Remembering VP Menon, our unrecognised nation-builder
Vappala Pangunni Menon was my maternal grand-uncle. During the 1940s, his aged mother lived next to our ancestral house in Kothakurussi, a sleepy village in British South Malabar. It is also called ‘Anaganadi’, meaning the foothills of Anangan Mala (mountain). Anangan has a legend, similar to Mount Lycabettus (Athens). Lycabettus emerged when Goddess Athena dropped a piece of stone while carrying a heap to build Acropolis. Anangan rose when God Hanuman dropped a piece of Dronagiri while carrying the magical herb ‘Sanjeevani’ to save Lakshmana.
In those days most people in Kerala lived away from main roads in independent houses surrounded by verdant paddy fields. Consequently, one had to walk quite a distance from the roads, using narrow foot tracks dividing lush paddy fields, to reach such traditional houses. During the rains, the tracks would get slushy. Despite this, Menon used to come frequently to visit his mother, enduring physical inconvenience.
My earliest recollection of meeting him was as an eight-year-old in 1945. My grandmother, who was his cousin, took me to meet him telling me that ‘Kuttamama’, as he was called, was a ‘big man’ from our ‘Tharawad’(family). Relatives, visitors and high officials used to throng the house as he was then working closely with the ‘Viceroy’. One such person waiting to meet him in 1945 was Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer, Dewan of Travancore State who declared independence on June 11, 1947.
Since then, I would meet Kuttamama in Kerala, Bangalore or in Bombay. He guided me through my All-India Services examination in 1957-58 and even suggested which ‘cadre’ I should choose. His last letter to me was on July 23, 1965, while I was posted in Sangli, Maharashtra. He said that he was going to England in September to “eradicate my illness once and for all”. He was suffering from severe asthma. It was not to be. He passed away in December 1965.
Kuttamama was patient with youngsters as he knew the pangs of unemployed youngsters. An incident at this stage of his life had become folklore. Celebrated authors Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre had described this period in their work ‘Freedom at Midnight’ (1975). American Unitarian Minister Robert Fulghum referred to it in his philosophical musings ‘All I need to know I learned in Kindergarten-Uncommon thoughts on Common things’ (1986).
An unemployed Menon arrived in New Delhi in 1914 en route to Simla, then British Raj’s summer capital. After dropping out of school at the age of 13, he had moved from job to job holding such low-ranking positions like government peon, factory hand and construction worker. He travelled to New Delhi to seek a government clerk’s job, which was the dream of any youngster. On reaching Delhi, he found that he had lost all his money on the train. He then approached an elderly Sikh gentleman for a loan of Rs 15 for his train fare to Simla, and it was given.
Menon’s daughter told Collins-Lapierre the rest of the story: When Menon asked him how he would repay, the Sikh replied: “No — until the day you die, you will always give that sum to any honest man who asks for your help”. Six weeks before his death, his daughter recalled that a beggar came to his family home in Bangalore. Menon sent his daughter for his wallet, took out fifteen rupees and gave it to the man. “He was still repaying his debt”.
From that low position, Menon became a reference point during every constitutional crisis for the last three Viceroys with his encyclopaedic knowledge. Collins-Lapierre describe how in 1947 Lord Mountbatten had turned to Menon, “the highest-ranking Indian in his viceregal establishment who had no degree from Oxford or Cambridge like the vaunted administrative elite the Indian Civil Service. No family ties had hastened his rise. VP Menon was an incongruous oddity in the rarefied air of the Viceroy’s house, a self-made man”.
During my meetings, he would tell me that in 1914 he had no place to stay in New Delhi. A kind senior permitted him to stay in an unobtrusive corner of the Old Secretariat, allowing him to use its washrooms. Since he had nothing else to do at night, he would study the old files in the ‘Constitutional Reforms’ section where he started working continuously since 1917 until he became Constitutional Adviser and Reforms Commissioner.
Yet Menon worked closely not only with the British but also with Indian leaders with a patriotic zeal. Mountbatten’s diary (April 15-May 6, No: 149) mentions Menon’s ‘sterling qualities’ during this difficult period. His entries for May 6-June 4 (No: 15) mention how Menon helped him in getting “Pandit Nehru’s and Sardar Patel’s support”.
Menon’s second book ‘The Transfer of Power in India’ (1957) carries nine pages of xerox sheets of the “India Independence Act” drafted by a committee chaired by him with luminaries like Law Secretary Sir George Spence and KVK Sundaram, ICS as members. The draft was vetted and signed by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on July 3, 1947, as the head of the Interim Government. On July 4, the Bill was introduced in the British Parliament and passed on July 16, creating India and Pakistan.
In June 1947, Mountbatten approved the creation of the ‘States’ ministry under Sardar Patel with Menon as Secretary, to integrate 562 princely states. (Diary: July 5-25, entries 65-66). Menon’s first book published in 1955 on the integration of Indian states gives dramatic details. He took over as Secretary, States Ministry, in addition to his charge as constitutional adviser on July 5. Yet, he could achieve integration of most of the states by August 15, as appreciatively mentioned by Mountbatten in his address to our Constituent Assembly on August 15.
On retirement, Menon faded away from the limelight. He received no official honours after 1947 for his amazing achievement of peacefully integrating most of the princely states. It is, however, gratifying that Dr G Prasanna Kumar, a retired IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, is organising a commemorative lecture by Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan on Menon’s 128th birth anniversary on September 30.
