A draughtsman of independent India

The scope of V P Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India is vast. The author, historian Narayani Basu, introduces the reader, first, to a young boy “Kuttan”, and demonstrates how his defining character traits are evident from early on. Through short descriptions, a picture of Vappala Pangunni Menon or VP, as he is called through the book, starts to develop. We are told about his eidetic memory, his Machiavellian tactics that would harden over the years, and love for studying. We see how an incident from his boyhood days in Kolar, shaped his dislike of delegating work to others, and “preferring to do everything himself”. We learn “hard headed perhaps and illogical most certainly, VP was nothing if nor persistent.”
 
A small act of kindness by a stranger at the Old Delhi Railway Station changes the course of his life. Employed as a temporary clerk, VP between 1914 and 1915 shuttles within the Home Department, usually as a typist, and sometimes a stenographer. VP becomes close friends with Kottieth P Anantan who is also an early mentor, and his wife Pankajam, who would later become VP’s partner. He gets married and his personal life descends into a scandal. Circumstances play “the role of kindly fairy godmother to VP” when Edwin Montagu is appointed Secretary of State of India, and VP is recruited to the Emergency Branch of the Home Department to assist Montague —  the first time he enters the world of Indian political and Constitutional reform, a world he does not leave until his retirement.
 
Within the course of a night, VP Menon presents Mountbatten with the Menon Plan, the first official draft of the terms of India’s independence, which becomes the catalyst for India’s transformation into an independent democratic republic. As the Reforms Commissioner to the last three viceroys of India, and as Secretary, States Ministry, Menon played a pivotal role in manoeuvring the integration of 565 states into the Indian Union — including Junagarh, Hyderabad, and Kashmir — each of which came with its own set of difficult characters and unique situations. Finally, we witness VP’s career change course after Sardar Patel’s death, and his eventual retirement into obscurity.
 
The book, written by Menon’s great granddaughter, follows those events of Indian history to which Menon contributed directly and significantly. It also explores the interpersonal relationships between the protagonists who shaped independent India. Menon is considered Sardar Patel’s right hand man, but the author emphasises that VP would never be anyone’s “man” but his own, and that he was loyal to the governments for he which he worked. It was this along with his other qualities that made Sardar Patel rely on him. VP’s relationship with Nehru remained fraught throughout his career, especially after Mountbatten instructed VP to not tell Nehru about Plan Balkan, the original Mountbatten plan that proposed that India would be vivisected into dozens of countries. This laid the foundations for Nehru’s profound mistrust of VP.
 
These days, we find Nehru and Patel blindly pitted one against the other, and the cracks within their relationship manipulated to augment partisan politics. But just as no two people remain the same through the course of their lives, no relationship between two strong personalities can be static, especially if the national interests of an independent India are at stake. Narayani Basu’s narrative attempts to explore the nuance as well as the evolution of the very complex relationship between the two men. The dynamics of this relationship also plays an important role in VP’s career.
 
The book claims that Nehru’s first official list of the people he wanted in independent India’s first Cabinet excluded Patel. It was Mountbatten, who at VP’s insistence, met Gandhi and had Patel’s name included. Another instance she mentions is the serious rift that developed between Sardar Patel and Nehru over Kashmir, with Nehru’s insistence on making Kashmir a part of India, whereas Sardar would have preferred to hand Kashmir off to Pakistan or see to its partition. In the course of the discussions, Patel sent Nehru his resignation and, in response, Nehru offered to resign. This situation was resolved after Mahatma Gandhi’s intervention.
 
According to Campbell Johnson, press attache to Mountbatten, “… each had what the other had not. Nehru had the sweep and range of imagination and world policy. Patel was a highly practical man, who would say, “All right we are going to do this”.“ Through the course of the biography, Sardar Patel is omnipresent as VP’s mentor and as the pragmatic in India, while Nehru is viewed, often critically, through VP or Patel’s perspectives — revealing how private perspectives and interpersonal dynamics shaped Independent India.