The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Professor
K. N. Pannikar has sought to explain to the reader, as Ibn Khaldun put it, ‘how
and why things are as they are’ and ‘to wash his hands of any blind trust in
tradition’. His preferred area of work is intellectual history which he locates
at the intersection of social and cultural history and his focus has been on
importance of culture in the transformation of consciousness. Addressing after
releasing Prof. K.N. Pannikar’s book “History as a site of Struggle” at
a function in Thiruvanathpuram, Kerala today, he has said that in our world of
today, Professor Panikkar’s emphasis on ‘intellectual decolonisation’ is often
found to be inconvenient. Yet, it cannot be ignored.
Shri Ansari said that his 2004 Kappen Memorial Lecture of 2004 on ‘Cultural
Past and National Identity’ (included in this volume) and his assertion
that the dynamism of Indian culture lies in the integrative-disintegrative
tendencies of Indian polity and the resulting cultural diversity and plurality
that has moulded the cultural practices of the people and is embedded in
national identity.
The Vice President said that the volume before us is a collection of
papers and articles that Prof. Panikkar has written over years. Together, they
sustain and reinforce his position as an outstanding public intellectual of our
times. This tome of over 650 pages does not have to be read at one go; instead,
it has to be taken piece by piece, essay by essay, each morsel relished and
carefully digested.
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