Author Jairam Ramesh joins Milan to discuss his new book, "A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon."
Rasputin, Lucifer, Evil Genius, Sombre Porcupine, The World’s Most Hated Diplomat. These are just some of the choice names that people have given for the former diplomat and politician V.K. Krishna Menon.
Menon is, in many ways, one of the most consequential figures in post-Independence India and he is the subject of a recent book by the politician and author Jairam Ramesh, titled: A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon. The book was awarded the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay-New India Foundation (NIF) Book Prize for 2020.
Jairam Ramesh is Milan’s guest on the show this week. The two discuss Ramesh’s approach to biography writing, Menon’s inscrutable personality, his status as Nehru’s “soulmate,” and his lasting legacy for Indian foreign policy. Plus, the two discuss Menon’s contemporary relevance as India stares down the possibility of another conflict with China over their contested border.
Episode notes:
Milan 00:11
Welcome to Grand Tamasha, a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times. I'm your host, Milan Vaishnav.
Rasputin. Lucifer. Evil genius. Somber porcupine. The world's most hated diplomat. These are just some of the choice names that people have given for the former diplomat and politician V. K. Krishna Menon. Menon is, in many ways, one of the most consequential figures in post-independence India, and he is the subject of a new book by the politician and author, Jairam Ramesh, titled A Checkered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon. The book was recently named the co-winner of the 2020 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay New India Foundation Book Prize. Jairam Ramesh is a Rajya Sabha MP, former Union minister, and author of several well-known books including Intertwined Lives: P.N. Haksar & Indira Gandhi. I am pleased to welcome him to the podcast for the very first time. Jairam, welcome to the show, and congratulations on the recent prize.
Jairam 01:10
Thank you. Good morning, Milan. Good evening from here, good morning to you.
Milan 01:14
Great to speak with you. I want to jump right in by asking you to reflect a bit on the process of doing this book. Anyone who reads this quite lengthy book is struck right off the bat by the copious amount of archival material you unearth to piece together the story of what is a pretty complicated life, I think it's fair to say. You mentioned you took advantage of several new archives which had opened up and given access. Tell us a bit more about how you went about researching this book.
Jairam 01:47
Well, this is my third biography, and the philosophy that I have followed in all the three biographies is to depend exclusively on archival material. There is very little oral history, there's very little interviewing, there are very few judgments of others or even of the author. So, it is really archival narratives, and this contemporary written material that is available in archives in India and abroad as well.
Now, specifically on the Krishna Menon biography: after almost 40 years, his archives have been opened up at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and they are a treasure trove, to make an understatement, because there's literally almost 1000 files. And they've finally been opened up. So, I didn't have any special access to it – it was access anybody could have. Plus, there was a lot of material available on Krishna Menon in the U.S. and UK that has now come into the public domain. They've been digitized, and they are now easily accessible.
Books have been written on Krishna Menon in the past, but they've either been hagiographies or they have been hatchet jobs because he's a man who evokes extreme views – you're either a great admirer of his or you're a great critic of his. And I wanted to avoid that, as I have in my previous biographies as well. So, frankly, my philosophy on biography writing, Milan, is: depend on archives, depend on your own narrative. Don't get into psycho-history, don't get into too much of judgment, but present the facts as they reveal themselves in the contemporary written evidence, and let the subject of the biography speak for himself or herself. And that's the approach I've adopted.
And the main archives, of course, are the Nehru Memorial Archives for Krishna Menon and then the British National Archives. A number of the Eisenhower archives have also been very helpful – the John Foster Dulles archives, and the Mountbatten archives in the UK, and a lot of other archives of individuals who had been associated with Krishna Menon in the forties and in the fifties. So, it's a lot of archival scavenging that's in the book.
Milan 04:52
So, I want to ask you about this issue of judgment. I mean, you note at the outset of the book that it's not meant to be a judgmental undertaking. It is, in your words, a “straightforward narrative biography.” As you alluded to, however, anyone who ever came in contact with Menon ended up leaving with an extremely strong opinion, sometimes positive and more often than not negative. Was it a struggle, as you were doing this, just to keep your own views in check while you were writing the book?
