Page 39 - K M PANNIKAR and The Growth of a Maritime Consciousness in India

THE GEOPOLITICIAN AND HIS EVOLVING MENTAL MAP
A Critical Survey of KM Panikkar’s Geopolitical Reflections
Panikkar’s geopolitical reflections were a pioneering effort in envisioning image
and role for an independent India in the post war geopolitics.KM Panikkar was
indeed a lone voice during his time raising maritime consciousness and aligning
the operational milieu of the Indian Ocean with the psycho-milieu strategic
elites through his pioneering geopolitical reflections which fused the maritime
and terrestrial components of India’s strategic geography into a holistic
geopolitical mental map.

With re-appearance of sea power logic in the contemporary geopolitics,
aphorism from his pioneering study on India’s sea power, “India and the Indian
Ocean: An Essay on the Influence of Sea Power on Indian History” has rather
become ubiquitous in the strategic discourse. However, at the same time, what
has remained unnoticed that there exists two editions of this book and the
second edition published in 1951 is remarkably different from the first edition
published in 1945.The differences in the two editions of “India and The Indian
Ocean” are not an isolated example of his evolving geopolitical perceptions and
resultant shift in the strategic policy prescriptions. A review of his geopolitical
writings, spanning over nearly four decades, highlights numerous shifts in his
geopolitical perceptions and geostrategic policy prescriptions.
Even though KM Panikkar remains outstanding as a historian and strategic
thinker reflecting on the power transition in times of intense geopolitical flux,
he has also been critiqued by some of his contemporaries for fashioning his
arguments as per expectations of his audiences. The paper argues that these
critical comments need to be weighed against challenges faced by the strategist
in securing a detailed, valid conception of his/her geopolitical environment
and resultant challenges in deciphering geopolitics. The Paper, through a
critical review of KM Panikkar’s geopolitical writings aims to decipher and
contextualise Panikkar evolving geopolitical mental map.

23-24 March 2021 | Sapru House, New Delhi 39