How Menon's downfall began
Menon is best remembered today as the Defence Minister who lost the 1962 India-China war.
Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon is best remembered today as the Defence Minister who lost the 1962 India-China war. But in the course of his long and varied career as a lawyer, an expat freedom-fighter, an ambassador and a minister; Menon's complex reputation frequently preceded him even as it dogged him. Given his combination of ambition, ability and a talent for making loyal friends and bitter enemies, it was perhaps predictable that his ascent would be mirrored by a dramatic fall. Now a new biography, releasing this month, written by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh draws on previously untapped archives of letters and personal papers to unravel the complex impulses that animated this polarising figure. In these excerpts, episodes from Menon’s ministerial twilight suggest the twisting path of decisions and missed opportunities that can lead a powerful statesman to political oblivion.
Chou En-lai’s visit, April 1960
Chou had meetings with Nehru of course, but what was unusual was that Nehru got him to meet officially with some of his seniormost colleagues as well Pant; Morarji Desai, the finance minister; Swaran Singh, the minister of steel; and Krishna Menon. Chou and Chen Yi also called on Vice-President S. Radhakrishnan. Krishna Menon had first met Chou in Geneva in MayJune 1954. Then they had been together in Bandung in April 1955 and in Beijing a month later. Among all Indians, he had had the maximum interactions with Chou.
Krishna Menon was at the airport along with the Prime Minister and other senior ministers to receive Chou and his team. The NehruChou talks began the next day at 11 am The record of that first conversation says:
It was agreed that initially the two Prime Ministers will talk only between themselves, but that, later on the advisers on both sides, not exceeding a total number of six, should also participate. Prime Minister suggested that Premier Chou might meet the Minister of Home Affairs as well as the Minister of Defence. Premier Chou had said that he would like to call on the Home Minister. At the end of the morning talk, Premier Chou said that he would like to meet the Defence Minister before coming to the Prime Minister’s residence for further talks in the afternoon. It was, therefore, decided that the Defence Minister would call on the Chinese Prime Minister at 3 pm in Rashtrapati Bhavan . . .
Krishna Menon’s only official meeting with Chou lasted two hours. Till now no record of that conversation had been available, unlike those of all other meetings of Chou. In the Krishna Menon archive there is a 14-page Top Secret’ note prepared by him after his first discussion with Chou on 20 April 1960. This note, which he had sent to Nehru, said:
Chou En-lai greeted me warmly. Present at the meeting were also Chen-Yi and Chang Han Fu...
Chou En-lai said he was very glad to see me again... [He] then said that the Prime Minister (JN) had said that I wished to meet him... I did not contradict this although this was not a fact... At a later stage in the conversation he also mentioned that he had said to our Prime Minister (JN) that he would like to see me. To this again, as on the previous occasion I merely made a smiling response...
I took the line which the Prime Minister (JN) had taken and conveyed to him the deep sense of shock that India had suffered [from Chinese incursions into Ladakh in October 1959], making it clear that it was not a shock of fear but of friendship outraged...
Chou En-lai then replied, I think, for about 2030 minutes... His first point was to express appreciation for our position in relation to them and mentioned the United Nations and so on...
He mentioned about Tibet, about Chinese total sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy. He referred to the Dalai Lama and while they did not object to political asylum, and could not do so, and had nothing to say against him, they were shocked with the reception and the treatment given to the Dalai Lama and that the Dalai Lama was using India as his base of operations and maligning China... He seemed to have exaggerated notions of a great Tibetan movement here...
(Moments in history Nehru, Chen Yi, Menon, Chou En-lai, S. Radhakrishnan and Govind Ballabh Pant, April 1960; Menon, Gen. K.S. Thimayya, Nehru and Minister of State S.S. Majithia on the occasion of Thimayya taking over as army chief, May 1957; Menon with Nehru at a UN Day function, New Delhi, October 25, 1962; Menon at a public meeting on the night of the Chinese invasion in Delhi, October 20, 1962)
...He said that China had made no territorial claims... and he suggested that we had said that they had made these claims... The purpose of this may have been to convey the impression that in the East their position is more or less to let things be and to obtain some definition of frontiers... He said they had come with a very sincere desire to settle matters and we must find a settlement...
With regard to the Northern area... I did not get into the question of our knowing or not knowing about the roads, but merely said it was an incursion into our areas which he later repudiated. He gave the indication that things should be allowed to freeze... I was extremely careful not to say anything in view of our internal position. I also said that neither this Government nor any Government could make compromise in regard to Indian sovereignty and Indian territory...