Jairam 05:23
Well, you know, it's always difficult, Milan. You won't start a book unless you have some modicum of admiration for the subject, and if you don't feel that the subject is worth writing about, you won't start on a biography.
Now, I'm not a Menon-phobe, but I'm not a Menon-phile, either. So, I've presented all the evidence to show that Menon made very major contributions. For example, one of the issues that is very contemporary in India today is self-reliance in defense manufacturing. He was the greatest champion of that. And he was the only Indian politician in the fifties arguing for a negotiated settlement with China on the border issue – an issue that, as you know, is uppermost in people's minds today. So, I present the evidence on that. On the other hand, he was cantankerous – I mean, you call him a diplomat, but he was actually the most undiplomatic. He made friends easily, but he made enemies even more easily. And he gave India a bad name in international forums, particularly toward the later part of the 1950s, and the Americans found him pesky, the British found him pesky, the Europeans found him pesky. So, I mean, I didn't suppress anything, Milan.
There was only one issue that bothered me, and that was a letter that Nehru writes to Krishna Menon in 1939 saying that, you know, “Not only am I in a state of physical collapse, but I'm in a state of great mental tension, and I don't know how I'm going to continue life.” It's a very anguished letter that Nehru writes to Krishna Menon. And from the letter, the context was Indira Gandhi's news to her father that she wanted to marry Feroze Gandhi, and that was what had really disturbed Nehru. And he shared that anguish with Menon. And that's the only time I asked, “Should I include this or should I not include it?” But I included it, including my narrative [of] why Nehru was disturbed and [why] the only person he could share his anguish with was Krishna Menon. I didn't hold back anything. There were suicide notes that he wrote on numerous occasions, which I have reproduced in the book; conversations with Zhou Enlai, which in today's context may sound a bit sensitive, so to speak, because here was Krishna Menon arguing for a negotiated settlement. But I included all that, Milan.
The author has to have a sense of detachment. I mean, you're attached to the subject, but you can't be detached from the evidence, whether it's positive or whether it's negative. And I think intellectual honesty and integrity demands that you present whatever you have found and provide the narrative, whether it's positive or negative. I am not out to demonize him, either. I'm just saying, “Here is a consequential personality in Indian political life, and this is his life story, warts and all.” And I think that's the general approach to biography that I've taken, whether it is in the case of Mr. Haksar or even in the case of Indira Gandhi – although my biography of Indra Gandhi was on her environmental legacy, still, I located her environmental legacy in her larger political scheme of things, and as you know, Indra Gandhi is very controversial. She has her legion of admirers, but she's also got an army of critics, most importantly, for the Emergency that she imposed from '75 to '77. And I couldn't not write about the Emergency in that book and how she dealt with environmental issues during the Emergency.
Milan 10:21
You've talked a little bit about Menon's personality. There are several telling anecdotes in the book. One comes from Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, Nehru's sister, who would succeed Menon as high commissioner to London. She once said that he was a “brilliant and versatile man, but he had overpowering ambition, which he sometimes tried to hide under a cloak of pseudo-humility. He was like a Victorian woman, a person of moods and periods of depression.” The daughter of the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, records that Menon was “in a manner far more English than any Englishman.” What did she mean by that? How was he more English than any Englishman?
Jairam 11:04
Both Nehru and Menon, Milan, were proud Indians, but they were good Britishers as well. You know, Nehru told Mountbatten that he, Nehru, was the last Britisher to rule India. He said it, obviously, in a light way. Both of them were very British – they were educated in England, they had British friends, they were part of the British Left circle, the Labour Party circle. So, Menon, of course, lived in the UK from 1924 till 1952, for 28 years, although Nehru was there in England only for seven years. He was a student in at LSE for 10 years – the longest record, which is unlikely to be equaled. So, he was British in that sense. He was comfortable with Pax Britannica. He was not comfortable with Pax Americana. He would have lived with Pax Britannica, but he was certainly very uncomfortable – he had all the suspicions of America that the British intelligentsia coming from the Left had.
