By Sunil Kumar
Chettur Sankaran Nair, a Keralite from a wealthy family in Pallakad district on the Malabar coast, was a distinguished Indian lawyer, nationalist and statesman. He became the youngest president of the Indian National Congress in its nascent years. In 1912, he was knighted by the British crown.
At the time of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, CS Nair served as Education Minister and the sole Indian representative in the Viceroy’s Executive Council—which was a singular honour. Why? At a time the British colonial authorities tended to look down and disparage the entire Indian population as ‘cattle class’ in Tharoor’s infamous words, they would only take a man of sufficient distinction and intellect as a member. Also, a degree of deference to the Empire would have been an added bonus.
Like India’s first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the horrific massacre and the inhumanity on display by Reginald Dyer and the Governor of the Punjab- both of Irish descent, Sankaran Nair’s conscience was shaken, he voiced his anguish and resigned in protest. This led to British revoking martial law in the Punjab. He wrote a book called ‘Gandhi and Anarchy” in which he criticized the Governor of the Punjab Micheal O’Dwyer. This led to a libel suit from Dwyer who had returned to London. This being colonial times, the jury was biased against Nair and he lost. He opted to pay 500 pounds as damages rather than apologize to Dwyer. Dwyer was killed by Udham Singh in 1940 and C Sankaran Nair was dead much before that in 1934.
