a close look
V. P. Menon
Father of Integration
T
he National School of Drama (NSD) in the
heart of New Delhi witnessed the staging
of an unusual play on September 30. It was
unusual in many respects. Book publisher Media
House brought out a coffee table-type, profusely
illustrated book on the drama that leaves little to
imagination. The day was chosen with a purpose,
as it was the 122nd birth anniversary of Vapal
Pangunni Menon, known more popularly as V.P
Menon. Never before was such a day celebrated.
It was a working day. Yet, the hall was filled to
capacity by the young and the old to witness
the staging of the play Charithramezhuthia
Hridayangal (Hearts That Wrote History)
scripted by Ajith G Maniyan.
by A. J. Philip
It was in many respects like the famous play
Abraham Lincoln by directed by John Drinkwater
on the life and times of the 16th President of
the United States, who was assassinated while,
ironically, watching a play Our American Cousin
on a Good Friday in 1865. Unlike Drinkwater’s
play which had only 27 characters, Ajith had
cast four times that number as characters. While
the former had only six scenes, the latter had
no less than 100 scenes from London to Lahore
and Kashmir to Kanyakurmari. What’s more,
it included 258 artistes when the play was first
staged at Azad Bhawan on February 21 this year.
V. P. Menon
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03 - 09 October 2016
While the American play was on the life of one
of the world’s greatest political leaders who lost
all elections he contested till he won the 16th
Presidential election, Hearts That Wrote History
was about a person, whose contributions to the
making of India are relatively forgotten. However,
there are many things common between Lincoln
and Menon. If Lincoln was born in a poor family
at Hodgenville in Kentucky, Menon was born in
a relatively prosperous family at the foot of the
Anangan Mala at Ottapalam in Palakkad district
of Kerala. As the legend goes, the hill was brought
there by Lord Hanuman while bringing the herb
that could revive Lakshman.
a close look
While poverty forced Lincoln
from dropping out of school
while he was in Class II,
circumstances forced Menon
to leave school mid-way. Their
personal lives were not exactly
a great success, Lincoln having
lost his first love Ann Rutledge
to typhoid. Menon suffered
from a desertion that left him
with two sons and he had the
stigma of living in with his
friend’s widow all his life. Both
were self-taught and scholars in
their own right. The Complete
Works of Abraham Lincoln and
the two books Menon wrote
on India’s Independence and
Integration are a pointer to
their extraordinary grasp of all
the political and social issues
they faced. If Lincoln succeeded
in integrating the conquered
southern states into the Union
to form what the USA is today,
Menon played a major role
in the integration of over 500
princely states into the Indian
Union.
Lincoln reached the highest
position a politician could reach.
Similarly, Menon as advisor to
the three last Viceroys reached
the highest position a civil
servant could aspire for. If
Lincoln were to contest today,
he would have been dismissed
by Donald Trump as a beggar
from the north, Menon would
not have become even a section
officer, forget Secretary to the
Government of India. Yet, few
people know about him, as
underscored by an IAS officer
who, on a visit to the Kerala
Club at Connaught Circus saw
his portrait and asked Club
President Prof Omchery NN
Pillai whose picture it was. It
was Menon who, together with
another Menon -- KPS Menon -- founded the Club.
Why blame the IAS officer when many well-educated persons are
in the same boat. They would as well ask, who is Chandra Shekhar
Azad. Such is the level of ignorance about the freedom struggle
which is often summarised as Gandhi-Nehru’s struggle.
The world has seen many great integrators like Prussian Bismarck,
Roman Cicero and Mongolian Chengis Khan but they integrated
many states into one mainly through conquest. As the right-hand
man of Sardar Patel, VP Menon integrated a larger number of states
-- 564, to be precise. Our historians often mention the Mountbatten
Plan under which India was partitioned and Pakistan formed.
They seldom bother to know that it was actually the MountbattenMenon plan. Had the original Mountbatten Plan not been recalled
and Menon’s suggestions not incorporated into it, the British would
have left granting sovereignty to any state which sought it.
Thus, Menon prevented a civil war while Lincoln ended one.
Lincoln is credited with signing the Emancipation Declaration that
ended slavery, the integration of native states into the Indian Union
ended the era of rulers who squandered public money for their own
welfare and conspicuous consumption -- read the book Maharaja by
Diwan Jarmani Dass -- and treated their subjects as no better than
slaves.
It was left to Menon to meet every ruler -- big or small -- to get
the Instrument of Accession signed by him or her. He cajoled and
he threatened but he never used force except in Hyderabad to
have his way. In the case of Hyderabad, too, minimum force was
used. He thus became the greatest integrator the world has seen.
Menon wrote two books namely, Transfer of Power in India and The
Integration of Indian States, which everyone interested in modern
Indian history should read. In these two books he gives his opinion
on many leaders and rulers but there is very little to throw light on
his own life and times.
It was in the course of my research into Menon’s life that I came
to know that he had a colourful past, though shrouded in mystery.
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03 - 09 October 2016
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a close look
Dandi March
Justice Kurian Joseph congratulating the actors
He belonged to a rich family of Ottapalam in
Palakkad and it struck me as odd that he could
not complete his middle school education. After
all, he was a precocious child. My search led to
another startling finding that he had to leave
Ottapalam at a young age. In an incident of rage,
he put the torch to the school where he felt he was
“humiliated” by the principal. He feared arrest
by the police and left for the Kolar Gold Mines in
the princely state of Mysore where he worked as
a labourer. From there, he reached Simla, the seat
of British government in India, before trying his
hand at many things, including selling towels in
Bombay, now Mumbai.
