Chakravarthi Vijayaraghava Narasimhan MBE, ICS (21 May 1915,

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

2 November 2003,

Chennai Chennai, also known as Madras (List of renamed places in India#Tamil Nadu, its official name until 1996), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Tamil Nadu by population, largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and ...

) was an

Indian Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British Raj, British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 3 ...

officer and a former Under Secretary-General of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

, serving twenty-two years in the UN. Born in Madras, he was educated at St. Joseph's College, Tiruchi, the University of Madras and

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

. He entered the Indian Civil Service in September 1937. As a Deputy Secretary in the Development Department of the Madras Government, he was appointed a Member of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(MBE) in the 1946 New Year Honours. He transferred to the service of the new Union Government in 1950, joining the Ministry of Agriculture. In 1953, he joined the Ministry of Finance and headed the Economic Affairs Department, responsible for development and co-ordination of foreign aid programmes. He was appointed to the United Nations in 1956, as Executive Secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Asia and Far East. In 1958, he was appointed Under-Secretary for Special Political Questions in the U.N., to work directly under the U.N. Secretary General,

Dag Hammarskjöld Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (English: ,; 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second secretary-general of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Septe ...

, and with Nobel laureate

Ralph Bunche Ralph Johnson Bunche ( ; August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Priz ...

. In 1961, he became Chef de Cabinet in the U.N. His last post was as Under Secretary-General before retirement in 1978. In 2001, he received India's second highest honor, the

Padma Vibhushan The Padma Vibhushan ( , lit. "Lotus Grandeur") is the second-highest civilian award of the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "exceptional and distinguished service". All persons w ...

. A vocalist, scholar and connoisseur of

Carnatic music Carnatic music (known as or in the Dravidian languages) is a system of music commonly associated with South India, including the modern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and southern Odisha. It is o ...

, he also wrote an English translation of the ''

Mahābhārata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kurukshetra War, a war of succe ...

'' based on selected verses in 1965. His translation was criticized by

James L. Fitzgerald James L. Fitzgerald is an Indologist at Brown University. He studied at the University of Chicago, receiving his B.A. in 1971, his M.A. in Sanskrit in 1974 and his Ph.D. in Sanskrit and South Asian Civilizations in 1980. At Chicago he studied prim ...

, St. Purander Das Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Classics at Brown University, as being "dry and oversimplified", but praised it as a "useful recapitulation of the bare bones of the story".

References

Munzinger Archiv
(German) {{DEFAULTSORT:Narasimhan, Chakravarthi V. 1915 births 2003 deaths Indian civil servants Members of the Order of the British Empire Indian Civil Service (British India) officers Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan in civil service Indian officials of the United Nations