But coming to what Vijay Lakshmi Pandit had said, Milan – you see, in the 1950s, Menon was known as “formula Menon.” If you had a crisis, you went to – you didn't like Menon, but you went to him for a formula. In 1952, it was Menon's formula that led to the armistice in Korea in mid-1953. His role in Korea is deeply, deeply significant. Whether it was Cyprus, whether it was Algeria, whether it was the Suez Crisis of 1956, Menon had another formula, and usually Menon's formula clicked. The Americans didn't like him. The Russians didn't like him, either, although he was seen to be a Russian agent. And in 1955, which was perhaps his most glorious year, he almost brought about a rapprochement between the U.S. and China. What Kissinger accomplished in 1971, Menon almost pulled off in 1955. He had six meetings with Dulles, he had two meetings with Eisenhower on the issue of imprisoned American airmen, and four airmen were actually released because of Menon's intervention. And in '55, unfortunately, the domestic politics of America – Eisenhower was not bold enough to do what Nixon did in 1971.
If he wanted to be constructive, he could be very, very constructive. Lester Pearson, the former prime minister of Canada, who was dealing with Menon on the Korean issue, wrote in his diary saying that if he wants to be constructive and positive, there is no force like Menon, but you had to wait for those moments where he was constructive and positive. He was a very prickly man. And I think the reason why he was prickly, Milan – apart from his personality and so on – was also the fact that, remember, this was an Anglo-Saxon world. We're talking about the early fifties; the white man was still ruling the world, and the white man was telling the world what was good for them. And Krishna Menon thought that he could speak English better than all the guys – he knew more about the West than many people in the West – so he resented being talked down to, and he wanted a position of equality. But in the fifties, it was a different ballgame. The British and the American rule was still the hegemony – the intellectual hegemony, if not the colonial hegemony. Certainly, the intellectual hegemony was very much there. So, Menon spoke freely at the UN, and in the early fifties, until the mid-fifties, I think he was a voice that was listened to. The West didn't like him because of two issues, Milan – decolonization in Africa and the apartheid rule in South Africa, on which he was an early bird, and disarmament. He was one of the earliest voices on disarmament, which ultimately led to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the USSR. So, I think the environment in the fifties was such that anybody who stood up and got counted from the so-called “Third World” would become a target of attack.
Milan 16:38
One of the central relationships throughout your book is the friendship – sometimes strained – between Menon and Nehru. Nehru's biographer had this to say about Nehru's 1935 trip to London: he said, “The most lasting impression on Nehru was made not by any Englishman but by Krishna Menon, who he then met for the first time.” Later in the book, you write that “during the 17 years or so that Nehru was prime minister, the only person with whom he shared uninhibited intellectual camaraderie was Krishna Menon.” Now, on the surface of it, these men had some similarities, but also a great many differences. What was ultimately, do you think, the source of their mutual attraction?
Jairam 17:24
I think Menon was Nehru's soulmate, and he was a sounding board. There are many facets to this. Menon was one of the founders of Pelican Books, part of the Penguin family. He was a well-known publisher; he published a lot of books. He helped in publishing Nehru's books in England, through which Nehru became an internationally known figure. He was also very close to the British Labour Party. Stafford Cripps, Clement Attlee, Harold Laski – these are all people who were very influential in the Labour Party, and Nehru of course was known to them, but Menon became a sort of facilitator and a conduit between Nehru and the Left intelligentsia in England.
But I think Nehru saw Menon as an international figure – he saw him as a very well-read figure, as a very articulate figure. Most Indian politicians Nehru saw were provincial. They were worried about their constituency, worried about their caste, or they were, you know, worried about the commoner issue, which was very important at that point of time. And Nehru saw Menon as a kindred spirit. They were democratic socialists – both were democratic socialists, deep believers in in democracy, but unrepentant socialists till the very end, and there were many things on which their views converged. For example, the idea of having a Constituent Assembly, which Gandhi opposed till 1939 – Gandhi comes around only in 1939. Nehru and Menon were amongst the earliest people to advocate the idea of a Constituent Assembly, way back in 1933, 1934, and as you know, the Constituent Assembly becomes a reality in 1946, and it leads to the Constitution of India.
