CV Devan Nair
IHF-SG Excellence Award For Lifetime Achievement
Cengkaran Veetil Devan Nair was Singapore’s third president and the first of Indian extract. His presidency lasted between 1981 and May1985 when he abruptly resigned the office before his term ended, citing health reasons.
An activist turned unionist turned politician, the one-time colourful, controversial and resolute Nair was a man with a soft spot for English Literature and the sonnets of Shakespeare. Ever as President he would visit schools and live out the passion he always had for the English language and the finer semantics of literature.
But he will be remembered more for his unassuming public profile in spearheading the drive to inaugurate the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) the omnibus label that comprised all the trade unions in Singapore.
CV Devan Nair was born in Malacca on 5 August 1923. His father was a rubber plantation clerk and mother a housewife; the family moved to Singapore in 1933. His early education was at Rangoon Primary School and later his secondary education was at Victoria School. In 1940, he passed his Cambridge examinations with flying colors and started teaching after World War I, beginning at St Joseph’s Institution and later at St Andrew’s School.
He became interested in union work and in 1949 was elected as the General Secretary of the Singapore Teachers’ Union (STU). His mentor in the labour movement was PV Sharma who had clout in the STU. Union work and Sharma’s influence ignited patriotism in Nair and this led to anti-colonial activities against British rule. He was arrested in 1951 after the Hock Lee bus riots and jailed until 1953. Upon his release, he joined the Singapore Factory and Shop Workers Union as its secretary.
He was one of the founding members and first Exco members of the PAP Central Committee when it was formed by Lee Kuan Yew and others in 1954. An astute politician who never lost his appetite for political combat, Nair, along with his People’s Action Party (PAP) comrades waged internecine warfare against communists, colonialists and the communalists in Singapore’s formative years.
In 1957, Nair and his comrades in the PAP, Lim Chin Song, James and Dominic Puducherry (brothers), Fong Swee Suan, S Woodhul, PV Sharma and others were arrested by the British government for anti-colonial activities and kept in prison until the PAP formed the first self-governing government in 1959. Before taking office, the PAP demanded that all the political prisoners be released by the colonial government. The British and Lim Yew Hock government relented. It was only after their release that the PAP’s first cabinet was sworn in. Many of them were subsequently appointed as political secretaries to the various ministries but before the end of the first year, many of them, including Nair, resigned as they could not adjust to the mundane jobs. They used to busy schedules planning union and other work and giving instructions before they were imprisoned, sitting around in an office and taking instructions from insignificant superiors would have been torture. Nair went back to teaching.
Arrival of Secretary-General of National Trades Union Congress, Devan Nair, back in Singapore greeted by his family members. Photo credit- Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
Later, the government appointed him as the Chairman of the Prisons Inquiry Commission which was tasked with improving the prisons’ workings and environment. He was also responsible for the creation of Adult Education Board and served as its first chairman from 1960 to 1964.
Under his stewardship, relations between the ruling PAP and NTUC became organically close, keenly remembered for the industrial peace and calm it brought to a nation otherwise wrecked by strife and fratricidal warfare.
Nair was responsible for the establishment of the NTUC Insurance Co-Operative INCOME, the NTUC Fairprice Supermarkets and the COMFORT Taxi Co-operative.
When Singapore was part of Malaysia, he contested in the General Election of Malaysia in 1964 and won the PAP’s only seat from Bangsar constituency in KL. In 1969, after his term in the Malaysian Parliament ended, he decided to return to Singapore to help modernise and expand the labour movement.
He resumed the post of Secretary-General of the NTUC until 1979 when he became its President. Nair also served as the president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Asian Regional Organisation, from 1976 to October 1981 In recognition of Nair’s achievements and his leadership of the labour movement, he was awarded the Public Service Star in 1963. In 1976, the University of Singapore now National University of Singapore) conferred on him an Honorary Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa).
In 1979, Nair stood for the by-election at the Anson constituency as a PAP candidate and won the seat. He retained his seat at the General Election held in 1980 but resigned in 1981 to assume the highest office in the country as President of Singapore.
He also authored books such as the following: ‘Who Lives If Malaysia Dies?, Tomorrow: The Peril and the Promise’, ‘Singapore: Socialism that Works’ and ‘Asian Labour and the Dynamics of Change.
After stepping down from the office of the presidency, Nair spent the final years of his life in Canada with his wife Avadai Dhanam Laxshimi, their daughter and her family.