It is said that there is hardly any manual job
he had not done before becoming a government
employee based on a recommendation one of his
relatives, a deputy collector, had made to a British
officer. In one of the most fascinating episodes,
a kind-hearted Sardarji gave him Rs 15 when he
found that his pocket had been picked in Delhi.
It was with this money that he could reach Simla,
from where the British ruled India. The Sardarji
did not want the money back and asked him to
give it to anyone who sought his help.
Nehru, Gandhi, Patel, Mountbatten and Menon
Menon persuading the rulers of native states
to join the Indian Union
A Malayali in Simla Ananthan helped Menon
to connect with the Britisher to whom his own
relative had given a letter. He gave him a lowly
job in the government. By dint of hard work,
Menon, who was not even a Matriculate, reached
the highest position a civil servant could attain.
In a way, it was also a measure of the British
willingness to recognise talent. Menon was an
authority on constitutions and he knew the ins
and outs of every princely state in India. For
instance, he knew many secrets of the rulers
like how many mistresses they had, how many
murders they had committed etc. He used them
with telling effect while persuading them to sign
the Instrument of Accession. He was a master
practitioner of statecraft that did not frown upon
blackmailing for the larger good of the state.
For many it was a better option than facing the
charge of felony in independent India. See how
quickly he made use of the attempt on the life of
Sir CP Ramaswamy Iyer, Diwan of Travancore,
to force the Travancore Maharaja to sign the
Instrument of Accession. He had earlier declared
Travancore as a sovereign state and posted an
Ambassador in Paris. Menon had an extraordinary
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a close look
knowledge of the English language so much so
that it was not uncommon for Mountbatten to
consult him even on subjects which were purely
linguistic. No other Indian had ever reached that
position in India.
I have read the manuscript before it went to
press and I can say it is easily one of the best plays
in that genre. As anyone who reads the book
would know, it was not just the biography of a
person that the playwright sought to write.
When India became independent, as Secretary,
Ministry of States, his services came under Home
Minister Sardar Patel. While Nehru had a disdain
for all those who served the British as civil
servants, Patel had no such inhibitions. He saw
in Menon all the good qualities of a civil servant
who works for the greater glory of the nation,
not himself or even his boss. Menon had even
the mortification of a ruler pointing his pistol at
him. But he remained unflustered and firm till he
could integrate all the contiguous states into the
Indian Union. Such was Patel’s trust in him that
when a South Indian leader complained to him
that he saw Menon drinking liquor, Patel asked
him to find out which brand he drank so that he
could also taste it.
It was also the story of the freedom struggle,
the tortuous negotiations that preceded
Independence, the painful Partition and the
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
It is a matter of speculation what would have
happened if Menon was allowed to handle the
Kashmir issue. It was he who used the attempted
raid on Srinagar by the Pakistani tribes to force
Maharaja Hari Singh to join the Indian Union.
Alas with the sudden death of Patel on December
15, 1950, Menon lost his benefactor and source
of strength. For reasons which need not be
elaborated, he lost his moorings and spent his final
years in relative obscurity. He was the chairman
of the Leela group of Hotels and Governor of
Orissa for a short while. He tried to mediate
when some fishermen opposed construction of
the Vivekananda memorial at Kanyakumari.
While school and college textbooks extol
European integrators, Menon was consigned to
the memories of a few like the caretaker of the
house he built at Ottapalam where a full-length
Malayalam movie Vatsalyam with Mammootty
in the lead was shot. The caretaker of the house
is a Mohammed who does the Shraddha of VP
Menon’s sister year after year.
Mohammed told me that he had received several
Rs 15 from Menon! Given the lack of a proper
biography of VP Menon, save the hagiography
called Kuttikalude VP Menon, it must have been
quite a trying task for Ajith to write the script of a
full-length biographical play.
Instead of translating Patel’s chaste Hindi and
Mountbatten’s Queen’s English into Malayalam,
the author used the two languages in the context
in which they were used. This had made the
multilingual play quite unique and a difficult
task for the publisher.
Xavier Vadakkekara of Media House who
loves challenges rose to the occasion and did a
wonderful job. Needless to mention, it is the first
major book on the life and times of Menon.
There are some who believe that Menon was
ideologically close to Hindutva. It is like saying
that Patel was a BJP man. The fact is that Patel was
born a Congressman and died a Congressman.
By the way, Menon dabbled in politics for a while
as a member of the Swatantra Party. He was also
one of the founders of Forum of Free Enterprise
whose booklets I used to read while I was at
college.
Charithramezhuthiya Hridhayanghal is one
play that needs to be staged all the over the
country to let the people know about a wondrous
person. Let me paraphrase what Albert Einstein
said about Mahatma Gandhi, “Generations to
come will scarce believe that such a one as VP
Menon ever in flesh and blood walked upon this
earth”.
The book will help theatre groups to enact the
play in every nook and cranny in the country. Ajit
G. Maniyan has done a great service in the writing
of this play which, I am sure, will eventually be
classified as one of the great biographical plays
of the world. After all, as VP Menon was fond
of saying, “A nation that forgets its history or its
geography does so at its peril”.
The book is available at : Media House, 375-A,
Pocket 2, Mayur Vihar, Phase-1, Delhi - 110 091
(The writer is a senior journalist and can be reached at:
[email protected])
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03 - 09 October 2016
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