So, it's a phenomenal relationship because Nehru protects Krishna Menon, and he is not blind to Krishna Menon's faults and foibles and weaknesses, but he thinks that the advantage of having Krishna Menon outweighs the disadvantages, which can be overcome because of Nehru's personality. So, I think, frankly, it's the international perspective, that Krishna Menon brought to India's freedom struggle, and the fact that he was one of the key negotiators between India and the British Labour Party. Most Indians believe that the Indian Freedom Movement was fought in India. Of course, that's true, but there is another strand to the Indian Freedom Movement – there was a strand of negotiation between the Indian National Congress and the British Labour Party. And Menon was a central figure in that process of negotiation.
Milan 20:56
In contrast to Menon's close partnership with Nehru, you also write that Menon could never quite get his head around Gandhi. At one point, he tells Nehru he can't understand Gandhi or the positions that he took. Why did Gandhi remain such an enigma, in some sense, to Menon?
Jairam 21:16
Well, Gandhi remained an enigma to many people. Menon only articulated his sense of puzzlement at how Gandhi was able to pull it off. Gandhi was not a charismatic speaker, Gandhi was not a charismatic looker, and Menon felt that Gandhi was deeply anti-science, deeply anti-modernity. He brought Hindu themes and Hindu motives into the political discourse in India. He defended the caste system. He was absolutely against untouchability, but he defended the caste system – not the caste system, but he defended the Varnashrama Dharma, which is the different gradations.
So, he saw Nehru representing progressive, secular [ideas] – and by secular, he meant absolute separation of religion, that the state had no business in propagating religion. Of course, India is a religious society. However, his notion and Nehru's notion of secular India was that the state is absolutely far away from religion. And Gandhi was comfortable with using Hindu themes, Hindu motives. So, I think this was a perpetual sense of puzzlement.
But Nehru understood Gandhi beautifully, as you know. He wrote, as you read in some of the letters, that “you will never understand Gandhi; you have to go beyond what Gandhi is saying or go beyond what Gandhi is writing.” And I think, for example, Menon could never understand how the Salt Satyagraha could be such a game changer and a transformative moment in Indian political history. Many people were befuddled by the fact that Gandhi had used salt as a symbol. That was Gandhi, you know. I think Menon, much later, 30 years later, when he was in retirement, began to appreciate Gandhi much more. But as long as he was out of India, Gandhi to him was a perpetual source of agony, because what Gandhi said could be interpreted in multiple ways. So that's, I think, the reason why he could never relate to Gandhi.
Milan 24:24
So, Menon left India in 1924. I think he came back once in 1932. He made a second visit in 1946, and this was really a crucial visit because he played a very important role behind the scenes just prior to Independence. It was in July 1947 that he was appointed India's first High Commissioner to London. When Edwina Mountbatten – the wife, of course, of the viceroy – wrote her farewell letter to him, she talked about his friendship, his wise counsel, his judgment, his ability to smooth things over as the British were exiting India. Tell us a little bit about the kind of behind-the-scenes role that Menon played in the final months of the Raj.
Jairam 25:14
Well, in '46 and '47, it's a tale of two Menons, Milan. Sardar Patel's chief adviser was V.P. Menon, and Jawaharlal Nehru's key advisor was V.K. Krishna Menon. So, in many ways, if you want to write the story of 1946 and 1947, it should be called a tale of two Menons.
Milan 25:37
Maybe that's your next book.
Jairam 25:41
And the two Menons hated each other. They were completely different. But V.P. Menon ultimately was the man who came up with the formula for the Partition and the transfer of power from the British to the dominions of India and Pakistan. Mountbatten comes in March of 1947. Mountbatten comes because Krishna Menon has known Edwina from 1934 onwards, and he's met Mountbatten in 1942. He knows Mountbatten. So, the Mountbattens use him not only as Krishna Menon, and but also as somebody who enjoys Nehru's confidence and trust. And he's at Nehru's side throughout, from March of 1947 till the third of June, when Partition is actually formally announced by the British.
