He was detained again by the British in 1956 and remained so until the PAP won the 1959 general election and helped secure his release.

Nair would soon return to Singapore and echoed his leftist beliefs by becoming involved in the labour movement, including serving as Secretary-General of the NTUC once more between 1970 and 1979, before taking up the presidency in 1981.

[4] Nair was initially a member of the Communist Anti-British League before joining Lee Kuan Yew's People's Action Party (PAP) in 1954.

[5] In 1956, he was detained again under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance Act together with trade unionists Lim Chin Siong and James Puthucheary as suspected communist subversives after the Chinese middle schools riots.

[3] He was the only PAP member who contested in the 1964 Malaysian general election and won Bangsar, near Kuala Lumpur.

He resigned the seat in 1981 to accept the then largely ceremonial office of President as the country's head of state.

[11] According to Nair's counterclaim, he resigned under pressure when their political views came into conflict and Goh threatened him during a game of chess to oust him as president.

Nair also alleged that he was fed drugs to make him appear disoriented and that rumours were spread about his personal life in an attempt to discredit him.

In 1999, an article about the case in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail resulted in a libel suit by Goh.

"[15] After his resignation as President, Nair and his wife migrated first to the United States in 1988 where they settled in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

[16] His eldest son, Janadas Devan,[18] was a senior editor with The Straits Times and is currently Chief of Government Communications at the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) and also a director at the public policy think-tank Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

[18][20] Nair was a good friend of Dutch economist Albert Winsemius, and composed a poem titled "The Yangtze's Voyage Through History" for him.