Hyderabad: Former civil servant and prominent city-based historian, Narendra Luther passed away on Tuesday of respiratory arrest. He was 89. Luther was suffering from urosepsis and was undergoing treatment at the Care Hospitals, Banjara Hills.
An IAS officer of the 1955 batch who retired as chief secretary of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, he is an eminent historian of Hyderabad, who wrote extensively about its history and culture — and has 14 books to his credit. Among his popular publications are ‘Hyderabad: A Biography’, ‘Prince, Poet, Lover, Builder, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the Founder of Hyderabad’, ‘Lashkar: The Story of Secunderabad’ and the coffee table book on ‘The Prince of Photographers Raja Deen Dayal’, among others.
The former chief secretary is also the president of the Society To Save Rocks and is an authority on the rock formation and geology of Banjara Hills. On this subject, he made a documentary titled ‘Rockumentary’.
Born in Hoshiarpur, Punjab in 1932, Luther spent his formative years in Lahore. At the onset of partition, Luther and his family moved to Amritsar. In his autobiography ‘A Bonsai Tree’, Luther wrote in detail about his early years in Pakistan and the migration to India.
Luther is survived by his wife Bindi Luther, son Rahul Luther and daughter Sandhya Luther.
In his message to the family, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao CM recalled Luther’s services as a bureaucrat working in various capacities in the united AP Government. Chief Minister conveyed his condolences to the members of the bereaved family. He also recalled Luther’s services as a person who worked on the history and culture of erstwhile Hyderabad state and its rulers and also as the President of the Society to Save Rocks.