Sardar KM Panikkar: The Forgotten Guardian of Humanity
What makes a life well lived?
Is it accolades and titles, inked onto brittle pages of history books? A few words chiseled into epitaphs — scientist, martyr, writer? Or is it the unrecorded moments when a person, standing at the edge of chaos, chooses courage over comfort, action over applause?
These are not just philosophical questions. They strike at the heart of how we remember — and how easily we forget.
When you Google Sardar KM Panikkar, the results are polite but underwhelming. “First president of the Kerala Sahitya Academy,” they say. A few links here, a Wikipedia entry there. Blink, and history seems to shrink him into a footnote. But scroll deeper, dig further, and suddenly, a different story unfolds — of a man who moved through history like a quiet storm, shaping nations, saving lives, and weaving threads of humanity through the torn fabric of a divided land.
The Scholar of Many Tongues
Born in the princely state of Travancore, KM Panikkar was a prodigious child of culture and intellect. His parents, Puthillathu Parameswaran Namboodiri and Chalayil Kunjikutti Kunjamma, surely saw early glimmers of his brilliance — though perhaps even they could not have guessed the scope of his legacy.
A student at Madras and later Oxford, Panikkar had the rare gift of thinking like a historian, writing like a poet, and acting like a statesman. He taught at Aligarh Muslim University and the University of Calcutta, but academia wasn’t where his soul settled. By 1925, he was the editor of The Hindustan Times, sharpening his pen against the grindstone of politics.
But his most powerful stories were told not on the front page, but through history itself.
The Historian Who Could Write in Lightning
He wrote Malabar and the Portuguese in 1929 and followed it with Malabar and the Dutch in 1931 — works that would cement his reputation as a master chronicler of India’s encounters with colonial powers. Nehru would later endorse his book Asia and Western Domination, and Krishna Menon once quipped, “He can write a history book in half an hour which I could not write in six years.”
Panikkar wasn’t just compiling past events; he was dissecting the anatomy of power, identity, and resistance — and he did it in more than one language. He had a deep love for Dravidian poetry, especially the unique cadences of Malayalam, and championed the role of regional languages in preserving Indian heritage.
But Panikkar wasn’t interested in being remembered for his books. He was interested in living his values — even when the world burned around him.
The Sardar of Bikaner
The Partition of India in 1947 was a rupture unlike any other — a line drawn on a map that split homes, hearts, and history. Panikkar, then Secretary to the Chamber of Princes in Bikaner, found himself at the crossroads of catastrophe.
To the east and north, East Punjab was a furnace of communal violence. To the west, Bahawalpur had seen 5,000 Hindus massacred in a single day. Waves of terrified Hindu and Sikh refugees surged toward Bikaner. But they were not alone.
The Muslim community within Bikaner, caught between vengeful mobs and mounting fear, stood on the brink of annihilation. And there, in that crucible of hatred and history, Panikkar made a choice.
“I was determined at all costs to prevent the trouble spreading into Bikaner,” he wrote in In Two Chinas, not just out of compassion but because he knew the devastating power of historical memory — and what would happen if the Rajputs’ dormant rage ignited.
He partnered with Maharaja Sadul Singh, deployed the princely army to Ganga Nagar, and gave them extraordinary orders: shoot rioters on sight if needed. Civil authorities were empowered to impose collective fines. These were not mild measures — they were bold, decisive, and potentially dangerous for his reputation.
But Panikkar wasn’t concerned with reputation. He was concerned with lives.
When Delhi failed to respond to his appeals, he took matters into his own hands. He organized convoys — trains and foot marches across the desert — to escort thousands of Muslim refugees safely into Pakistan. Through blistering sands and volatile borders, people walked 350 kilometers toward an uncertain future, but they walked alive.
The first convoy made it. Then the second. Not a life lost.
“When this weary procession also reached Pakistan, I heaved a sigh of relief,” he wrote. The sigh of a man who had wrestled violence into submission — and won.
Beyond Borders, Beyond Time
After Partition, Panikkar continued his service as India’s first ambassador to China and later to Egypt. He was part of India’s inaugural delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. He carried his quiet diplomacy and keen intellect into the highest chambers of global decision-making.
But perhaps nothing he did thereafter matched the moral magnitude of those days in Bikaner — when he chose, in the midst of fire and fear, to preserve life instead of stoking fury.
He died in 1963 while serving as vice-chancellor at Mysore University. A scholar until the end. A guardian in the middle. And a forgotten hero for far too long.
The Measure of a Life
So, what does it mean to live a life “well lived”?
It may not be titles. It may not be textbooks. It may not even be remembrance.
Sometimes, it’s a silent decision in a moment of crisis. A refusal to give in to hate. A convoy across a desert. A sigh of relief. The quiet legacy of a man who became, in all the ways that matter, a Sardar — not by title, but by deed.
Let history not forget him again.