P. V. Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 in a Telugu speaking Niyogi Brahmin family in the village of Laknepalli village of Narsampet mandal, in Warangal district, now in Telangana. Later he was adopted and brought to Vangara, a village in Bheemadevarpalle mandal of Karimnagar district in Telangana, then part of Hyderabad State, when he was three years old. His father, Pamulaparthi Sitarama Rao, and mother, Pamulaparthi Rukmini (Rukminamma), hailed from agrarian families. Popularly known as P. V., he completed part of his primary education in Katkuru village of Bheemdevarapalli mandal in Karimnagar district by staying in his relative Gabbeta Radhakishan Rao’s house and studying for his Bachelor’s degree in the Arts college at the Osmania University. P. V. Narasimha Rao was part of Vande Matram movement in late 1930s in the Hyderabad state. He later went on to Hislop College, now under Nagpur University, where he completed a Master’s degree in law. He completed his law from Fergusson College in Pune of the University of Bombay (now Mumbai).

He supported Indira Gandhi in formation of New Congress party in 1969 by splitting the Indian National Congress. This was later regrouped as Congress (I) party in 1978. He served as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Andhra Pradesh districts in 1972. He rose to national prominence in 1972 for handling several diverse portfolios, most significantly Home, Defence and Foreign Affairs, in the cabinets of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. He serves as Foreign minister from 1980 to 1984 and then from 1988 to 1989. In fact, it is speculated that he was in the running for the post of India’s President along with Zail Singh in 1982.

Narasimha Rao was married to Satyamma Rao, who died on 1 July 1970. They had three sons and five daughters. His eldest son P. V. Rangarao was an education minister in Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy’s cabinet and MLA from Hanamakonda Assembly Constituency, in Warangal District for two terms. His second son, P. V. Rajeshwar Rao, was a Member of Parliament of the 11th Lok Sabha (15 May 1996 – 4 December 1997) from Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency.

Rao was an active freedom fighter during the Indian Independence movement and joined full-time politics after independence as a member of the Indian National Congress. He served as an elected representative for Andhra Pradesh state assembly from 1957 to 1977. He served in various ministerial positions in Andhra government from 1962 to 1973. He became the Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1971 and implemented land reforms and land ceiling acts strictly. He secured reservation for lower castes in politics during his tenure. President’s rule had to be imposed to counter the Jai Andhra movement during his tenure.

Rao, along with fellow minister K. K. Tewary, Chandraswami and K. N. Aggarwal, were accused of forging documents showing that Ajeya Singh had opened a bank account in the First Trust Corporation Bank in St. Kitts and deposited $21 million in it, making his father V. P. Singh its beneficiary. The alleged intent was to tarnish V. P. Singh’s image. This supposedly happened in 1989. However, only after Rao’s term as PM had expired in 1996, was he formally charged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the crime. Less than a year later the court acquitted him due to lack of evidence linking him with the case.

Rao very nearly retired from politics in 1991. It was the assassination of the Congress President Rajiv Gandhi that persuaded him to make a comeback. As the Congress had won the largest number of seats in the 1991 elections, he had an opportunity to head the minority government as Prime Minister. He was the first person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to serve as Prime Minister for five continuous years, the first to hail from the state of Andhra Pradesh, and also the first from southern India. Since Rao had not contested the general elections, he then participated in a by-election in Nandyal to join the parliament. Rao won from Nandyal with a victory margin of a record 5 lakh (500,000) votes and his win was recorded in the Guinness Book Of World Records and he was Prime Minister of India at that time; later on, in 1996, he was MP from Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha. His cabinet included Sharad Pawar, himself a strong contender for the Prime Minister’s post, as Defence Minister. He also broke a convention by appointing a non-political economist and future prime minister, Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister. He also appointed Subramanian Swamy, an Opposition party member as the Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade. This has been the only instance that an Opposition Party member was given a Cabinet rank post by the ruling party. He also sent Opposition leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to represent India in a UN meeting at Geneva.

Rao decided that India, which in 1991 was on the brink of bankruptcy, would benefit from liberalising its economy. He appointed economist Dr. Manmohan Singh, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, as Finance Minister to accomplish his goals. This liberalisation was criticised by many socialist nationalists at that time.

