• Eminent historian M.G.S. Narayanan passed away in Kozhikode, Kerala on April 26. He was 93.

• He was the former chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR).

• One of India’s most reputed historians, he headed the department of history at University of Calicut from 1976 to 1990 and served as ICHR chairman from 2001-2003.

• Narayanan played a major role in shaping history and historiography as a form of knowledge.

A towering legacy in Indian historiography

• Muttayil Govinda Menon Sankara Narayanan (commonly known by his initials as MGS) was born on August 20, 1932.

• He had been a major cultural presence in Kerala for more than six decades.

• He was educated at the University of Madras where he earned a master’s degree in History with first rank. He taught at the Guruvayurappan College, Kozhikode, before moving to the post graduate department of History of the University of Kerala, then located in Kozhikode.

• The centre was later incorporated into the University of Calicut and on its inception, Narayanan became the head of the history department, where he taught for nearly 15 years. During this period, he brought in a major shift in the way history is studied and taught in Kerala.

• His PhD thesis, ‘Perumals of Kerala’ examined Kerala’s socio-political history from the 9th to the 12th centuries.

• He was closely associated with the Indian History Congress, where he served in various capacities. 

• He also served the ICHR as its first member secretary and later its chairman.

• Narayanan had received training in epigraphy and was proficient in Malayalam, English, Tamil, and Sanskrit, as well as Brahmi, Vattezhuthu and Grantha scripts.

• Besides his contributions in the field of history, Narayanan had also made his presence felt in Kerala as a poet, literary critic, political observer, critic, and social activist.

• He also worked as a visiting professor at several universities in India and abroad.

• He mentored over a thousand students and supervised many postgraduate research projects. With more than 200 published articles in Malayalam and English, he made historical scholarship more accessible through his literary flair.

• He had served as a Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and as visiting fellow at the University of Moscow and the Institute of Oriental Studies in Leningrad.

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