Innaiah Narisetti

Innaiah Narisetti (born October 31, 1937) is a writer and humanist from India. A longtime journalist and translator, he served as the chair of the Indian branch of the Center for Inquiry, a secular non-profit organization "dedicated to promoting and defending science, reason, and free inquiry in all aspects of human interest."
Narisetti was born in Patha Reddi Palem village in Chebrolu Panchayat, Tenali Taluq, Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India. He went to Roman Catholic school at the village and later in Chebrolu, and then to Surya Devara Narasaiah High School in Chebrolu, where he graduated in 1952. From 1953 to 1958 he went to college at Andhra Christian College, Guntur 1953-58, then from 1958 to 1960 at Andhra University, Waltair, to study philosophy. He received his MA in philosophy from Osmania University in 1964. He is an atheist.

Narisetti submitted his Ph.D. thesis in 1969, entitled The Philosophical Consequences of Modern Science with Special Reference to Determinism. His dissertation director, V. Madhusudan Reddi is devoted to Sri Aurobindo, a poet and mystic. While Reddi approved the thesis he refused to allow Narisetti to graduate. Reddi's bias towards Aurobindo prevented the approval of Narisetti's thesis for 13 years. His degree was awarded only in 1982, after having gone through three examining boards and after the High Court ordered the university to follow rules and decide the case.

Narisetti started as a journalist with Prajavani, a Telugu weekly from Guntur, and worked there from 1954 to 1958; he translated several articles by Manabendra Nath Roy. From 1959 to 1962, he contributed articles in the weekly Vahini, from Vijayawada. Under the pen name Sulapani, he published a number of articles written along with Radha Rani (pen name of Siddabattuni Ramakrishna, classmate in college). He was the personal assistant of N. G. Ranga (Professor of Economics at Pachaiyappa's College, Madras, Chennai) from 1959 to 1961.

He contributed articles (in Telugu) to the Radical Humanist monthly, the Sameeksha monthly, the Vidyarthi educational monthly, and a number of English magazines, such as the Indian Rationalist monthly, and Freedom First. He also contributed to American publications, by writing articles for the The Encyclopedia of Unbelief (edited by Gorden Stein) and the The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief (edited by Tom Flynn and Richard Dawkins (Oct 25, 2007)); and to the Center for Inquiry magazine.

In 2007, he translated Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and Sam Harris's Letter to A Christian Nation into Telugu.

He is married to Venigalla Komala. She retired from Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, and translated M.N. Roy's Memoirs of Cat. His son, Raju Narisetti, was managing editor [1] of the Washington Post, and was founding editor of Mint, a financial daily from Delhi and Bombay; Raju also was editor of Wall Street Journal Europe and currently is the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network and its deputy managing editor (Print edition) in New York City. His daughter Dr. Naveena Hemanth practices child psychology in Rockville, Maryland.

Innaiah Narisetti currently lives in Maryland, USA..