Anti-colonial warrior who counted Nehru, Bose as friends comes out of the shadows

A new biography of A.C.N. Nambiar says he saw from close quarters, the INA leader’s respect for Panditji’s influence on the freedom struggle

A.C.N. Nambiar, second from right, at a dinner with Indira Gandhi at the Indian Consulate in Geneva.

A.C.N. Nambiar was a man of many parts, but he had a life away from the public eye, as a trusted but discreet friend of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

The journalist-activist-diplomat who rubbed shoulders with kings, democrats, dictators, political activists and revolutionaries in Europe, and faced long detentions in foreign jails for no crime, also had ties to Subhas Chandra Bose.

At the end of the Second World War he was a pauper, only to rise like a phoenix. The story of Arathil Candeth Narayanan (ACN) Nambiar is now told in a book, ‘A Life In Shadow’ written by Vappala Balachandran, a former senior RAW official.

The book on the ‘forgotten anti-colonial warrior’, released here on Tuesday, is a 344-page anecdote-filled tour, with letters written by Nambiar, who was called Nanu in some circles, to Bose in 1945, as well as Nehru’s letter to him in 1947 and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s letters.

A renegade in Europe

Nambiar was active as a journalist in Europe before the Second World War. He helped raise awareness in India and Europe on colonial exploitation through his columns. To intelligence agencies he was, ironically, a ‘notorious communist’ or a Nazi collaborator, ‘a tool in the hands of the Nazis’, ‘Indian Renegade’, and turncoat.

The biography sketches Nambiar’s relationship with Nehru and Bose recalling his own descriptions.

In Badenweiler, Nehru gave him instructions on cooking eggs and washing his eyes. He told him that he was not young enough for yoga lessons. While Nambiar was an ambassador in Bonn, he was instructed by Nehru not to miss physical exercise; the Prime Minister said to him that one could pursue such activity even while shaving, by just raising one’s legs.

Contrary to the general impression, Bose wanted to make Asia his main centre of operations when he left India for Europe. This he told Nambiar in January 1942 when he joined him in Berlin. Nambiar was close to two key characters of the Independence struggle. Mr. Balachandran took 13 years to scour books and records to conclude, “As Nambiar saw it, Nehru and Bose differed not on the aim of independence but on the modalities. Nehru, although doubting certain assumptions and conclusions of Bose, never doubted his patriotism nor harboured any hatred. Bose...recognised Nehru’s importance and influence in India’s national struggle although he felt that Nehru’s pro-British attitude could be a problem.”

The book has Mrs. Gandhi’s letter where she talks to Nambiar, about Sanjay Gandhi. “Sanjay faced all the calumny, the false propaganda and the hardship of the last years with remarkable dignity and maturity,” she says.