R.Madhvan signed “Rocketry: The Nambi Effect” in 2018 for the role of Nambi Narayanan, one of ISRO’s most accomplished and greatest rocket scientists, but later Madhavan also became the director of the movie. The film was released on 1 July 2022 in theaters to great critical acclaim and commercial success. But what about the one-of-a-kind genius the film was created upon?
Nambi Narayan was awarded on 26 January 2019 with India's third highest civilian national award, the Padma Bhushan award, by the President of India Ramnath Kovind. This man is a scientist, a so-called spy, and a scholar who was accused of cheating his nation.
"Kalam did ask me to quit the fight, but I'm made of different mettle. Kalam thought he could use my expertise for certain developmental activities if I could free myself from this case. My priority was to prove myself right.” Mr. Narayanan said.
Early Life:
Nambi Narayanan born on 12 December 1941,in Nagercoil, kanyakumari,Tamilnadu. He completed his schooling at DVD higher secondary school in Nagercoil, Tamilnadu. From Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, he did his BTech and he paid college fees by scholarship. He went to Princeton University for MSE.
Family:
His father died when he was very young, and his mother was not in good health. His wife Meena and his son Sankar Kumar Narayanan is a businessman and his daughter Geetha Arunam is married to an ISRO scientist Subbiah Arunan, director of the Mars orbiter mission and recipient of the Padma Shri award
In an interview, Narayanan said that "I was an 18-year-old boy with a sick mother and two sisters to get married. There began a difficult life. When other students took money from home, I sent some money home. I always had a stressful life, and that was thrust upon me when my father died.".
Career:
After completing college he worked for some time in the sugar industry. He met with ISRO chairman Vikram Sarabhai in 1966 at Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station Thumba Thiruvananthapuram. Influenced by Narayanan's work, Sarabhai selected him for ISRO, where he worked as a payload integrator with another scientist YS Rajan. Then he registered in an Engineering college for a master's degree in Thiruvananthapuram for M. Tech. Knowing about his education plan, Sarabhai offered Narayanan to leave for his further education. In 1969 he received a fellowship from NASA, and after that from Princeton University, New Jersey he completed a master's in Chemical Rocket Engineering in 10 months Under the leadership of Luigi Crocco.
Narayanan was offered a job in NASA, with US citizenship, but he returned to India. APJ Abdul Kalam was working on solid motors with his team in the early 1970s. Narayanan came with the technology of liquid fluid rocket science. ISRO's chairman Satish Dhawan and after them Mr. UR Rao encouraged Narayanan to work on his idea of a liquid fuel engine.
Narayanan once said, "When I began working with ISRO, the space organization was in its infancy. We never really had a plan to develop any rocket system. We were planning to use rockets from the US and France to fly our payload.” But Narayanan lead an Indian project to develop their rocket.
As a result of his constant work, he made liquid propellant motors. In the mid-70s, he successfully made a 600-kilogram (1,300Ibs) engine. His team continued working on making bigger engines.
Société Européenne de Propulsion was ready to transfer the technology of Vikas Engines in 1974, in return for 100 manpower engineering work from ISRO. This time work was completed in three teams. The team of 40 engineers led by Narayanan worked on technology purchases from France. The other two teams were working on transferring the hardware to India and setting up a development opportunity in Mahendragiri. In 1985, they successfully tested the first Vikas Engines. According to an ISRO report Narayanan's exceptional organizational and management abilities.
Russia agreed to transfer the technology to India in 1992, but countries like France and America refused, stating that the deal violates the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime to stop the spread of Long-term and Medium Missiles that are capable of transferring nuclear weapons. That time, under pressure president Boris Yeltsin, paused the deal while officers from India and US solved the issue.
Narayanan was in charge of the cryogenic department in ISRO. They were working for around 2 decades with France's assistance in making cryogenic engines. Narayanan is recognized for making India's first liquid propellant motors and this motor developed into the cryogenic engine. This engine is used in GSLV (Geo-synchronous Launching vehicles).
November 1994:
Kerala police arrested a Maldivian woman for staying without a visa in India. Later they changed her espionage, after that they found the phone number of D Sasikumaran (ISRO scientist) in her diary. Then they went to arrest Sasikumaran, Mariam Rashida's friend and ISRO'S contractor S.K.Sharma, a Russian space agency's office K.Chandrasekhar and Maldivian woman Fauzai Hassan. They were blamed for conspiring and stealing from ISRO'S Vikas Engines and selling cryogenic technology to Pakistan. As told by police that Mariam had said that ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan was involved in spying with her.
On 30th November 1994, ISRO cryogenic engine project director Mr. Nambi Narayanan was also arrested. Following a few months, his prestige and dignity were ruined.
Narayanan said about the charges, he was being charged for selling the technology( the cryogenic engine) which was not possessed in India at that time. He also said "We were getting Vikas engines fabricated by outsiders. When we folded the tender, over 200 people asked for the drawings and we sent them to all of them. Now, why should I sell the same drawing?"
When the case was transferred to the CBI, they were willing to listen to what Narayanan was saying and treated him politely. There was no violence but repeated questioning. In the end, the officers apologized to him for the espionage case. In April 1996, CBI found that there was no evidence against Narayanan. The charges of the Intelligence Bureau and Kerala police against Narayanan were false. Sasikumaran and Nambi Narayanan were released after 50 days of custody in January 1996.
Clearing His Good Name And Image:
ISRO did not support Nambi Narayanan as "ISRO could not interfere in a legal matter." said Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan (then chairman of ISRO).
Mr. Narayanan again started work but now it was an admin post in Bangalore. The local government try to reopen his case and took his case to the Supreme Court, which was dismissed in 1998.
In 1999 National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) give an order against the Kerala government for torturing Nambi and his family. In 2001, NHRC ordered the Kerala government to compensate Narayanan one crore. Mr. Narayanan retired the same year.
He stated in an interview, “People will come to our house and burn my effigy, call me names, seek slogans. My family suffered a lot. My children were agitated and fought back. But my wife slipped into depression and stopped talking.”
He remembered an incident about his wife Meena being forced out of an auto-rickshaw by the driver when he knew her identity and did not allow her to travel. "The cruelest part was that it was raining at that time," he said.
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