A. C. N. Nambiar

Arathil Candeth Narayanan Nambiar (1896 – 17 January 1986) was an Indian Nationalist and a friend and colleague of Subhas Chandra Bose. Originally from Thalassery, Kannur, Kerala, Nambiar spent much of his life serving the Indian independence movement in Europe.

Biography

Early life A. C. Narayanan Nambiar was the fourth son of writer Vengayil Kunhiraman Nayanar and Arathil Candeth Kallyani Amma. Narayanan belongs to the Arathil Candeth family through matrilineal succession. His nephew is K. P. Candeth, a Lieutenant General in the Indian Army and first Governor of Goa.

He married Suhasini Chattopadhyay, the sister of Sarojini Naidu, and the first woman Communist member of India in 1919. Later they separated.

Europe

Nambiar had been working in Europe as a left-wing journalist for some time when the Second World War broke out. In the 1930s he had been beaten up by Nazi stormtroopers, imprisoned, and then deported, at first to Prague. At the outbreak of war he was working in Paris.

According to MI5 documents that remained classified until 2014, the British believed Nambiar was a Soviet spy before the war. The documents show that a Soviet defector in the 1950s said Nambiar had been an agent of the GRU in the 1920s. Nambiar had visited Moscow in 1929 while active in Indian communist organisations. (The declassified documents also included correspondence between Nambiar and Bose captured after the surrender of German submarine U-234.)

In January 1943 Bose secretly transferred by submarine to the Japanese theatre of war, leaving Nambiar in charge in Germany. There was more potential there for recruitment to Bose's cause amongst Indian prisoners; large numbers had been taken in the Fall of Singapore. The attitude of Bose and Nambiar towards Nazi Germany slowly transformed from seeing it as a convenient way of obtaining material support for their cause to believing that German victory was essential for them to succeed. As a consequence, they more and more accepted use of the Legion in the German cause as opposed to exclusively in India. In April Nambiar had to deal with a mutiny in the Legion, who were reluctant to move to the Netherlands as ordered. They had believed they would be fighting in India or somewhere from where they could attack towards India such as North Africa. By August the Centre's operations became severely disrupted by Allied bombing and Nambiar's own house was destroyed. Most activity was moved out of Berlin, but Nambiar remained there as Bose's official representative. In March 1944 Nambiar was appointed Minister of State in Bose's Provisional Government. He then worked as a counsellor at the Indian Legation in Berne. He was appointed Indian ambassador to Scandinavia, then, in 1955 he was appointed the second Indian Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, succeeding Subimal Dutt. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1958. Nambiar finished his career as European correspondent of the Hindustan Times.