K. M. Panikkar: Difference between revisions

 

'''[[w:Kavalam Madhava Panikkar|Kavalam Madhava Panikkar]]''' (3 June 1895 – 10 December 1963), was an Indian novelist, journalist, historian, administrator and diplomat. He was born in Travancore, then a princely state in the [[British Indian Empire]] and was educated in [[Madras]] and at the [[University of Oxford]].

 

== Quotes ==

 

===''Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945''===

 

*The explanation for capturing the vessel is perhaps to be found in Barroes’ remark: ‘It is true that there does exist a common right to all to navigate the seas and in Europe we recognize the rights which others hold against us; but the right does not extend beyond Europe and therefore the Portuguese as Lords of the Sea are justified in confiscating the goods of all those who navigate the seas without their permission.’ Strange and comprehensive claim, yet basically one which every European nation, in its turn, held firmly almost to the end of Western supremacy in Asia. It is true that no other nation put it forward so crudely or tried to enforce it so barbarously as the Portuguese in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but the principle that the doctrines of international law did not apply outside Europe, that what would be barbarism in London or Paris is civilized conduct in Peking (e.g. the burning of the Summer Palace) and that European nations had no moral obligations in dealing with Asian peoples (as for example when Britain insisted on the opium trade against the laws of China, though opium smoking was prohibited by law in England itself) was pact of the accepted creed of Europe’s relations with Asia. So late as 1870 the President of the [[Hong Kong]] Chamber of Commerce declared: ‘[[China]] can in no sense be considered a country entitled to all the same rights and privileges as civilized nations which are bound by international law.’ Till the end of European domination the fact that rights existed for Asians against Europeans was conceded only with considerable mental reservation. In countries under direct British occupation, like India, Burma and [[Ceylon]], there were equal rights established by law, but that as against Europeans the law was not enforced very rigorously was known and recognized. In China, under extra‑territorial jurisdiction, Europeans were protected against the operation of Chinese laws. In fact, except in Japan this doctrine of different rights persisted to the very end and was a prime cause of Europe’s ultimate failure in Asia.

 

*Legislature protected the right of converts to their share in Hindu joint families, and High Court decisions enabled converts to blackmail their wives to follow them into the fold of their new religion. The Government also encouraged the missionaries to work among the backward tribes.”

* “The commander of a Spanish galleon which was driven ashore spoke of Spanish power and recounted to the local daimyo who had salvaged the vessel and claimed the cargo the glories and prowess of the Conquistadores in a boastful manner. Hideyoshi’s suspicious mind, already aware of Portuguese action in the East, ordered the arrest of all Spaniards in the country and had them crucified in Nagasaki as spies.”

 

 

*[The Treaty that followed] “provided for the suspension of official examinations for five years in towns where foreigners had been molested - a device meant to give a chance to the missionary educated young men and Christians to be employed in service…”

 

*“Sir John Bowring, who negotiated the treaty of 1855, was able to secure the principle of extra-territoriality for British subjects, permission to build churches and exemption of all duty for import of opium.”

*“The monarch of Siam assumed the title of the Defender of the Buddhist Faith in imitation of the British King’s title. The conservative but generally enlightened policy followed by the monarchy during the critical period between 1870 and 1920 had the effect of getting Siam through the transition without violent tumult and a disorganization of society, so that in the period following the First [World] War she was enabled to recover her natural independence in full by the gradual abolition, through negotiations, of the rights of extraterritoriality which the foreign nations possessed.”

 

 

 

 

==Quotes about K.M. Panikkar==

 

*What hurt the Christian missionaries most, however, was Panikkar’s observation that “the doctrine of the [[monopoly]] of [[truth]] and revelation… is alien to the Hindu and Buddhist mind” and that “to them the claim of any sect that it alone represented the truth and other shall be condemned has always seemed unreasonable”. He had knocked the bottom out of the [[missionary]] enterprise. No monopoly of truth and revelation, no missions. It was as simple as that.

**Sita Ram Goel, Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

 

*A new image of medieval India had also emerged in my mind by reading K.M. Panikkar’s A Survey of Indian History. It was no more the India of Muslim monarchs ruling leisurely over a large empire, building mosques and mazãrs and madrasas and mansions, and patronizing poets and other men of letters. On the contrary, it was the story of the long-drawn-out war which took a decisive turn to the disadvantage of Islamic imperialism with the rise of Shivaji. The war had ended in a victory for the Hindus by the middle of the 18th century.

**S.R. Goel: Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

 

==External links==

 

{{DEFAULTSORT:Panikkar}}

[[Category:Indologists]]

[[Category:1895 births]]

[[Category:1963 deaths]]