"The message that Panikkar had tried to convey to Asians in general and to his own countrymen in particular was that the history of Christianity surveyed by him was a running commentary on the imperialist character of the Christian doctrine. But the Brown Sahibs who had taken over from the British - the politicians and the intellectual’s elite in India - failed to grasp his message and ignored his monumental study altogether. On the other hand, the missionaries were up in arms against him. “To prove his point,” they said, “Panikkar picks and chooses historical facts and then deals with them one-sidedly.” But none of them came out with facts which could redeem or even counterbalance those. presented by Panikkar. Efforts to explain them away or put another interpretation on them, also remained a poor exercise. Fr. Jerome D’Souza had jibed, “A very fine narrative Mr. Panikkar, but you must not call it history.” But he or his missionary colleagues never bothered to tell what was that history which Panikkar had not taken into account. Subsequent Christian writings show that the missionaries have never been able to stop smarting from the hurt caused by Panikkar’s book."