Rao also made diplomatic overtures to Western Europe, the United States, and China. He decided in 1992 to bring into the open India’s relations with Israel, which had been kept covertly active for a few years during his tenure as a Foreign Minister, and permitted Israel to open an embassy in New Delhi. He ordered the intelligence community in 1992 to start a systematic drive to draw the international community’s attention to Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism against India and not to be discouraged by US efforts to undermine the exercise. Rao launched the Look East foreign policy, which brought India closer to ASEAN. According to Rejaul Karim Laskar, a scholar of India’s foreign policy and ideologue of Rao’s Congress Party, Rao initiated the Look East policy with three objectives in mind, namely, to renew political contacts with the ASEAN-member nation; to increase economic interaction with South East Asia in trade, investment, science and technology, tourism, etc.; and to forge strategic and defence links with several countries of South East Asia. He decided to maintain a distance from the Dalai Lama in order to avoid aggravating Beijing’s suspicions and concerns, and made successful overtures to Tehran. The ‘cultivate Iran’ policy was pushed through vigorously by him. These policies paid rich dividends for India in March 1994, when Benazir Bhutto’s efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir failed, with opposition by China and Iran.

Members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) demolished the Babri Mosque (which was constructed by Mir Baqi, a general of India’s first Mughal Emperor, Babur in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. The site is the birthplace of the Hindu God Rama . The destruction of the disputed structure, which was widely reported in the international media, unleashed large scale communal violence, the most extensive since the Partition of India. Hindus and Muslims were indulged in massive rioting across the country, and almost every major city including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bhopal struggled to control the unrest.

In 1993, a strong earthquake in Latur, Maharashtra killed nearly 10,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Rao was applauded by many for using modern technology and resources to organise major relief operations to assuage the stricken people, and for schemes of economic reconstruction.

Rao’s government faced a no-confidence motion in July 1993, because the opposition felt that it did not have sufficient numbers to prove a majority. It was alleged that Rao, through a representative, offered millions of rupees to members of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), and possibly a breakaway faction of the Janata Dal, to vote for him during the confidence motion. Shailendra Mahato, one of those members who had accepted the bribe, turned approver. In 1996, after Rao’s term in office had expired, investigations began in earnest in the case. In 2000, after years of legal proceedings, a special court convicted Rao and his colleague, Buta Singh (who is alleged to have escorted the MPs to the Prime Minister). Rao was sentenced to three years in prison for corruption. “I sentence the accused PV Narasimha Rao and Buta Singh to rigorous imprisonment up to three years and a fine of 100,000 rupees ($2,150),” the judge said in his order. Rao appealed to the Delhi High Court and remained free on bail. In 2002, the Delhi High Court overturned the lower court’s decision mainly due to the doubt in credibility of Mahato’s statements (which were extremely inconsistent) and both Rao and Buta Singh were cleared of the charges.

Rao knew he had only one chance to test before sanctions kicked in, i.e., he could not both test conventional atomic bombs in December 1995 as well as the hydrogen bomb separately in April 1996. As Shekhar Gupta – who has had unprecedented access to Rao as well as the nuclear team – speculates: “By late 1995, Rao’s scientists told him that they needed six more months. They could test some weapons but not others…thermonuclear etc. So Rao began a charade of taking preliminary steps to test, without intending to test then.”

“Saamagri tayyar hai,” Rao had said. (“The ingredients are ready.”) “You can go ahead.” The conventional narrative at the time was that prime minister Rao had wanted to test nuclear weapons in December 1995. The Americans had caught on, and Rao had dithered – as was his wont. Three years later, prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee fulfilled his party’s campaign promise by ordering five nuclear tests below the shimmering sands of Rajasthan.

Kalam recalls that Rao ordered him not to test, since “the election result was quite different from what he anticipated”. The BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee took over as prime minister on 16 May 1996. Narasimha Rao, Abdul Kalam and R Chidambaram went to meet the new prime minister “so that”, in Kalam’s telling, “the smooth takeover of such a very important programme can take place”.

Rao was the “true father” of India’s nuclear programme. Vajpayee said that, in May 1996, a few days after he had succeeded Rao as prime minister, “Rao told me that the bomb was ready. I only exploded it.”

In spite of significant achievements in a difficult situation, in the 1996 general elections the Indian electorate voted out Rao’s Congress Party. Soon, Sonia Gandhi’s supporters forced Mr. Rao to step down as Party President. He was replaced by Sitaram Kesri.

