 In 2004 he was given a "Pravasi Bharatiya Samman" award alongside other people honoured for their "outstanding contribution to the understanding of the Indian civilisation and for advancing India's cause abroad" at a conference opened by the Indian prime minister and organised with the aim of "bringing together the Indian Diaspora and leveraging the potential offered by the Global Indian Family".2005 brought a different kind of publicity when a Pulitzer prize-winning book written by Caroline Elkins, an associate professor at Harvard, quoted a "respected attorney in Nairobi", de Souza, as believing that at least one hundred thousand Kikuyu disappeared at the time of Mau Mau, in "a form of ethnic cleansing on the part of the British government".These figures have been challenged by John Darwin, a fellow of Nuffield College, and lecturer on the History of the British Commonwealth at Oxford University.