K. R. Narayanan

Kocheril Raman Narayanan was born on October 27, 1920, in Uzhavoor, a village in the Kottayam district of what was then the princely state of Travancore, now part of Kerala ^[1]. His family belonged to the Paravan community, a caste of coconut pluckers classed among the Dalits, groups long treated as untouchable in the traditional social order. His father, Kocheril Raman Vaidyar, practiced traditional medicine and commanded local respect, but the household of seven children lived in real poverty ^[2].

The date on his school records was not, by his own account, his actual birthday. An uncle who enrolled him at school was unsure of the date and chose one that would allow early admission, and October 27 stuck for the rest of his life ^[1]. Getting to class meant walking several kilometres, and there were terms when the family could not pay fees on time. Narayanan later recalled listening to lessons from outside the classroom when he had been barred for unpaid dues, and borrowing books because he could not buy them ^[2].

He pressed on regardless. After school in Uzhavoor and Kuravilangad he studied at C.M.S. College, Kottayam, and then took his degrees at the University of Travancore in Thiruvananthapuram, completing a master's in English literature in 1943. He finished first in the university, the first person from his community to do so, yet the state administration offered him only a lowly clerical post, which he declined ^[2]. That refusal set the pattern for a career built on scholarship rather than patronage.

Narayanan left Travancore for Delhi and then Bombay in the mid 1940s, supporting himself as a journalist. He worked for The Hindu and for The Times of India, and in 1945 he obtained an interview with Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, an encounter he described in print and remembered for the rest of his life ^[3].

Journalism paid poorly, and his ambition was to study abroad. He wrote to the industrialist J. R. D. Tata asking for help, and a scholarship from the Tatas took him to the London School of Economics ^[3]. There he read economics and political science and came under the influence of Harold Laski, the socialist political theorist whose lectures drew students from across the colonial world. Narayanan earned an honours degree in economics and, more importantly for what followed, Laski's confidence.

When Narayanan sailed home in 1948, Laski gave him a letter of introduction to Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of newly independent India. Narayanan delivered it in person in Delhi. Nehru read it, was impressed by the young man, and shortly afterwards Narayanan was offered entry into the Indian Foreign Service, which he joined in 1949 ^[3]. For a Dalit villager born under the Raj, admission to the country's elite diplomatic corps was almost without precedent.

The Foreign Service took Narayanan around Asia and beyond. His early postings included Rangoon, Tokyo, London, Canberra and Hanoi, and he later served as India's ambassador to Thailand and to Turkey ^[4]. In Rangoon he met Ma Tint Tint, a Burmese activist involved in social work. Marriage between an Indian diplomat and a foreign national required an exception under the service rules, and Nehru personally approved it. The couple married in 1951, and Ma Tint Tint became an Indian citizen, taking the name Usha Narayanan ^[4]. They had two daughters, Chitra, who followed her father into the Foreign Service and served as an ambassador, and Amrita.

Two ambassadorships defined his diplomatic reputation. In 1976 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent him to Beijing as India's first ambassador to China since the border war of 1962 had frozen relations, a posting that demanded patience and precision as the two countries began cautiously talking again ^[4]. Then in 1980, after he had formally retired from the service, Indira Gandhi recalled him to be ambassador to the United States, where he served until 1984. His tenure in Washington helped prepare Indira Gandhi's 1982 visit to the United States, part of a slow thaw in a relationship strained by Cold War alignments ^[5].

Between the two ambassadorships he spent a period in academia as Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, an institution he later described with affection. Colleagues in the service remembered him as a scholar diplomat: he wrote on international affairs, and a collection of his essays, India and America, reflected his interest in explaining the two democracies to each other ^[5].

At Indira Gandhi's urging, Narayanan entered electoral politics after returning from Washington. In 1984 he won the Ottapalam constituency in Kerala for the Congress party, and he held the seat again in 1989 and 1991 ^[5]. Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi he served as a Minister of State, handling portfolios that included planning, external affairs, and science and technology. He was never a mass politician in the conventional sense; his strength lay in committee rooms and drafting tables rather than on the stump.

In 1992 Parliament elected him Vice President of India, an office that carries the chairmanship of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. He presided over the chamber through five turbulent years that included the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition and a rapid churn of coalition governments ^[6]. His conduct in the chair, courteous but firm, widened the cross-party respect he already enjoyed.

That respect mattered in July 1997, the fiftieth anniversary year of independence, when the electoral college of MPs and state legislators chose the next head of state. Narayanan won the presidential election overwhelmingly against the former chief election commissioner T. N. Seshan, and on July 25, 1997 he was sworn in as the tenth President of India, the first Dalit ever to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan ^[1][6].

Anyone asking who was K. R. Narayanan as head of state usually gets the same phrase in reply: the working President. He used the description himself, saying he intended to act within the constitution rather than as a rubber stamp or as a rival power centre ^[6]. The distinction was tested quickly. In October 1997 he returned the union cabinet's recommendation to impose President's Rule in Uttar Pradesh, asking ministers to reconsider, and the government backed down. In 1998 he did the same when the Vajpayee cabinet sought to dismiss the state government in Bihar ^[6]. Both episodes set precedents for presidential scrutiny of Article 356, the constitutional provision allowing central takeover of state governments, which had often been used for partisan ends.

Among the most repeated K. R. Narayanan facts is that in 1998 he became the first sitting Indian president to vote in a general election, queueing at an ordinary polling booth to make the point that no citizen, however placed, stood outside the democratic process ^[7]. He also broke convention in his speeches. His address on Republic Day in 2000, marking fifty years of the constitution, warned that the fury of the patient and long-suffering people would endanger the state if social and economic inequality continued to be ignored, unusually direct language for the office ^[7].

His presidency coincided with the Kargil conflict of 1999, three general elections, and the visit of US President Bill Clinton in 2000, during which Narayanan pointedly questioned descriptions of South Asia as the most dangerous place in the world ^[7]. Reports of differences between the President and the Vajpayee government surfaced periodically, notably over the Gujarat riots of 2002 in his final months in office. He declined to seek a second term and stepped down in July 2002, succeeded by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam ^[6].

Retirement was brief and quiet. Narayanan and Usha moved to a house on Prithviraj Road in New Delhi, and he occasionally commented on public affairs, including remarks critical of the handling of the 2002 Gujarat violence ^[8]. In late 2005 he was admitted to the Army Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi with pneumonia and subsequent renal failure. He died there on November 9, 2005, at the age of 85, and was cremated with state honours beside the Yamuna at a site later named Karma Bhumi. Usha Narayanan, herself a translator of Burmese short stories and a promoter of welfare programmes for women and children, died in 2008 ^[8].

Assessments of K. R. Narayanan achievements begin with the symbolism of his rise, but rarely end there. He was the first Dalit President and the first Malayali to hold the office, yet he disliked being reduced to those labels, insisting he was President of all Indians while refusing to pretend caste prejudice had disappeared ^[1][7]. Constitutional scholars credit his handling of Article 356 recommendations and of the 1998 government formation, when he required coalition leaders to show letters of support before inviting anyone to form a ministry, with clarifying how a president should behave under hung parliaments ^[6].

His name survives in institutions and in memory. Kerala honours him through the K. R. Narayanan National Institute of Visual Science and Arts near Kottayam, and his village of Uzhavoor keeps his memory as its most famous son ^[8]. Any full K. R. Narayanan biography returns in the end to the distance travelled: a boy who listened to lessons through a classroom window became the citizen in whose name the Republic's laws were signed. Few careers in independent India say more about what its constitution promised, and how much effort the promise still demands.