There is nothing in any paper trail to suggest that Nehru intended to slight Patel by ignoring him. What is one to make of this revelation? There is the letter, to which historians and other experts refer, in which Nehru invites Patel to join his cabinet. Like all successful bureaucrats, Menon knew that to achieve an objective, it is best to whisper a good idea in the ear of the vain politician and let him claim credit, lest he implement a stupid idea of his own. Basu’s account suggests it was Menon who asked Mountbatten to restrain the impetuous Nehru. He told Hodson that he naturally advised Nehru that not including Patel would be a foolish move. Mountbatten had a clear view of how history should judge him. Hodson later checked with Lord Mountbatten, then India’s viceroy, who too seemed to remember it. In those conversations, Menon recalled that Nehru initially did not want to include Patel in the cabinet. Menon wrote three books two of them, The Story Of The Integration Of Indian States, published in 1956, and The Transfer Of Power In India, published a year later, are crucial in our understanding of the making of the Indian nation.īut to understand his life better, she also draws hugely on the papers of Harry Hodson, who was India’s reforms commissioner (and to whom Menon reported), and the many hours of interviews Hodson did with Menon, which undoubtedly helped shape Hodson’s book, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (of her nearly 900 footnotes, close to a quarter cite Hodson’s papers or books as a source). The first is Menon’s own writing, which cannot be accused of being confessional. When historian Ramachandra Guha challenged him, Jaishankar, now a party politician, stuck to his guns.īasu’s account of Vappala Pangunni Menon’s life draws on two important sources.
Jaishankar, who was an effective diplomat, cast aside the niceties of his earlier profession and said he “learned" about Nehru’s plan from the book. That they had differences of opinion is known. That Nehru and Patel were both giants of the freedom struggle is disputed only by the ignorant. Menon: The Unsung Architect Of Modern India, Narayani Basu’s biography of her great-grandfather, was published earlier this year, it attracted attention because of a melodramatic “revelation"-whether Jawaharlal Nehru wanted Vallabhbhai Patel in his cabinet or not. It is a sad reflection of our divisive time that when V.P.
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