This is now part of the archival record, it's part of the transfer of power documents as well – Wavell hated Krishna Menon, but Mountbatten depended on him. And I think the dependence, Milan, was to use him as a sounding board, to use him as a touchstone of how Nehru would think and what Nehru would do, because in these matters, I think, Krishna Menon and Nehru thought alike. But really, the two Menons played a very, very crucial role. And on Kashmir, particularly – Krishna Menon saw Kashmir, he saw Partition, as part of some British strategic vision for retaining a hold in this part of Asia. And he kept telling Nehru that Kashmir is not just an issue of integration of one part into India, but it's part of a larger British and Anglo-Saxon American game plan, with strategic objectives, in order to gain a foothold to deal with Russia and to deal with the Middle East.
Milan 28:35
Can I ask you about just one aspect of this? Because many historians have portrayed the debate over Partition as a kind of duel between Nehru and Jinnah with, of course, Mountbatten as a third critical actor, but Congress leader Mulana Azad, in his memoir – and you document this – accuses Menon of being the one responsible for convincing Nehru to accept Partition. So, in your judgment, based on everything you've seen, how much of the Partition decision can be fairly attributed to Menon's role?
Jairam 29:13
To be fair, Milan, the evidence shows that from September of 1946, both Patel and Nehru were beginning to get reconciled to the idea of Partition. See, their experience of running the interim government and the problems that they had with Liaquat Ali Khan, and then subsequently the walking out of the Muslim League, I think from September ‘46 onwards – even from April 1946, the Calcutta killings and then subsequently the way the interim government functioned, or did not function – by the end of 1946, from what I have read of Patel and Nehru, both Patel and Nehru are beginning to think that this is not in the realm of impossibility. So, I would not attribute the decision like Assad said. In fact, Assad blames two people – he blames Krishna Menon, and he blames Edwina. And I think he is a bit unfair. You know, he was a bitter man when he wrote those 30 pages. He was a bit unfair. I think both Nehru and Patel had basically reconciled themselves that Partition was going to be inevitable, that Punjab had to be partitioned, Bengal had to be partitioned, in order to save India.
Remember, one factor that often historians don't talk about is that the British were quite comfortable in transferring power to three entities: the dominion of India, the dominion of Pakistan, and the other third entity, which is a confederation of the princely states. And this was an idea that was being canvassed by the Chamber of Princes in India, and it had its supporters in England, [including] Winston Churchill – although Winston Churchill was not in the government, he was an important voice in the British political establishment. So, actually, one of Menon's great contributions in England was to knock this idea of a confederacy out of the window, saying that if there's going to be a transfer of power, it has to be a transfer of power only to two dominions, India and Pakistan, not the confederation of princes.
And, incidentally, it was not just the Nawab of Bhopal, but there was also a Maharaja of Jodhpur, there was a Maharaja of Travencore. So, it transcended the Hindu-Muslim divide: you had the Nizam of Hyderabad and then the Nizam of Bhopal and also the Maharaja of Travancore and the Maharaja of Jodhpur and a lot of smaller other Maharajas. So, that was, I think, Menon's important role. And there, V.P. Menon was also very clear that there must be two dominions. There must be India and there must be Pakistan – there is no place for a third player.
Milan 32:43
You mentioned Kashmir earlier, and I want to circle back to that. Fast forward a few years: Menon becomes ambassador to the United Nations; he makes this famous eight-plus-hour impassioned defense of India's position on Kashmir in front of the United Nations Security Council. This earned him a spot, as you note, in the Guinness Book of World Records because of the length of his intervention, but you also note that this made him a hero back home. What was it about this speech that sort of captured the imaginations of Indians and would become, I think, a central part of his legacy going forward?