Rao energised the national nuclear security and ballistic missiles programme, which ultimately resulted in the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. It is speculated that the tests were actually planned in 1995, during Rao’s term in office, and that they were dropped under American pressure when the US intelligence got the whiff of it. Another view was that he purposefully leaked the information to gain time to develop and test thermonuclear device which was not yet ready. He increased military spending, and set the Indian Army on course to fight the emerging threat of terrorism and insurgencies, as well as Pakistan and China’s nuclear potentials. It was during his term that terrorism in the Indian state of Punjab was finally defeated. Also scenarios of aircraft hijackings, which occurred during Rao’s time ended without the government conceding the terrorists’ demands. He also directed negotiations to secure the release of Doraiswamy, an Indian Oil executive, from Kashmiri terrorists who kidnapped him, and Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat posted in New Delhi in October 1991, who was kidnapped by Sikh terrorists. Rao also handled the Indian response to the occupation of the Hazratbal holy shrine in Jammu and Kashmir by terrorists in October 1993. He brought the occupation to an end without damage to the shrine. Similarly, he dealt with the kidnapping of some foreign tourists by a terrorist group called Al Faran in Kashmir in 1995 effectively. Although he could not secure the release of the hostages, his policies ensured that the terrorists demands were not conceded to, and that the action of the terrorists was condemned internationally, including Pakistan.

National elections were scheduled for May 1996, and Rao spent the next two months campaigning. On 8 May at 21:00, Abdul Kalam was asked to immediately meet with the prime minister. Rao told him, “Kalam, be ready with the Department of Atomic Energy and your team for the N-test and I am going to Tirupati. You wait for my authorisation to go ahead with the test. DRDO-DAE teams must be ready for action.” Rao energised the national nuclear security and ballistic missiles programme. His efforts resulted in the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests.

Lakhubhai Pathak, an Indian businessman living in England, alleged that Chandraswami and K. N. Aggarwal alias Mamaji, along with Rao, cheated him out of $100,000. The amount was given for an express promise for allowing supplies of paper pulp in India, and Pathak alleged that he spent an additional $30,000 entertaining Chandraswami and his secretary. Narasimha Rao and Chandraswami were acquitted of the charges in 2003 and before his death, Rao was acquitted of all the cases charged against him,

Rao suffered a heart attack on 9 December 2004, and was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where he died 14 days later at the age of 83. His family wanted the body cremated in Delhi. “This is his karmabhoomi”, Rao’s son Prabhakara told Manmohan Singh. But it is alleged that Sonia Gandhi’s closest aide Ahmed Patel and others ensured that the body was moved to Hyderabad. In Delhi, his body was not allowed inside AICC building. His body was kept in state at the Jubilee Hall in Hyderabad. His funeral was attended by the then Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh, the then Home Affairs Minister Shivraj Patil, the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L. K. Advani, the then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and many other dignitaries. Rao was a long-time widower, since his wife died in 1970 and he was survived by his eight children. A memorial was built for P. V. Narasimha Rao located adjacent to Sanjeevaiah Park, developed in 2005 on 1.2 hectares (2.9 acres) of land known as P. V. Gyan Bhoomi. The Government of Telangana declared his birthday to be celebrated as a Telangana State function in 2014. 10 years after death, P. V. Narasimha Rao gets memorial in Delhi at Ekta Sthal, which is now integrated with Rashtriya Smriti a common place for erecting memorials for former Presidents,PMs and others. The memorial is raised on a plinth in marble bearing text highlighting briefly his contributions. The plaque describes Rao: “Known as the scholar Prime Minister of India, Shri P V Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 in Laknepalli Village, Warangal District in Telangana state. He rose to prominence as freedom fighter who fought the misrule of the Nizam during the formulative years of his political career. A reformer, educationist, scholar, conversant in 15 languages and known for his intellectual contribution, he was called the ‘Brihaspati’ (wiseman) of Andhra Pradesh.”

In September 2020, Telangana Legislative Assembly adopted a resolution seeking to confer Bharat Ratna on Rao. The resolution also requested the Central Government to rename the University of Hyderabad after him.

In June 2020, Government of Telangana, led by Telangana Rashtra Samithi has declared to organise one-year long centenary celebrations of Rao. The state government also decided to set up a memorial and five bronze statues at various places, including Hyderabad, Warangal, Karimnagar, Vangara and Delhi.