Narayanan was born in Perumthanam, Uzhavoor village, in the princely state of Travancore (present day Kottayam district, Kerala) into a Hindu family.

After a brief stint with journalism and then studies at the London School of Economics with the assistance of a scholarship, Narayanan began his career in India as a member of the Indian Foreign Service in the Nehru administration.

His family, belonging to the Paravar caste (whose members are involved in fishery, boat-building, sea trade[7]), was poor, but his father was respected for his medical acumen.

[12] At the LSE (1945), he studied political science under Harold Laski;[13] he also attended lectures by Karl Popper, Lionel Robbins, and Friedrich Hayek.

At the LSE he shared lodgings with K. N. Raj and Veerasamy Ringadoo (who later became the first president of Mauritius); another close friend was Pierre Trudeau (who later became Prime minister of Canada).

Years later, he narrated[17] how he began his career in the public service: Shri Krishna When I finished with LSE, Laski, of his own, gave me a letter of introduction for Panditji.

[30] After his retirement, Narayanan served as the Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi from 3 January 1979 – 14 October 1980; he would later describe this experience as the foundation for his public life.

Narayanan entered politics at the request of Indira Gandhi and won three successive general elections to the Lok Sabha in 1984, 1989 and 1991, as a representative of the Ottapalam constituency in Palakkad, Kerala, on a Congress ticket.

[42] The Janata Dal and the parliamentary left parties had jointly declared him as their candidate, and this had later garnered support from the Congress under P. V. Narasimha Rao, leading to a unanimous decision on his election.

[43] On his relationship with the Left front, Narayanan later clarified[31] that he was neither a devotee nor a blind opponent of Communism; they had known of his ideological differences, but had supported him as vice-president (and later as president) because of special political circumstances that prevailed in the country.

In his inaugural address,[46] he said: That the nation has found a consensus for its highest office in some one who has sprung from the grass-roots of our society and grown up in the dust and heat of this sacred land is symbolic of the fact that the concerns of the common man have now moved to the centre stage of our social and political life.

President K. R. Narayanan's address to the nation[51] on the golden jubilee of the Indian Republic (26 January 2000) is considered a landmark:[52] it was the first time[53] a president attempted to analyse, with due concern for growing disparities, the several ways in which the country had failed[54] to provide economic justice to the Indian people, particularly the rural and agrarian population; he also stated that discontent was breeding and frustrations erupting in violence among the deprived sections of society.

He reiterated this in stronger terms in his next Republic day address (2001);[56] on this occasion, he took exception to certain proposals seeking to abridge the franchise, and pointed out the wisdom of reposing faith in the common men and women of India as a whole, rather than in some elite section of society.

Vajpayee was able to meet this demand after support for the NDA grew, and subsequently he was appointed Prime Minister[59] (15 March 1998) on the condition (which was met) that a vote of confidence be secured within 10 days.

In doing so, he diverged from the actions of his predecessors who had been faced with the task of appointing a prime minister from a hung parliament, Presidents N. Sanjiva Reddy, R. Venkataraman, and Shankar Dayal Sharma: the latter two had followed the practice of inviting the leader of the single largest party or pre-election coalition to form the government without investigating their ability to secure the confidence of the house.

President Narayanan in his speeches consistently sought to remind the nation of its duties and obligations towards the Dalits and Adivasis, the minorities, and the poor and downtrodden.

[4][51][66] President Narayanan spoke on various occasions on the condition of the Dalits, Adivasis, and other oppressed sections of society, and the various iniquities they faced (often in defiance of law), such as denial of civic amenities, ostracism, harassment and violence (particularly against women), and displacement by ill-conceived development projects.

[69] on the Dalit and Adivasi agenda for the 21st century and spoke of the necessity of the private sector adopting policies to promote equitable representation of the backward sections in their enterprises.

In a governmental note on higher judicial appointments (which leaked to the press;[70] January 1999), he observed that eligible persons from the backward sections were available and that their under-representation or non-representation was not justifiable;[71] K. G. Balakrishnan, a Dalit, was elevated to the Supreme court (8 June 2000), the fourth such instance, and the only one since 1989.

[67] When the Australian missionary and social worker Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burned alive (22 January 1999), President Narayanan condemned it as a barbarous crime belonging to the world's inventory of black deeds.

President Narayanan was deeply pained and anguished, and described it as a grave crisis of the society and the nation; he called it the duty of every Indian to strive to restore peace and thus preserve and strengthen the foundations of the state and the tradition of tolerance.

The NDA then proposed to elevate the vice-president, Krishan Kant, as a consensus; this drew support from the opposition and an agreement to this effect was conveyed by Vajpayee's representative to the Congress.

He reflected on his varied experiences of the essential goodness and wisdom of the Indian people, recalling how he had grown up in Uzhavoor among adherents of several religions, how religious tolerance and harmony had prevailed, how upper-caste Hindus and well-off Christians had helped him in his early studies, and how upper-caste Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims had worked together enthusiastically for his election campaigns in Ottapalam.

Addressing the forum at its concluding session, he praised the WSF for demanding freedom in its most comprehensive form, and was happy that people had assembled under an important idea, rather than for narrow political ends; after reflecting on corporations displacing governments in various countries, and on how Mahatma Gandhi had fought British colonisers non-violently with the strength of the masses, he predicted that vocal masses the world over would successfully fight by non-violent means the capturing of the world's resources by a few corporations in the name of globalisation.

K. R. Narayanan dedicated (15 February 2005) his tharavaadu at Uzhavoor to the Santhigiri Ashram in Pothencode for the purpose of establishing the Navajyothisree Karunakara Guru research centre for Siddha and Ayurveda.

K. R. Narayanan died on 9 November 2005 aged 85 at the Army Research and Referral Hospital, New Delhi, after being briefly ill with pneumonia and consequent renal failure.

He was cremated with full state honors at sunset the following day, according to Hindu rites, which took place in Karma Bhumi near Rajghat, New Delhi.

The last rites were performed by his nephew P. V. Ramachandran, at Ekta sthal on the banks of the River Yamuna (adjacent to Shanti van, the memorial of his mentor Jawaharlal Nehru).

K.R.N.F is also producing a documentary (both in Malayalam and English) on the life of K. R. Narayanan, entitled The Footprints Of Survival, aimed at propagating the ideals and perpetuating the memory of K.R.Narayanan.

[83] The Foundation General Secretary Eby J. Jose has written a biography of the late president titled K. R. Narayanan Bharathathinte Suryathejassu.