Jairam 33:21
It was a grand theatrical performance – the fact that in between two parts of his speech, he fainted and he was revived, and the fact that he spoke that long. That was the first time since 1948 that India's case was made with such eloquence and with such a level of detail, and with such a political slant. As you know, Milan, that made him a hero in India, and even those who were to become his bitter political rivals later – most importantly, Rajagopalachari – made a public appeal that he should win the 1957 Bombay elections. There was a public appeal made that, in the national interest, Krishna Menon should win, although then five years later, the same Raja-ji would say, “In the national interest, Mr. Menon should go,” in the context of the Chinese. But you know, more than Kashmir, I want to say one word on China, because that's very topical, very relevant.
Milan 34:49
Correct.
Jairam 34:52
There is a lot of evidence that I've brought out which has now become available, including the transcript of his conversations with Zhou Enlai in April of 1960 – Krishna Menon the only man who was arguing for a negotiated settlement. Now, what the contours of this negotiated settlement were was not very clear. At some places, it was called a swap deal – that we allow the Chinese suzerainty in areas which today are contested, namely Ladakh, whereas the Chinese acknowledged India's case in the eastern sector. Broadly, that's what the swap deal meant. Sometimes the word lease was used, sometimes the word suzerainty was used, but whatever it was, it was a negotiated settlement that Krishna Menon was talking about and advocating from 1958 onwards.
But unfortunately, Nehru's cabinet was very badly divided on this. Only Krishna Menon and some other people belonging to the left were supporting a negotiated settlement. And all of Nehru's big guns in the cabinet – the home minister, Govind Ballabh Pant, the finance minister, Morarji Desai, and of course, the vice president, Dr. Radhakrishnan – were all against it. And from '58 onwards, Nehru is in the autumn of the patriarch – Nehru is in a period of his political decline. After 1958 is a slow decline. And he's not the same Nehru who could say, “No, guys, I want a negotiated settlement.” Parliament was against a negotiated settlement. The socialists were against a negotiated settlement. And a young MP, a 37-year-old MP who had just been elected from UP, was the most eloquent voice against any negotiated settlement on the Chinese border. Of course, that MP in 2003 goes to Beijing as prime minister and signs an agreement with his counterpart saying that we must have a negotiated settlement, and they appoint special representatives. I'm of course talking of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Parliament was against a negotiated settlement, the Indian media was against a negotiated settlement, Nehru's cabinet was against a negotiated settlement. Nehru was ambivalent – he never came out strongly in favor of Menon. And remember, Zhou Enlai comes to India in '55, he comes to India in '56, he comes to India in '57, and then he comes to India in 1960, and he's in India for six days in April of 1960. And that's the last opportunity for a negotiated settlement. In July of 1962, Krishna Menon talks to Chen Yi in Geneva, and again, there's talk of a negotiated settlement. But by then it's too late.
Milan 38:23
A few years later, Menon would end up, of course, famously resigning his position as defense minister over China's 1962 invasion of India. You document the ways in which he had poisoned, I guess you could say, relations between the civilian establishment and the three military service chiefs. In retrospect, and with the benefit of hindsight, do you think Menon was a convenient fall guy, or do you think one can kind of draw a direct causal linkage from Menon's behavior to the debacle India suffered at the hands of the Chinese in the '62 War?
Jairam 39:04
Two things, Milan. He was a fall guy. If he didn't go, Nehru would have had to resign. The MPs of the Congress Party said, “If Menon doesn't go, you go.” They demanded Menon's resignation. And so Menon resigns on the 7th of November, finally. Nehru is very reluctant to accept the resignation. He's holding onto the resignation letter from the 28th of October 1962 to the 7th of November 1962. But in a meeting of Congress, many Congress MPs say, “Look, you've got to fire him. If you don't fire him, you will have to go.” And so I think to that extent, he became a fall guy.
But at the same time, it's very clear that the Americans had read the riot act to the Indians and said, “As long as Menon is defense minister, no military supplies will come from America.” Now, that meant no military supplies from Canada. That meant no military supplies from Britain. And this is very clear – Kennedy passes this message on to B.K. Nehru, who was our ambassador, and Galbraith passes this message on to Nehru in Delhi. So, in a way, Nehru was boxed in. He knew that we needed the military supplies. There was a pause, as you know. The Chinese first attack on the 28th of October 1962; this goes on till the 28th of October. There is a pause. And then again it starts on the 14th or 15th of November 1962, and it goes on for another eight, nine days. So, in that interregnum, the negotiations were taking place for arms supply, and it's very clear that the price for the arms supply was the exit of Menon.
