Innaiah Narisetti
From Philosopedia
Narisetti, Innaiah (1937– )
Innaiah, as he is generally known in Hyderabad, did his doctoral work researching the subject of thesis and anti-thesis by the media. His degree was delayed because his university ineptly ruled that, despite his having passed the thesis in writing, he had to receive a unanimity of examiners’ votes in order to pass his oral exams. Eventually, the nation’s high court ruled that the university had been in error for demanding the examining committee’s unanimity of favorable votes. Meanwhile, his thesis was examined in detail by three committees over a ten-year period, from 1969 to 1979.
In 1992 and 1994 he addressed the American Humanist Association conference in Washington, D.C., and in 1994 that group’s conference in Detroit. From 1992 to 1994 he was President of the Andhra Pradesh Rationalists Association, and in 1995 he became an executive member of the Indian Radical Humanist Association. In 1996 he was elected Vice President of the Rationalist Association of India. A former lecturer in philosophy at Osmania University, he is a journalist and author.
Narisetti has written about Agehananda Bharati’s Ochre Robe, which he translated into Telugu, describing the book’s being banned in India. The work had recorded Bharati’s memoirs about editing Vivekananda’s eight volumes, finding nonsense in Vivekananda’s views and mischievously pleading that inasmuch as the views had been allegedly expressed by a divine person nothing should be deleted or edited. The swamis in the Ashram detected the mischief and denied Bharati’s plea, also asking him to quit. Later he wrote further negative views about Vivekananda, who at the time was considered an influential nationalist and a modern spiritualist whose Yoga system was touted by many. Ramakrishna Ashram put pressure on the Indian government, and the book was banned in 1967. Later Bharati added a few pages, the work was published in the United States, and Narisetti translated it into Telugu as well as had it serialized in the daily Andhra Prabha.
In addition to being author of many books in Telugu, Narisetti has written Inside Andhra Pradesh (1980); The Philosophical Consequences of Modern Science (1982); The Birth and Death of Political Parties in India (1982); Politics for Power—Study of Contemporary Andhra Pradesh Politics (1982); Between Charisma and Corruption (1991); M. N. Roy, Evelyn, Ellen: A Bibliography (1996); and Forced Into Faith (2008). For the Encyclopedia of Unbelief, he wrote “Unbelief in India.”
Narisetti has written for Delhi’s Radical Humanist and Hyderabad’s Indian Rationalist as well as translated many works from English to Telugu, including M. N. Roy’s Reason, Romanticism, and Revolution. He signed Humanist Manifesto 2000.
In 2007, participating in a publication party at a Hyderabad press club where Taslima Nasrin's book in Telugu was being featured, lawmakers and members of the All India Majlis - Ittehadul Muslimeen party threatened Nasrin with a chair and hurled a leather case, bunches of flowers, and other objects at her, shouting for her death. Narisetti was slightly hurt while protecting her.
His wife, Komala, is a retired assistant professor of English at Dr. Ambedkar Open University in Hyderabad. His daughter is a Washington, D. C., psychiatrist, and his son is a business writer for The Wall Street Journal. Dr. Narisetti’s e-mail: <hu92@aol.com>. His address: A-60, Journalists’ Colony, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad 500 033, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Website: http://innaiahn.tripod.com/
(WAS, numerous conversations.)
