(5 of 10)
What enrages the West and many Indians about Menon is the way he toadies to the Communist bloc in his capacity as India's chief U.N. delegate. Menon roasted Britain and France about Suez, dismissed Russian oppression in Hungary as "probably an exaggeration." He is a consistent advocate of Red China's admission to the U.N. Nikita Khrushchev's demand for an uninspected nuclear test ban gets Menon's wholehearted approval. Asked what would happen if Russia then went ahead and resumed testing as it did last fall, Menon shrugs: "There is no alternative except to live and let live."
Menon tirelessly preaches "self-determination," but the question of a plebiscite for the Moslem Indian province of Kashmir, which is also claimed by Pakistan, brings forth a torrent of words about India's historic rights.* He has a remarkable explanation of why the Russian satellites are not colonies: "A colony by definition is a territory which is not a member of the U.N.," he says. "You can't call the satellites colonies, because they were all admitted to the U.N. by a unanimous vote. There may be oppression there, there may be any vice you can think of, but that is not colonialism."
The Boy Scout. Menon's mind is a weird, eclectic mixture, containing more of Marx than of Gandhi, more of the Bloomsbury agnostic than the Hindu,† more 19th century radicalism than 20th century reality, all held together by arrogance. His feelings toward colonialism can be traced partly to his birthplace, the town of Calicut on the Malabar coast (now the state of Kerala). "I was born where Vasco da Gama made the first landing by a European in India," Menon says. But he is reluctant to talk about his youth. "I have no past, have no journals or diaries. When I die, I want to leave nothing behind." Son of a lawyer, he was sent at the age of 15 to the theosophical institute in Madras run by Mrs. Annie Besant, the eccentric Englishwoman who was an early agitator for Indian home rule, a prominent member of the theosophy movement** and in 1917 president of the Congress Party. Theosophy did not appeal to young Menon. Says he: "This world has too many problems to think of the other world's."
He became a leader of the Indian boy scout movement, in 1924 went to England for six months as secretary to one of Mrs. Besant's assistants. He stayed for 28 years. Says Menon: "I survived England somehow or other." He studied under Socialist Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, was later admitted to the bar. But Menon found his real calling when he joined the India League, an unofficial propaganda organization aimed at converting the British to Indian home rule.