Ordering the Post-Colonial Oceanic Space(s): K. M. Panikkar and the Origins of India’s Maritime “Resurgence”

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to situate the attempted recalibration of India’s strategic thinking and quest for security, from the continental South Asia toward the Indian Ocean region (by extension the Indo-Pacific), in the thought of K. M. Panikkar. Panikkar’s legacy is regularly invoked to justify the “maritime turn” in India’s security affairs within the academic and policymaking circles. Importantly, the invocation of his legacy straddles the civilian/military approach to the Oceanic space in contemporary maritime security discourse. To this end, the paper seeks to excavate the logic of strategy and understanding of the extended spatial maritime security geography of India in the works of K. M. Panikkar. Panikkar’s legacy is generally squeezed into a Mahanian frame or the British Raj’s security complex in the Indian Ocean Region. While they bear strong imprints on his works, the engagement with Panikkar’s work has so far reproduced a strategic positivist rendering of these two influences. Of importance then is also the way in which colonialism shaped Panikkar’s approach to postimperial maritime security of India as well as the way he read Indian history into the future strategic externalities facing India. This paper in essence contributes to the study of the context of revival of texts and thinkers in international relations as they pertain to the changing structure of power internationally and the ideational configuration of national units.

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