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Sir C. Sankaran Nair: The Defiant Patriot Who Took On The British In Their Land, Erased From India’s Memory

April 8, 2025
The Commune

As Akshay Kumar prepares to bring Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair’s story to life in Kesari Chapter 2, the timing couldn’t be more poignant. The film’s trailer launch in April 2025 saw Nair’s great-grandson overcome with emotion as he thanked the team for resurrecting his ancestor’s legacy. This cinematic revival coincides with British MP Bob Blackman’s recent demand in Parliament for an official apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre – an atrocity that Nair fought tirelessly to expose. The irony is stark: while a foreign politician acknowledges colonial crimes, India has largely forgotten the patriot who challenged the Empire at its zenith.

Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair 

In the pantheon of India’s freedom fighters, Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair (born 11 July 1857, in Mankara, Malabar District, Madras Presidency) occupies a peculiar position: a man of towering intellect and unshakable integrity, whose bold stands against the British Empire should have made him a national hero — and yet whose name has been quietly dropped from the mainstream nationalist narrative.
Educated in law and called to the Bar from Lincoln’s Inn, Nair rose rapidly through the ranks of India’s legal and political systems. He became one of the first Indians to be appointed Advocate-General of the Madras Presidency, later serving as a judge of the Madras High Court and as a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council — one of the highest offices accessible to Indians under the Raj.
But more than titles, it was his refusal to bend — to colonial brutality, religious extremism, or political opportunism — that set him apart.

Born in 1857 in Kerala’s Malabar region – the year of India’s First War of Independence – Sankaran Nair embodied the intellectual firepower that colonial rulers feared most. His meteoric rise through the British system was itself an act of subversion: becoming Advocate-General of Madras Presidency by 1898, President of the Indian National Congress in 1897, and ultimately the highest-ranking Indian in the colonial government as member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. These weren’t positions of compromise, but strategic footholds from which he dismantled imperial pretensions through legal mastery and moral courage.

A Lone Resignation After a Massacre

When General Dyer opened fire on unarmed civilians in Amritsar on 13 April 1919, killing several hundreds, there was widespread condemnation across India. But few officials within the British administration took action.

C. Sankaran Nair was one of the exceptions. As a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council — one of the highest positions an Indian could hold at the time — his resignation in protest sent shockwaves through the colonial establishment. It was the first high-level act of defiance by an Indian insider against the British state’s brutality.

But Nair’s resistance did not end there.

The Libel Trial that Took the Fight to London

In 1922, Sankaran Nair published Gandhi and Anarchy, a fiercely critical book that not only challenged Mahatma Gandhi’s methods but also directly accused Michael O’Dwyer — the former Lieutenant Governor of Punjab — of responsibility for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. O’Dwyer sued Nair for libel in a London court.

The British expected an Indian to back down on foreign soil. But Nair held his ground, making it one of the earliest examples of an Indian challenging the British Empire legally and morally in its own courts. Though the case ended in O’Dwyer’s favor, it forced British society to once again confront the horror of Jallianwala Bagh.

A Critic of Congress and Khilafat

While Nair stood firmly against British atrocities, he was also unafraid to question the direction of India’s nationalist movement under Congress.

He opposed Gandhi’s alliance with the Khilafat Movement, which aimed to restore the Ottoman Caliphate after World War I. For Nair, secular nationalism and Islamic theocracy could not be reconciled. He also condemned the Moplah riots of 1921 in Kerala, where hundreds of Hindus were killed and forcibly converted. While Congress attempted to frame the Moplahs as misguided anti-colonial rebels, Nair insisted on calling the atrocities by their name.

Such dissent, however, came at a cost. Nair’s refusal to toe the Congress line meant that he would never be embraced as part of the official nationalist canon.

A Modernist Who Pushed For Reform

Nair’s brilliance extended beyond politics. A Cambridge-educated lawyer, he was one of the youngest advocates to appear before the Madras High Court. He was deeply committed to social reform — advocating for women’s education, the abolition of untouchability, and legal rights for children and widows.

As President of the Indian National Congress in 1897, decades before Gandhi rose to prominence, he had already begun shaping the discourse around Indian self-rule. But unlike many of his peers, Nair believed constitutional and legal methods — not mass disobedience — were the path to sustainable change.

In this, he resembled Dr. B.R. Ambedkar far more than Gandhi.

Erased From Textbooks, Remembered Abroad?

Despite his legacy, Nair has been largely erased from Indian textbooks, memorials, and popular consciousness. His legal battle against O’Dwyer is barely discussed. His critiques of Congress and the Khilafat are conveniently forgotten.

Ironically, in 2025, a British MP named Bob Blackman has called for a formal UK apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Meanwhile, the man who actually resigned over it, challenged O’Dwyer in a British court, and laid bare the brutality of Empire — still has no statue in India’s capital, no school curriculum chapter, no public tribute.

Why He Still Matters

In today’s politically polarized climate, C. Sankaran Nair offers a reminder that nationalism doesn’t have to mean conformity. His courage lay not just in challenging colonial injustice, but in standing up to ideological orthodoxy — whether it came from the Raj or from Congress headquarters.

He was a rebel with principles. And for that reason alone, it is time we reclaimed his memory.

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