 After his studies, Panikkar travelled to Portugal and Holland to research the involvement of these countries with Malabar, the results of which were published in the books "Malabar and the Portuguese" (1929) and "Malabar and the Dutch" (1931).He was the maternal uncle of the noted poet, dramatist and lyricist Kavalam Narayana Panicker.On returning to India, he first taught at the Aligarh Muslim University and later at the University of Calcutta.