India, Oct. 14 -- Of KM Panikkar, K Iswara Dutt noted that he was "one of the impossible men". But he didn't write a doorstopper of a book like you did, though you feel the same way about the man. Why is that so?

Because KM Panikkar is really hard to pin down. I've often been asked how Panikkar saw himself, whether as a scholar, writer, lawyer, or historian. I hate to answer for my subjects, but evidence tells me that he thought of himself as a thinker and scholar. From his Oxford university days until the end of his life, he was thinking about the country's trajectory and what it means to be an Indian, and these questions remained central to all of his writing throughout his life.

By the time he was at university, he was reading obsess...