Narayanan Raghavan Pillai

Sir Narayanan Raghavan Pillai, of Elenkath, KCIE, CBE (24 July 1898 – 31 March 1992), popularly known as "Rag", was an Indian civil servant, bureaucrat and statesman. He served as the first Cabinet Secretary in independent India, 1950–1953, and as the second Secretary General in the Ministry of External Affairs, He also served as India's Ambassador to France.

Early life

Pillai was born in Travancore kingdom (present-day Kerala) on 24 July 1898, in a distinguished Nair family of Elankath in South Travancore. He was a matrilineal descendant of Dewan Nanoo Pillai. Elankom Gardens in Diamond Hill, Trivandrum is named after the family's town house. He read English and became a Bachelor of Arts first-class honours in 1918 from Madras University, subsequently receiving a government scholarship to study at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. There, he took the Tripos in Natural Sciences in 1921 and a Tripos in Law in 1922, both times with first-class honours.

Career

British India

Joining the Indian Civil Service (ICS) in 1922, Pillai initially served in the Central Provinces as an assistant commissioner and as an officiating deputy commissioner from March–November 1927. During his career with the ICS, Pillai was appointed to various secretarial positions in the then United Provinces. He successively served as an assistant collector of customs in Madras (now Chennai, 1927–1929) and as deputy director of commercial intelligence at Kolkata (1929–1932). He was promoted to deputy secretary in March 1932, joining the Commerce Department.

In his last years, he resided at 26 Hans Place in Kensington, Knightsbridge. He died on 31 March 1992, just short of 94.

Personal life

In 1928, he married and the couple had two sons. Nisha Pillai, the former BBC presenter, is one of his grandchildren.

Honours

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1937, Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1939 Birthday Honours and Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in the 1946 Birthday Honours.

Pillai was awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 1960, and was made an honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, his old college, in 1970.