar, Problems of Indian Defence (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960).

  11. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.31, Pannikar, Op Cit., n.4 and Pannikar, Op Cit., n.35.

  12. Pannikar, Op Cit., n.51, 125-129.

  13. Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 25.