Menon, V. K. Krishna
MENON, V. K. KRISHNA
MENON, V. K. KRISHNA (1896–1974), Indian nationalist leader and politician. Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon was a prominent Indian freedom fighter against British rule. With an intellectual orientation in common, Menon and Jawaharlal Nehru had forged a close friendship during the independence struggle. V. K. Krishna Menon was first appointed minister without portfolio (1952–1956) and then defense minister (April 1957–November 1962) in Prime Minister Nehru's government. During this time, Menon also served as leader of the Indian delegation to the United Nations (UN; 1952–1953 and 1954–1962).
He first gained international prominence in 1957 for an eight-hour improvised speech at the United Nations Security Council in defense of India's position on Kashmir. As leader of the Indian delegation, he was prominent in the negotiations that resolved the Korean War and the Suez crisis. In 1961 the West condemned India when, on Menon's advice to Nehru, Indian forces invaded Goa, seizing this colonial territory from the Portuguese in what was claimed to be a violation of the UN Charter on nonaggression and the resolution of disputes by peaceful means. A year later, Menon was pressured to resign as defense minister, following India's disastrous military defeat by Chinese forces along the Himalayan frontiers in October 1962. He was blamed for India's lack of military preparedness against China. Ironically, Prime Minister Nehru, the architect of Sino-Indian friendship, escaped blame.
Krishna Menon was born in Calicut, Cochin, now part of the state of Kerala, in 1896. He took an interest in the independence movement in the 1920s, first as an undergraduate student at Madras Presidency College, and then as a postgraduate law student at Madras Law College. As a law student he became associated with Annie Besant and her Home Rule Movement for India. Besant, impressed with the young Krishna Menon, sent him to England to study. In England he studied at the London School of Economics and at Lincoln's Inn, London, from where he was admitted to the English Bar as a barrister-in-law.
Menon founded the India League in London in 1928, and it became the center of Indian nationalist activities in England. The British Labour Party was impressed with his political skills and public oratory and made him one of its spokesmen. In 1934 he was elected to the London Muncipal Council from St. Pancras on a Labour ticket. He continued to be reelected from there until he became India's first high commissioner (ambassador) after India gained independence in 1947. During his time as a London councilman, Menon appeared as a barrister in several cases on behalf of London's poor. For his services, St. Pancras conferred on him the "Freedom of the Borough," an honor that until then had only been conferred on George Bernard Shaw. Menon also became a member of the Communist Party in London, an affiliation that plagued him later as a member of Nehru's Congress Party government. He was accused of excessive sympathy for China, blinding him to the threat from the north. Menon died in 1974 at the age of seventy-eight.
Raju G. C. Thomas
See alsoChina, Relations with ; Nehru, Jawaharlal
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bakshi, S. R. V. K. Krishna Menon: India and the Kashmir Problem. New Delhi: South Asia Books, 1994.
George, T. J. S. Krishna Menon: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape, 1964.
Kutty, V. K. Madhavan. V. K. Krishna Menon. New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1998.
Ram, Janaki. V. K. Krishna Menon. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Varkey, K. T. V. K. Krishna Menon and India's Foreign Policy. New Delhi: Indian Publishers Distributors, 2002.