This extract is a highly abbreviated account of a conversation that lasted for over two hours. But even this conveys two things: first, how strongly Tibet and the Dalai Lama played on Chou’s mind and how it changed China’s policy towards India after the Dalai Lama’s flight to India in March 1959; second, how much Krishna Menon was going out of the way to give the impression that he was a team player and did not want to stray from the official line, whatever he felt about it privately. That very night he met Chou over an official dinner and sent Nehru a brief note saying that his second conversation was for about seven to eight minutes and was informal and old style’. He told Nehru that Chou recalled their interactions at Geneva in 1954 and in Peking in 1955 and had asked him whether he had any suggestions to make. Krishna Menon had played coy and said that the suggestions would undoubtedly come up with the meetings between the two Prime Ministers...
Thus far, Krishna Menon had met Chou twice in three days. On 23 April, he met with Chen Yi for almost two and a half hours between 10 pm and 12.30 am. The two conferred again for some 90 minutes on the evening of 24 April, 1960. Chou and his colleagues left India on 26 April, 1960, his talks with Nehru having failed to produce any breakthrough on the volatile border dispute.
The only person on the Indian side who had always believed that India must negotiate with the Chinese on a give-and-take basis was Krishna Menon. There is, however, no written evidence that the so-called Krishna Menon formula that India would accept China’s claims in Ladakh, and in return China would accept India’s claims on the strategically vital Chumbi Valley came up in his conversations with Chou. He refused to confirm or categorically deny that such a package deal had, in fact, been discussed between him and the Chinese premier. He would be asked a few weeks later in Bombay about these conversations, and his reply was:
Whatever I do these days makes news. If I drink tea it is news. If I ask for coffee for a change that too is news.
Some years later he was again asked about the mutual-lease idea, and his reply was non-committal:
There may have been all sorts of ideas... Actually the Prime Minister and I had talks on what could be done but other people, some of them senior men, although they did not veto it said: Why all this now; we will see when it comes’. It was not understood that in diplomacy if you take the initiative your action has far greater effect. Perhaps they thought it was not necessary. I believe that in 1960 China had made it very difficult for those of us who wanted to do anything. That is what I told Chou En-lai when he came here. I said, You may hurt us, but you hurt yourselves more; you have strengthened every reactionary element in this country...you have made it impossible for reasonable people to talk and seek ways of settlement’. I don’t think Chou En-lai had much freedom [of action] on this.
But from all that we know about his approach to diplomacy it would not be wrong to assume that such a discussion on a long-term lease basis had taken place. Malcolm Macdonald reported to the British home secretary on 13 July 1960:
...There is in fact some reason to believe that not only the Chinese Prime Minister but also the Indian Prime Minister would personally have been ready for a compromise... Mr. Krishna Menon informed me with characteristic brutal frankness that the problem could only be settled by horse trading’ and the Vice-President (Dr. Radhakrishnan) confided to me in more diplomatic if feebler language that if the Chinese would yield India the shadow’ of sovereignty in Ladakh, the Indian[s] should yield to the Chinese the substance’ of administrative and military control there. Mr. Menon indicated to me that Mr. Nehru agrees with this view, but that he was forced to deny it by the strength of his compatriots’ present opposition to any deal. I believe that is a correct description of the Prime Minister’s frame of mind....
Slighting Thimayya, April 1961
Thimayya would recommend Lt General S.S.P. Thorat as his successor but that would be turned down by Krishna Menon and thereafter by the Prime Minister as well. Instead, Lt General P.N. Thapar was selected as the fifth army chief invoking the seniority criteria which had been ignored while appointing Thimayya. This, by itself, was nothing unusual and could be defended easily. But what Thimayya and Thorat were to be subjected to was bewildering.
Thapar would write a Personal and Top Secret’ bombshell of a letter to Thimayya on 23 April 1961, a fortnight before the latter’s retirement, making 13 specific allegations against the man he was to succeed. These allegations included passing on classified information to members of the opposition in Parliament, making very disparaging remarks about the Prime Minister and the defence minister to Indians and foreigners, hobnobbing with arms dealers, and some financial irregularities. On the same day Thapar wrote a similar letter to Thorat as well making five charges of telling diplomats posted in New Delhi that there was far too much political interference in appointments in the Indian Army, of making indiscreet comments against the defence minister, of spending far too much money on farewell parties for Thimayya, and of telling the Americans and South Koreans way back in 1954 that India would not have survived after Independence without American support.
Thapar would not have written these letters without Krishna Menon bamboozling him. This was the defence minister at his pettiest and meanest. He must have kept the Prime Minister informed and got his approval because Thapar began both the letters by saying, I am directed by the Prime Minister to request you for your comments on the following allegations,’ and ended by saying, The Prime Minister is, however, anxious that every opportunity should be given to you to clear up your position in the matter before Government decided what further action should be taken.’