So, Nehru had to get rid of him. There's no question about it. He had to get rid of him to deal with domestic political opinion. He had to get rid of him to satisfy the Americans. And this was a price that he had to pay for getting military supplies immediately. So, whether that means that he was a fall guy – yeah, I mean, he was a bit of a fall guy. But he had vitiated the atmosphere. He had played favorites – the appointment of General Kaul, who had absolutely no field experience and who was more of a military administrator than a field commander, led to very severe losses for India in NEFA, which is today's Arunachal Pradesh. So, there were some disastrous decisions that he had taken. But I think the more important reason why he had to go was the two factors that I mentioned, which is that Nehru had to appease the Congress party and Nehru had to appease the Americans. Nehru's position was saved and strengthened domestically, and American, British, and Canadian military supply was facilitated once Menon was out of the seat.
Milan 42:58
So, I want to end this conversation by asking you to reflect on the bigger picture. There's a new generation of Indians who were young, who may not know the name Krishna Menon. They're familiar with Nehru, with Gandhi, with Mountbatten. What is it that you hope that they take away from this book as they try to position Menon in the pantheon as you think about the sweep of the 20th century? What is it that you think his legacy should be? And what is deserving of further study and further inquiry?
Jairam 43:39
I think one of his great contributions to India, which is still very relevant, and which is still being talked about, is his whole emphasis on building a domestic defense production capability. He was the man who favored MiG production in India over British and American aircraft because the Soviets were willing to manufacture those aircraft in India. This is Atmanirbhar Bharat of Narendra Modi. He was an early advocate and practitioner. He didn't call it Atmanirbhar Bharat – he called it self-reliance, but atmanirbhar means self-reliance. And this whole emphasis on defense research – he was the one who got the Defense Research and Development Organization going. So, that's one part of his legacy, which I think continues to be very, very important.
I think the fact that he was always looking for an independent voice [was also important]. I mean, he used the word nonalignment, but what he meant by nonalignment basically was that India should do a cold calculus of its interests, and it should emerge as an independent voice. And I think that's a legacy that is still very much important.
He was a democratic socialist, as I mentioned, a great believer in democracy. He would have opposed the Emergency, undoubtedly, but I'm not so sure that he would have embraced liberalization. I think he was, as I said, a democratic socialist. They were two sides of the same coin. Now, one could argue that the socialist legacy has lost its luster, but the issues surrounding the legacy of our democracy is still very, very important.
And I think, Milan, frankly, the manner in which he conducted himself after he exited enhanced his stature in Indian public life. He left with dignity, he left with a sense of gratitude, and demonstrated remarkable loyalty to a man whom you could argue had sacrificed him at a crucial time. Yet there was no bitterness. And I think that's an important lesson for everybody in public life. He wrote no memoir. There was no tell-all book, there was no attempt to justify himself. So, we judge public personalities by what they do when they are in power. I believe it's important to judge public personalities by how they conduct themselves when they're out of power. And whether it was P.N. Haksar, who was Indira Gandhi's alter ego for five years before he was shunted aside, or whether it was Krishna Menon, who was Nehru's soulmate for 25 years before he too was kept aside – both these gentlemen showed remarkable dignity when they were out of office, and I think that's equally an important yardstick for judging public personalities other than what they achieve when they are in power.
Milan 47:44
My guest on the show today is Jairam Ramesh. His new book is called A Checkered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon. The book was recently named the co-winner of the 2020 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay New India Foundation Book Prize. It is a fabulous read. It gives fodder for many more books, I think, Jairam – on this period, on the two Menons, perhaps. Thank you for taking the time and congratulations on the achievement.
Jairam 48:13
Thank you, Milan. Always a pleasure to talk to you.