With Kashmir once again in the limelight, it could not have been a better time to publish a book about VP Menon, subtitled “The Unsung Arch...
With Kashmir once again in the limelight, it could not have been a better time to publish a book about VP Menon, subtitled “The Unsung Architect of Modern India.” Nor, indeed, when recent narratives have sought to embrace Sardar Ballabhbhai Patel, the iron man of India, as the leader who, given a free hand, would have saved the country from its fractured legacy – or, at least, since Partition proved to be inevitable, as an individual who might have welded all the disparate pieces together under a different dispensation, that is to say, a Hindu Raj. That is the current narrative, not necessarily one that Patel would have endorsed.
One can also question various small niggles with regard to the title. In VP Menon’s own superb account, “The Story of the Integration of the States”, published in 1956 to fulfil a promise he had made to his mentor, Patel, he describes the trajectory that was to lead to the forming of the two nations. It’s somewhat ingenuous to ignore that along with “Modern India”, there was also Pakistan.
As far as bestowing the rubric of architect goes, it’s certainly the privilege of a great-granddaughter to view her ancestor with a certain amount of...
