VK Krishna Menon (1896-1974) – An undiplomatic diplomat

It is not often that you come across people who create an impact on you, especially so if they are long gone and belonged to an era before your teens. I discovered one such person a week back. While his name is familiar to all, most today won’t know of his tremendous influence in geopolitics.

I studied in a Sainik school and one of the first things I picked up was that the whole concept of Sainik schools came from Mr VK Krishna Menon. I used to wonder about this great guy now & then, but never really bothered to figure out. Yes, conversation sometimes brought up his name, over the years, about associations of his with Jawaharlal Nehru and so on; eventually I thought it could be a good idea to dredge some stuff on this person. There was a lot of information available, but mostly polarized in support or against him. I have not read his biographies, understood his ideology or digested his famous 8-9 hour UN lecture on Kashmir, but my study will go on, for he is such a fascinating persona.

Today there are Krishna Menon Margs, statues, schools, stadiums, buildings & houses, books, memoirs, trophies…he was one of the first Indians to grace the front page of Time, he has books about him & his ideology written by non Indians…Some guy this!! He had been branded a communist, a traitor and what not…But then, in his heydays he hobnobbed with Kennedy, Kruschev, and all the big guns of that era. He was apparently instrumental in spearheading solutions for the Suez crisis, the Korean Crisis and even the French (Algeria) UN standoff. When he spoke, the world listened, when he gave press conferences, reporters asked questions fearing crisp retorts, but they always got a newsworthy interview at the end. Above all, he made more enemies than friends with his direct and probably arrogant outlook on life and lesser mortals.

The US always thought that VKKM was the one responsible for the Indian tilt towards Russia and (in those days) China. The AHR US stated: Krishna Menon, the Indian ambassador to the United Nations, was second to none- not even communist delegates to the organization -in the vituperativeness of his attacks on the United States.What did the international media have to say about him? Menon was dubbed as "Mephistopheles in a Saville row suit", "the devil's incarnate", "the bad fairy of the UN", the "old snake charmer" and also as a diabolical combination of all "three witches of Macbeth".

So what did he have to say to that? Read this from Narasimhan

V.K. Krishna Menon, India's Defence Minister, was the leader of the Indian delegation to the General Assembly in 1961. He knew he was not very popular in the U.S. He also had a macabre sense of humour. In September 1961, he had to undergo major surgery at a hospital in the Bronx which involved making an incision in his skull. When I went to visit him at the hospital, he said: "Narasimhan, your American friends think I am a lunatic. You can now tell them on good authority that you had indeed seen me at hospital and I am a man with a hole in the head."

But take this example written comparing Galloway’s visit to Washington to Menon’s.
Nearly, half a century ago, when Krishna Menon was in USA, he was similarly expected to be pulverized for his views and the Indian embassy specifically advised him against appearing on a live radio program hosted by an extreme conservative host. Menon, typically, rejected the advice. He was given a lecture by the aggressive host and asked if it was true that Menon was a communist. Without batting an eyelid, Menon returned the lecture and concluded it with a question to the host: But tell me, is it true that you are a bastard?? For once, the radio host was silenced, at least momentarily by a visiting host.

Or this
Krishna Menon, the Indian nationalist leader, sums up the attitude perfectly: "There is no use in asking whether you would choose British imperialism or Nazism, it is like asking a fish if he wants to be fried in margarine or butter. He doesn't want to be fried at all!"
He was considered the liberator of Goa from the Portuguese after taking up the issue to the UN. In a UN debate, V. K. Krishna Menon described the Portuguese overseas territories as a "slave empire" and declared that the "liberation of Goa" was "part of the unfinished task of liberating India.". He eventually convinced Nehru to send troops into Goa and liberate it..

VK Krishna Menon belonged to the wealthy Vengalil family of Calicut, studied at Presidency College Madras and then the University College & the London Business School, thence obtaining a PhD from Glasgow and joining the Labor party. He became a barrister, supporting the cause of poor ‘laskars’ who needed legal assistance and lived a number of years in England. He seemed to have had a very interesting and busy life there, for example did you know he was the founder & editor of Penguin books? And that he was the Councilor of St Pancras in London? It was in UK that he met J Nehru (they went on a dangerous trip to Spain to study the fight against Franco & fascism…and became fast friends after that) and post independence went on to become the UK high commissioner.

