A.C.N. Nambiar ( left in picture), who was the Berlin correspondent of The Hindu during 1926-1934, shifted his residence to New Delhi in late October 1984. Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had insisted on his return from Zurich as she was worried about his health. From 1927, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had treated and considered Nambiar to be a close family friend. For them, he was “Nanu”. Nehru had appointed him as India’s Ambassador to Sweden and West Germany. However, Nambiar chose to retire from diplomatic life in 1958 and resume his life as a journalist from Switzerland.
By 1933, Nambiar had become Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s trusted confidante in Europe. It was in the same year that Hitler’s police had expelled him from Germany after arresting him on February 27 for involvement in the Reichstag Fire along with Communists. In 1942, Bose brought Nambiar back to Berlin to join his team to carry on with his Indian independence struggle from Berlin. In 1943 he designated Nambiar as his successor for his European campaign when he secretly left for the Far East to lead the Indian National Army (INA). After the Second World War, the Allied Powers imprisoned Nambiar from 1945 to 1947. He was the only Indian freedom fighter to have been arrested by Hitler and the Allied Forces.
Soon after his arrival, Nambiar met Indira Gandhi on October 21, 1984. On October 22 he received a warm, handwritten letter from her, welcoming him and assuring him of all support including an offer to send him home cooked food from her house! However, on October 31, 1984 the world shattered for him. He was left staring at an uncertain future with Mrs Gandhi’s assassination. His only anchor in life had suddenly gone. He did not know India, which he had left 75 years ago. It adversely affected his health. He had to be in and out of the hospital repeatedly. He passed away on January 17, 1986.
A lifeline
What kept him going for a year after 1984 were letters he received regularly from European friends and his long conversations with persons (like this writer) on the difficulties of German politics to adjust to American thinking. One such friend who kept in touch with him constantly was Dr. Karl Otto Braun, a lover of India and a former German diplomat. Braun described himself as a “revisionist historian”, who he said, was “seeking the truth”, reflecting the traditional German dilemma of aligning too much with America, despite their admiration for American leadership.
Braun’s letter to Nambiar, dated April 11, 1985, seems relevant even now to understand the European dilemma of choosing America vis-à-vis Russia at a time when a common front to help Ukraine is being forged by Washington DC. One could thus appreciate the present Ukrainian criticism of the traditional German foreign policy towards Russia even by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had recently invited her to visit Bucha to see for herself “what the policy of 14 years of concessions to Russia has led to”.
At the Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, California, a controversial publication for “Holocaust Denial”, which organises the “Historical Revisionist Congress” has said that Dr. Braun, who passed away on August 21, 1988, was in contact with Netaji Bose, while in Germany. It has mentioned Braun’s role in “arranging Bose’s dramatic submarine voyage from Europe to Asia”. However, I could find no confirmation of this in my 10 years of research to write Nambiar’s biography.
Stalin and the Americans
What is interesting in Braun’s letter to Nambiar was the detail about his visit to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum in Albany, New York. In its secret archives, he found how F.D. Roosevelt had sent his trusted emissary Harry Hopkins to Stalin on July 31, 1941, to list out all the weapons that Stalin needed. Hopkins had said that Stalin wanted Roosevelt to know that he would welcome American troops on “any part of the Russian front under the complete command of the American army”. Stalin frankly admitted in the November 1943 Tehran Conference that “we Soviets would have lost the war” without American help.
By February 1945, this relationship had sunk when the Yalta Conference was held. Former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham has described this phase in his masterly work, Franklin and Winston (2003), regarding how Stalin insisted on his “Sphere of influence”, echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on Ukraine now.
Vappala Balachandran is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, and author of ‘A Life in Shadows: the Secret Story of A.C.N. Nambiar’. The views expressed are personal