Krishna Menon had a co-conspirator in this sordid episode. That was Lt General B.M. Kaul, who had been in Korea with Thimayya and Thorat and was then the quartermaster general at army headquarters. References to what Thimayya and Thorat had said in Korea could only have come from him, and this is the smoking gun of Kaul’s involvement in putting Thimayya and Thorat in the dock. Kaul had many things going for him: at a time when most officers in the Indian Army in the 1940s were seen to be too British’ in their worldview, Kaul identified himself openly with the nationalist movement. He moved easily in political circles and had come to Nehru’s attention soon after Independence. He was made part of India’s delegation to the UN in 1948 and thereafter held a series of assignments that, however, were never operational in nature. Along with Krishna Menon and Thapar, he had to quit the army after India’s debacle in the OctoberNovember 1962 war with China but there was a time when he was even considered one of the eight possible successors to Nehru.
Operation Vijay, December 1961
Operation Vijay, under the leadership of Major General K.P. Candeth son of Krishna Menon’s teacher at Presidency College some 45 years earlier and hailing from Ottapalam, some 100 km away from Krishna Menon’s place of birth was launched on the night of 17 December. The very next day the Portuguese surrendered, bringing to an end, in less than 24 hours, 451 years of colonial rule. Candeth would continue to be an admirer of Krishna Menon. Many years later he would tell his grandniece Janaki Ram:
He [Krishna Menon] was undoubtedly the ablest Defence Minister the army ever had we owe him a tremendous debt, because but for him we would not have had a defence industry. He had vision and enormous drive. He could get things done. But his manner of doing things was what antagonised the army. Because we are an organisation where respect, honour and tradition hold a great deal of importance. And we have to command people and we can’t do it if someone denigrates you.
The West was livid with Krishna Menon, and to a lesser extent with Nehru, on Goa they had consciously or unconsciously played the good copbad cop routine very well. The US State Department cabled the embassy in New Delhi on 26 December 1961 that the Indian ambassador in the US, B.K. Nehru, had been told that Krishna Menon’s visit to New York just as the Portuguese were surrendering was being seen by the Americans as India flaunting its action in Goa’.
In his conversations with Michael Brecher some years later Krishna Menon opened up to an unusual extent and spoke extensively of how the Goa operation was planned and its consequences. He was extremely critical of the role of the Americans, and of Galbraith in particular. He did not deny that he had presented a virtual fait accompli to the Prime Minister on the exact time of the operation informing him after it had begun. He would deny that his activism over Goa had anything to do with the elections since there were only a handful of Goans in North Bombay. He would compliment the army, navy and air force for working very well together. Two individuals would be mentioned: Lt General B.M. Kaul was praised for planning the entire operation, and Lt General J.N. Chaudhuri for muscling in and claiming credit for doing nothing. A year later, Kaul would be forced to resign after the military debacle in the war with China, and Chaudhuri would take over as army chief from Thapar, who would also be made to quit. Goa may well have given Krishna Menon and Kaul a swollen head and a false sense of India’s military prowess.
Meeting Kissinger, January 1962
This was the year that started off with a bang and ended up with an even bigger bang as far as Krishna Menon was concerned. But before the bang came two conversations with an American professor at Harvard University, who was visiting India as a consultant to the US National Security Council. What Krishna Menon had attempted to do for the Sino-US relationship in 1955, this professor would accomplish in 1971 and become a legend. On 8 and 10 January, 1962, Krishna Menon met with Henry Kissinger. Unlike Krishna Menon, Kissinger maintained records of all his meetings and noted:
I began the conversation by saying it was very kind of the Defence Minister to spare me the time for the appointment... Menon replied that I was undoubtedly one of the Americans who wished him defeated in the next election... the American press, American officials and the President [Kennedy] he said were either reporting about him invidiously or had treated him in a high-handed fashion... This was particularly true of the President. He said that he was aware of the President’s rude behaviour to him had not been directed against him personally but against the Prime Minister. People who were afraid to tackle Nehru tackled him.
I said that it seemed to be inconceivable that his interpretation was correct. After all, the President had been committed to a strong and developing India long before he became the Chief Executive...Krishna Menon replied, You are always trying to embrace us. Don’t embrace us. We are a proud people’...
We then turned briefly to Goa. Menon said that the American objection to the Indian action was a vestige of Western imperialism... The attack on Goa was simply a continuation of India’s struggle for independence...
I asked Menon about the difficulties with China on India’s northern frontier. He replied that the territory occupied by the Chinese was absolutely worthless, a fact well known to all foreigners eager to launch India into a conflict with China. The worst result of the Chinese moves on India’s northern frontier was its weakening of the progressive elements in India...
In nine months, the war that Krishna Menon thought would not happen did, in fact, take place. India would face severe military reverses, and Krishna Menon would be forced to resign with the US ambassador, Galbraith, playing a crucial role in his ouster. Krishna Menon never really took to Galbraith. He may have resented Galbraith’s easy access to Nehru but more than that he found Galbraith’s behaviour to be imperial and viceregal, without the sophistication and grace of a Mountbatten.