Chembakaraman Pillai was born in Thiruvananthapuram in 15 September 1891. His father was a police constable Chinnaswamy Pillai and his mother was Nagammal. He started his struggle for freedom by protesting the Partition of Bengal in 1905. He joined with Bala Gangadhara Tilak in his resistance against the Partition of Bengal. When the British police tried to arrest him because of his revolutionary speeches against the Travancore State government, he escaped to Germany in 1908 with the help of his friend Sir Walter Williams Strickland.
At Berlin University, he formed International Pro-Indian Committee to gather the support of the German people for India’s freedom struggle. He came in touch with many revolutionary Indian leaders in Germany like Hardayal, Raja Mahendra Pratap, Dr. Prabhakar, and A. C. Nambiar. He started a newspaper called Pro-India to spread the message of the Indian freedom movement. He participated in the First World War on the German side to defeat the British.
Armed with an engineering degree he joined the German navy as an officer in the cruiser Emden which attacked British ships and shelled several places in India. Madras was shelled on 22 September 1914 after a fierce sea battle with British ships.
Chembakaraman Pillai met Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. He was the Foreign Minister when a temporary free Government of India was established in Afghanistan on 1 December 1915.
He met Subhash Chandra Bose in Vienna in 1919. Though he joined in the German army, he criticized even Adolf Hitler, when he humiliated India in his speech. Dr. Chidambaram Pillai died on 26 May 1934 in Germany under mysterious circumstances.