Nehru and Sardar

A new book more or less confirms something about which there has been a lot of speculation: Nehru did not intend to make Sardar Patel a member of his first Cabinet

No one has ever explained why Vappala Pangunni Menon, who played a critical role in the transfer of power and the integration of Indian states in the 1940s and ’50s, has been ignored by historians. There are no books or biographies on him. He’s simply forgotten. Yet, this was a man who began life as a typist but rose to the very highest rungs of the civil service. Under the British, he was, in fact, the Constitutional Advisor to the Viceroy. This was unprecedented.

Fortunately, this lapse and injustice has been corrected. On the 12th, the first biography of this