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V. K. Krishna Menon is one of those who are not lost in a crowd. His face is
attractive in a Mephistophelian way. Piercing eyes, an aquiline nose, broad
forehead and dishevelled hair, his face has a fanatical glow. His., restless face
mirrors the quick thinking that is going on in his mind. Even more expressive are
his long fingers which can emphasise a point to supplement his precise words.
Rough-hewn masculinity is the instantaneous, impression. When he begins to talk, a
fanatical restlessness comes alive which is the result of deep convictions
hardened in the rough and tumble of a hard life. He may be liked. He may be
hated. But he can never be ignored.
Till August 15, 1947, Krishna Menon was not known even in India. Then he suddenly
burst on the national and international scene as a super diplomat explaining the
finer points of Jawaharlal Nehru's foreign policy and devising formula after
formula for the settlement of international conflicts and to initiate peace talks
in the most impossible situations that the world faced in the wake of the cold
war.
Where was Krishna Menon till 1947? What has he been doing to merit such eminence
and prestige to become the chief interpreter of Nehru's foreign policy?
Krishna Menon was born on May 3, 1896 in a wealthy family in the Malabar region of
Kerala (Somehow a wrong entry in some official records puts his year of birth as
1897 and the material put out by the Government of India has used the wrong year
as the year of his birth). His family on the mother's side owned considerable
landed properties. His father was a flourishing lawyer who was reputed for his
legal expertise and total rectitude. It was well known in the legal circles of
the town that if Krishna Kurup refused to accept a brief, no other lawyer would
take it up. Krishna Menon inherited his father's uncompromising matter-of-factness
in ample measure. His mother was a scholar and musician. She was obstinate once
she had made up her mind. Her son's arrogance and opinionativeness verge on
obstinacy.
After completing his schooling and intermediate examination in Kozhikode, Krishna
Menon joined the Presidency College in Madras for his bachelor's degree.
Presidency College in those days was the traditional centre for higher education
for boys from wealthy families.
These boys confined themselves to studies and conformed to the discipline of the
college. Menon not only neglected studies but almost ignored the traditional
discipline imposed by a British principal. There was a reason. No sooner had he
landed in Madras than he fell under the mesmerising influence of Annie Besant, the
stormy petrel from Ireland who preached Home Rule for India. Her theosophical
movement had made great strides among the elite of Madras. Her ideas of working
for the upliftment of the suffering and galvanising the youth of the country had
an electrifying effect on young Menon's mind whose patriotic zeal and burning
desire for social work were ignited by the magnetic personality of Annie Besant.
The lean young man from Malabar with intense eyes and ever willing to do the
hardest of chores became one of her favourite volunteers.
Dr. Arundale, an eminent British educationist, who was assisting, Annie Besant in
her educational ventures, developed a great liking for Menon whose prodigious
energy and total devotion impressed the professor Later Krishna Menon became Dr.
Arundale's secretary.
Krishna Menon's daring and youthful zeal for action became evident one morning
when the Red and Green flag of Besant's Home Rule fluttered from the main building
of the Presidency College. It was soon found out that the culprit was none other
than Krishna Menon. Expulsion from the college was narrowly avoided through the
intervention of an Indian professor who had already assessed the great potential
of Krishna Menon.
When Mrs. Besant started the Scout movement in the south, Menon hurled himself
into the movement with total dedication. He trained himself hard and soon became a
Scout commissioner. He also joined the special organisation which Annie Besant had
founded called the Brothers of Service with its own uniform which was a long white
tunic with a blue cord around the waist.
When one of his friends remarked that Menon looked like a crack in that uniform,
according to TJS George, his biographer, Menon retorted: "I am glad. Let the
light enter through the crack". Meanwhile, Menon completed his bachelor's degree
at the second attempt and joined the law College in accordance with the wishes of
his father who was eager to induct his son into his fabulous practice.
However fate intervened and Krishna Menon was to say goodbye to his activities in
Madras soon.
Mrs. Besant and Dr. Arundale were selecting young men of talent to attend an
educational conference in England and to undergo training as teachers. Menon was
one of the first to be chosen. At the age of 28, in 1924, Krishna Menon arrived in
England to start an altogether new phase in his career. London transformed him.
Although it was the continuation of the work he had been doing in Madras, a
seachange came over his outlook. Scope for a new kind of agitational work and the
opportunity for a battle royal with the British ruling class that had subjugated
his country presented themselves. As an Indian nationalist, his work in England
had been cut out for him: to carry the fight into the very den of the enemy. The
heinous anti-Indian campaign was carried on, said Krishna Menon, by men "who draw
their incomes from India and spend the evenings of their life in maligning India
and her people".
It was a meeting with Harold Laski, the director of the London School of Economics
and Politics, while seeking admission to the school, that Krishna Menon found a
great teacher at whose feet Menon got his ideas on socialism crystallised. As the
socialist professor mesmerised his pupils with his eloquent and crystal-clear
enunciation of ideas on government, Krishna Menon became one of his favourite
students. It was more than the relation between a brilliant professor and a bright
student. Laski who was outspoken in his views on colonialism in general and the
freedom of India in particular, became Menon's friend, philosopher and guide.
According to his biographer, Mrs. Laski recalled the relation between the two
thus: "He was always pestering my husband to do things. I have never seen anyone
so devoted to a cause as Krishna was to India's. He was pestering everybody in
order to propagate the cause. So we called him the 'nuisance student' in an
affectionate sort of way. My husband had genuine affection for Krishna. Krishna
was unique over here."
The greatest of Laski's qualities in the eyes of Menon was his belief in India's
independence. Laski made it a point to raise the Indian question in the highest
echelons of the Labour Party.
When Menon arrived in England, the Commonwealth League (a kind of Indian
association) was functioning in a quiet and subdued manner. What was wanted was a
vigorous Indian forum to fight for Indian independence and to refute the lies that
the British ruling class and most sections of the British Press were spreading.
The immediate job was to make the League a fighting organisation, reflecting
Indian opinion. The League had to be developed as a beach-head for Indian
agitation in England in the national cause. Krishna Menon spent the next
twenty-three ears in this work for creating an advance post of the Indian National
Congress in England. Menon would travel miles and miles to address a small group
of thirty/forty people in a village Church. It was at one of these Church
meetings that Menon met Reginald Sorensen, a Unitarian priest, who later became a
lifelong friend of India and who did yeoman's service in the cause of Indian
independence.
Menon would talk to MPs, politicians and the common people of Britain in his
attempt to give the facts about the most ruthless tyranny that Britain was
practising in India. Menon's friendship with Laski opened many doors for the
Indian agitator which made lobbying for Indian independence among the members of
the British Labour party possible. His main idea was to get pro-Indian opinion
expressed in Parliament and at Labour Party meetings so that the British people
could be informed of the inhuman rule of the British in India.
In the thirties it was normal practice for most intelligent Indian students to
work for Menon's India League. Jyoti Basu was one of them who later slipped to
the Communist Party. About this time, Menon joined the British Labour Party. Later
he was elected a member of the St. Pancras borough council where he became the
most dynamic chairman of the library committee. Councillor Menon's idea was to
establish in St. Pancras borough as many libraries as there were pubs. He started
an art festival and other cultural activities which were subsequently copied by
other borough councils.
Menon was at the extreme left of the Labour Party. He made use of all leftist
forums, including the Communist one, to espouse the cause of Indian independence
which was his ultimate goal. Agitational work through India League, St. Pancras
council, lobbying through Labour party friends and letters in the British Press
were all part of the struggle for India's liberation from the British.
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