HISTORIAN OF SOCIAL CHANGE

HAT a privilege—and a responsibility—it is for a student to speak about Professor K N Panikkar on the occasion of his passing.

- RAJAN GURUKKAL

Writing about Professor Panikkar invites reflection on two intertwined aspects of his life: his work as a historian and his role as a public intellectual who helped shape how historians and readers engage with the past and understand modern India.When Professor Panikkar began his scholarly work at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, the study of modern Indian history was still largely centred on elite political narratives of colonialism, the Congress movement and constitutional developments.

His work, however, asked a different question: what processes were unfolding beneath the formal political surface?

In works such as Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar, 1836-1921, he examined agrarian struggles, peasant resistance and the complex social world of colonial Kerala. He showed that resistance was not merely nationalist but also social— directed against landlordism, caste hierarchy and state authority.

In doing so, he helped broaden the understanding of nationalism by locating it within wider social processes.

Within the larger landscape of Indian historiography, he belongs to a generation that significantly reshaped the study of modern Indian history in the late twentieth century.

This shift moved the discipline from political narrative towards social history; from nationalist teleology towards structural analysis; and towards a greater recognition of historical agency among ordinary people.