I stayed a couple of times at the YMCA - Fitzroy square in London. Little did I know that there was a VKKM statue out there. He did have his share of misfortune while he served and after he died. Twice they erected statues of him and in both instances they were stolen.

It is said that Nehru and Krishna Menon neglected the defense of the Northeast under the belief that China would never attack a fellow Socialist country like India; for which the country ended up paying a heavy price in 1962. Following that and loud opposition from all and sundry, VKKN was deposed (resigned) from the Defense minister post, taking the blame, to shield Nehru perhaps? I am not sure, I have also read reports that VKKM egged Nehru to take on the Chinese based on Gen Kaul’s advise and that this led to the problem, rather than the assumption that the Chinese wont attack.,

Unfortunately VKKM was disliked by many and the reasons are put so succinctly by V Nevrekar. ‘It is however true that because of his arrogance, if not downright rudeness, Mr menon did not need much of an effort to irritate , anger and even antagonize people, especially those he considered below his intellectual level. This one article by Navrekar gives one much perspective, and shows us a different person from the submissive one that India presents at all kinds of international floors these days - people with hardly any oratorical skills or personality. He showed the white man, his place as Navrekar puts it…I enjoyed reading that…It was here that I saw some parallels between Menon with todays Rumsfeld!!! Just like Rummy, Menon, along with Nehru, apparently caused havoc in the army's working, disregarding professional opinion and advice, violating all channels and levels of communication and encouraging the same within the army hierarchy, which ended with disastrous results in the Sino-Indian conflict. Like his boss, Menon believed in giving verbal orders and disliked records.

His best friend arguably was Jawaharlal Nehru though it is possible that Menon finally became the fall man for Nehru’s Himalayan Blunder. However Nehru states the following while replying his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s complaint that Menon was always snubbing, ridiculing & rude to her (Rummy and Condy rice scenario!!!)

I have known Krishna now for a long time and have a fairly good appreciation of his abilities, virtues and failings. All these are considerable. I do not know if it is possible by straight approach to lessen those failings. I have tried to do so and I shall continue to try. This is a psychological problem of some difficulty and has to be dealt with, if at all successfully, by rather indirect methods. I propose to deal with it both directly and indirectly. "I hope I have the capacity to judge people and events more or less objectively. I am not swept away by Krishna; nor would I like my affection for you to influence my judgment to any large extent, though to some extent, of course, affection does make a difference and indeed should. Krishna has often embarrassed me and put me in considerable difficulties. If I speak to him, he has an emotional breakdown. He is always on the verge of some such nervous collapse. The only thing that keeps him going is hard work.

Besides "hard work" and cups of tea (he admitted to drinking about 38, not 40 cups of tea as frequently rumored, daily), Krishna Menon was "living for years on the drug Luminal ( Arthritis cure perhaps?), frequently fainting, or speaking incoherently in public".

Did you know that Nov 14th is a children’s day thanks to VKKM? I guess he could do so much in the UN, the ‘terror from the east’ as they called him. He wanted to be the secretary general. He knew he would never be that, though. It took many more years for another Malayali to step near the UN stage, i.e. Tharoor this year.

Menon was responsible for the term Menonism in politics. For those who are interested, A new word, "Menonism," has been coined by the American press to characterise the peace efforts of Mr. V.K. Krishna Menon. Explaining what "Menonism" means, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an article saying that it was an "attempt to return to the great tradition of 19th century diplomacy."

Like I said before, there is so much more to know about this interesting person, his personal side, his post defense ministry years, his relationship with Kerala…my ongoing project!!

A newer article of mine covering menon's defense ministry days, the MI5 files, the jeep scandals etc can be found at this link.

http://maddy06.blogspot.com/2007/03/vk-krishna-menon-part-2-reluctant.html

A good article in the Hindu – by Supreme Court justice VR K Iyer
Kushwant Singh worked for him and states…about his relationship with Menon

Pictures - Hindu, Time....

Articles on Menon in the Time magazinehttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,808644,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,865963,00.html?promoid=googlep
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829317,00.html?promoid=googlep
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,939948-2,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,827194,00.html

His famous 9 hour UN speech

http://www.un.int/india/ind29.pdf
http://www.un.int/india/ind30.pdf
http://www.un.int/india/ind31.pdf