Muttayil Govindamenon Sankara Narayanan was born at Ponnani, Malabar district on 20 August 1932.

It empirically reconstructed the history of Kerala during the Ceras between 800 and 1124 CE in a meticulous exercise, states Rajan Gurukkal.

[2][6] He was the general secretary of Indian History Congress during 1982–1985, and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow University in 1991.

[7]: 128  With Veluthat, Narayanan proposed that Bhakti movement brought together "kings, Brahmanas and the common people" in harmony between 6th and 10th-century, but more as an "illusion of equality", writes Karashima.

[7]: 113 According to T. K. Rajalakshmi writing in Frontline in 2001 – a news weekly in India, Narayanan is a specialist in ancient history and "a believer in Hindutva to the extent that he is a Hindu and an inheritor of a great tradition".