Krishna Menon's New Role
SABAVALA, SHAROKH
KRISHNA MENON'S NEW ROLE India's former foreign affairs spokesman concentrates quietly on defense buildup By Sharokh Sabavala NEW DELHI RECENTLY in Kerala, 100,000 people cheered a speaker when...
...The Air Force has been jet-equipped and the Navy awaits a new aircraft-carrier...
...His admirers, usually discreet, are doctors, lawyers, administrators and businessmen...
...Menon complained to Nehru, who forced his ex-Secretary to apologize...
...Defense Headquarters, until recently, was India's most exclusive club, where politicians and businessmen were treated with equal contempt...
...This aloofness stems from two causes...
...First, Menon remains very close to the fount of power in India...
...Menon, as the audience well knew, is their country's Defense Minister...
...This coterie is quite influential in the big Indian cities from which the ruling class springs...
...Even so, his margin of victory was far from impressive...
...His influence is accepted, albeit grudgingly...
...But on the whole, the campaigns on his behalf are quiet, too quiet...
...But for the fact that he is so close to the Prime Minister, he would be completely ignored...
...This, then, is the surface picture...
...The country rocked with the news of the appointment two years ago...
...The Services suddenly have begun to display some excellent sportsmen and athletes...
...Nehru called for an investigation, which resulted in the Secretary's complete exoneration...
...With the masses, his attitude is one of sweet reasonableness...
...On the parade ground, the one-time Trafalgar Square soap-box orator is as proper, as immaculate and ramrod, as any of his generals...
...The Indian Armed Forces, the Army in particular, are British-trained...
...he cannot speak its language, or for that matter any Indian language...
...Menon is tireless in visiting Army installations, outlying airfields and remote naval stations...
...Some said the generals would revolt...
...but he has not been reinstated...
...In his office, a round-the-clock routine concerns itself with re-equipping the Forces, with the need to build up a territorial army and auxiliary forces and with Services' welfare...
...But those who know say Menon is quietly building up a following—not among the masses, with whom he has little contact, but with the leader class...
...A facet of Menon's career which continues to puzzle Indians is his altogether unexpected popularity, both with the jawan—the GIs—and the top brass of the Services...
...KRISHNA MENON'S NEW ROLE India's former foreign affairs spokesman concentrates quietly on defense buildup By Sharokh Sabavala NEW DELHI RECENTLY in Kerala, 100,000 people cheered a speaker when he jeeringly referred to V. K. Krishna Menon as the "Foreign Minister of China...
...The ordnance industry has been galvanized...
...The people see him quietly going around his constituency or attending small, seemingly unimportant meetings which his Cabinet colleagues will not attend...
...Menon obviously wants to be ignored right now...
...His closeness to Nehru—once the subject of endless speculation which was quite often tinged with malice—is now accepted as a settled fact of Indian politics...
...While he shuns political rallies...
...The aura of Kipling, Kitchener and the jolly old Empire still lingers over the generals...
...Earlier in the year, the Prime Minister's Private Secretary, himself an influential person, resigned after charges of financial impropriety made against him in the Communist press were echoed in Parliament...
...The story goes that immediately after the resignation, the Secretary charged unceremoniously into the Defense Minister's room, with the accusation that Menon deliberately had jockeyed him out of office because he was too close to the Prime Minister...
...Yet Menon seems perfectly satisfied...
...Even his interest in foreign affairs has dwindled, and it seems doubtful that Nehru will use him again extensively as his international contact man...
...The MinisSHAROKH SABAVALA, who reports from India for THE NEW LEADER, is a Christian Science Monitor correspondent...
...If so, this court intrigue has been a miserable failure...
...With his peers, he is Olympian in his hauteur...
...In his own home State of Kerala, he is hardly known...
...Into this atmosphere Nehru injected a long-haired agitator...
...The speculation in Delhi is that the Secretary was being used by two other Cabinet Ministers to diminish Menon's influence with the Prime Minister...
...For an ambitious man and a seasoned politician, this appears by no means a satisfactory position...
...It vehemently denies he has Communist leanings...
...Every now and then, the bazaar grapevine reports Menon's imminent fall from grace...
...Everyone has been proved wrong...
...The country buzzes with gossip, usually and abruptly terminated by a special mark of favor from his friend and patron...
...ter insists that the best is not good enough for his boys, and he generally gets for them the best of what is going...
...He takes little active part in domestic politics...
...feared the beginnings of Communist infiltration into the rank-and-file...
...Thus, to most of his fellow countrymen Menon remains an enigma...
...Most of them are non-political, a few are outspoken in their condemnation of Communism...
...Secondly, he cor-siders himself more of an Armed Forces Minister than any of his civilian predecessors...
...He surrounds himself with Armv, Navy and Air Force personnel, to whose needs he pays meticulous attention...
...who may be the United Nations' bete noire, but who, in India, has turned himself into a gentle, soft-spoken baby-patter...
...It points to his efficiency, his dedication to work, his austere living...
...An alert young officer can confidently expect quick promotion today, and his family is increasingly well looked after...
...hitherto jealously guarded against any kind of political influences...
...The speaker was further supported when he added that Menon was a better defender of Communism in Kerala, against the wishes of his own ruling Congress party, than of the Indo-Tibetan border against Chinese Communist encroachment...
...He, therefore, does not have to bend, placate or please...
...India has its best Defense Minister to date, and while there is some grumbling about the expenses involved in the building of this reputation, there also is a secret pride at the efficiency with which the Ministry is run in comparison with some other Government departments...
...It argues against those who, in the recent past, have expressed fears that Menon may eventually become India's Nasser...
...Conversely, the Congress party does not rate Menon's chances high for the post-Nehru era...
...During the 1957 elections, the Kerala State Congress party could not guarantee Menon a safe seat, and Nehru had to foist him on Bombay, personally canvassed for him and ordered an elaborate campaign on his behalf...
...This, however, is not a usual reaction to the current activities of Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon...
...Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru...
...Other...
...Most people deplored the appointment as inevitably leading to a breakup in the country's best-organized mechanism...
Vol. 42 • August 1959 • No. 30
