Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (or K. M. Panikkar) was an Indian scholar, journalist, historian, administrator and diplomat. He was born to Puthillathu Parameswaran Namboodiri and Chalayil Kunjikutti Kunjamma in the Kingdom of Travancore, then a princely state in the British Indian Empire on June 3, 1895. Primarily, this book is neither a defence nor a criticism of a policy,-it is an account of a people's awakening. There seems to be in human nature some original perversity which preordains, for every national movement that is a growth, three stages of maltreatment. At first it is treated with indifference, then it is ridiculed, then it is abused. Not until it has outlived these experiences of adolescence will men deal with it on its merits.