Biography to explore personal, unheard episodes of VP Menon's life

A new book on the life and times of VP Menon, the man who brought about a definitive plan for a unified India after independence, will hit the stands by January-end, announced publishing house Simon & Schuster.

Written by historian and Menon's great-granddaughter Narayani Basu, the book titled "V.P. Menon: The unsung architect of modern India" will spill little-known facts about the political advisor of the last Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten.

The book will explore the man behind the public figure through his unconventional personal life and his private conflicts, which "made him channel his energy into public service".

"Drawing from documents -- scattered, unread and unresearched until now -- and with unprecedented access to Menon's papers and his taped off-the-record, explosively frank interviews - this remarkable biography of VP Menon not only covers the life and times of a man unjustly consigned to the footnotes of history but also changes our perception of how India, as we know it, came into being," the publisher said in a statement.

Menon is widely known for his contribution to devise an "alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence" as he and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the first deputy prime minister of India, ensured the merger of princely states with India.

"She (Basu) takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote; to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India; to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party; to his final relegation to relative obscurity," they said.