C. Sankaran Nair

Indian politician (1857–1934)

Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair CIE (11 July 1857 – 24 April 1934) was an Indian lawyer and statesman who served as the Advocate General of Madras from 1906 to 1908, on the High Court of Madras as a puisne justice from 1908 to 1915, and as India wide Education minister as a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council from 1915 until 1919. He was elected president of the 1897 Indian National Congress, and led the Egmore faction, opposing the Mylapore group. According to V. C. Gopalratnam, he was a leader of the Madras bar, alongside C. R. Pattabhirama Iyer, M. O. Parthasarathy Iyengar, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer, P. R. Sundaram Iyer, and Sir V. C. Desikachariar, and immediately behind Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and Sir S. Subramania Iyer. He wrote Gandhi and Anarchy (1922). A biopic on Nair's life was announced in June 2021 by Dharma Productions and began production in November 2022, starring Akshay Kumar, R. Madhavan and Ananya Panday. Titled Shankara, it is scheduled to release in 2024.

Chettur Sankaran Nair was born on 11 July 1857 in a prominent Hindu family named Chettur, as the son of Mammayil Ramunni Panicker and Parvathy Amma Chettur in Mankara, Palakkad district. His father worked as a Tahsildar under the British government. His early education began in the traditional style at home and continued in schools in Malabar, till he passed the arts examination with a first class from the Provincial School at Calicut. Then he joined the Presidency College, Madras. In 1877 he took his arts degree, and two years later secured the law degree from the Madras Law College.

Nair started as a lawyer in 1880 in the High Court of Madras. In 1884, the Madras Government appointed him as a member of the committee for an enquiry into the district of Malabar. Till 1908, he was the Advocate General to the Government and an Acting Judge from time to time. In 1908, he became a permanent Judge in the High Court of Madras and held the post till 1915. He was a part of the bench that tried Collector Ashe murder case along with C. A. White, then the Chief Justice of Madras, William Ayling, as a special case. In his best known judgment, he upheld conversion to Hinduism and ruled that such converts were not outcasts. He founded and edited the Madras Review and the Madras Law Journal. In the meantime, in 1902, the Viceroy Lord Curzon appointed him Secretary to the Raleigh University Commission. In recognition of his services, he was appointed a Companion of the Indian Empire by the King Emperor in 1904 and in 1912 he was knighted. He became a member of the Viceroy's Council in 1915 with the charge of the Education portfolio. As member, he wrote in 1919 two famous Minutes of Dissent in the Despatches on Indian Constitutional Reforms, pointing out the various defects of British rule in India and suggesting reforms. For an Indian to offer such criticism and make such demands was incredible in those days. The British government accepted most of his recommendations. Nair resigned from the Viceroy's Council in the aftermath of Jalianwalabagh massacre on 13 April 1919. Afterward he was a councillor to the secretary of state for India (in London, 1920–21) and a member of the Indian Council of State (from 1925). He played an active part in the Indian National movement which was gathering force in those days. In 1897, when the First Provincial Conference met in Madras, he was invited to preside over it. The same year, when the Indian National Congress assembled at Amaravathi, he was chosen its president. In a masterly address, he referred to the highhandedness of foreign administration, called for reforms and asked for self government for India with Dominion Status. In 1900, he was a member of the Madras Legislative Council. His official life from 1908 to 1921 interrupted his activities as a free political worker. In 1928, he was the President of the Indian Central Committee to co operate with the Simon Commission. The Committee prepared a well argued report asking for Dominion Status for India. When the Viceregal announcement came granting Dominion Status as the ultimate goal for India, Sir Sankaran Nair retired from active politics. He died in 1934, aged 77.

Nair was married to his maternal cousin (uncle's daughter) Palat Kunhimalu Amma (later Lady Sankaran Nair) at a young age, according to the traditions of the time. She predeceased him in 1926, during a pilgrimage to the holy temple of Badrinath in present day Uttarakhand. Their eldest daughter Lady Madhavan Nair and son in law and nephew Sir C. Madhavan Nair (a legal luminary and a judge of the Privy Council) lived on a large estate known as Lynwood, in Chennai. Within this property, in the area now known as Lady Madhavan Nair colony/Mahalinagapuram, is situated near the Ayappan Guruvayoorappan temple, the land for which was donated by Lady Madhavan Nair. There are still many roads bearing names of the house – Lynwood avenue – and of the children of Sir and Lady Nair – Palat Narayani Amma road, Palat Sankaran Nair road, Palat Madhavan Nair road. Nair also had five more children, among which another daughter Saraswathy Amma a. k. a. Anuji was married to the eminent diplomat K. P. S. Menon. Their son, Nair's grandson, also called K. P. S. Menon, and great grandson Shivshankar Menon were also diplomats who served as Foreign Secretary. Shivshankar Menon also served as India's 4th National Security Advisor. Nair's son R. M. Palat was also a noted politician in his own right. Lieutenant General KP Candeth, the Western Army Commander during the Indo Pak War of 1971 and the liberator of Goa, was another of Sir Sankaran Nair's grandsons. Candeth's nephew and Sir Sankaran Nair's great great grandson, Anil Menon, is a NASA astronaut. His nephew, V. M. M. Nair, was the oldest surviving ICS Officer in India when he died in 2021. Sankaran Nair's grand nephew (niece Ammukutty Amma's son) was K. K. Chettur, an ICS officer who also served as India's first ambassador to Japan. He was the father of Jaya Jaitly, a politician and socialist, whose husband Ashok Jaitly was chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir. Jaya's daughter Aditi is married to the former cricketer Ajay Jadeja. Another grand nephew of Sankaran Nair's was P. P. Narayanan (son of Chettur Narayanan Nair), a distinguished world trade unionist and leader in Malaysia (Morais 1984, introductory pages).