Opinion The fearless Sir Sankaran Nair and the story of the Jallianwala Bagh case

Nair is the subject of an upcoming film called Kesari Chapter 2. The film is an adaptation of the 2019 book, The Case That Shook the Empire: One Man’s Fight for the Truth about the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, by Nair’s great grandson Raghu Palat and his wife Pushpa Palat.

Who was Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair?

Nair was born in 1857 in an aristocratic family of Mankara village in Malabar’s Palakkad district. After Nair graduated from Presidency College in Madras and got a degree in law, he was hired by Sir Horatio Shepherd who later became Chief Justice of Madras High Court.

Since his early days as a lawyer, Nair came to be known for an uncompromising commitment to what he believed, irrespective of the strength of the opposition he faced. This earned him the ire of the British and made him unpopular among his colleagues and peers; he was also despised by the Brahmins of Madras.

Edwin Montague, the Secretary of State for India, once described Nair as an “impossible person” who “shouts at the top of his voice and refuses to listen to anything when one argues, and is absolutely uncompromising” (cited in The Case That Shook the Empire).

Nair was a lawyer of stellar capabilities and a social reformer of formidable credentials. In 1897, he became the youngest president of the Indian National Congress. By 1908, he had been appointed as a permanent judge of Madras High Court. His best-known judgements indicated his commitment to social reforms — in Budasna v Fatima (1914), he ruled that those who converted to Hinduism could not be treated as outcastes, and in a few other cases, he upheld inter-caste and inter-religious marriages.

The great nationalist

Nair believed in India’s right to self-government. In 1919, he played an important role in the expansion of provisions in the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms which introduced a system of dyarchy in the provinces and increased participation of Indians in the administration. Following the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, he resigned from the Viceroy’s Council in protest.

In 1922, Nair published Gandhi and Anarchy, a book in which he spelt out his critique of Gandhi’s methods of non-violence, civil disobedience, and non-cooperation. He also accused Michael O’Dwyer, who was Lieutenant Governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre, of following policies that led to the deaths.

O’Dwyer sued Nair for defamation in England, expecting the English court to side with him. The trial before the King’s Bench in London went on for five and a half weeks. It was the longest-running civil case at the time.

The 12-member all-English jury was presided over by Justice Henry McCardie, who made no attempt to hide his bias toward O’Dwyer. The jury sided with O’Dwyer by a majority of 11 against 1, the lone dissent coming from the Marxist political theorist Harold Laski.

Nair was ordered to pay £500 and the expenses of the trial to the plaintiff. O’Dwyer said he would forgo the penalty if Nair apologised. Nair refused.

The trial had a resounding impact on the British empire in India. At a time when the nationalist movement was gaining momentum, Indians saw in the judgement the clear bias of the British against them and an effort to shield their own.

Nair passed away in 1934 at the age of 77.