In 1930, a trip (his first overseas) as part of the secretariat to London for the First Round Table Conference brought home to VP the importance of the ongoing But, between 1914-1951, VP’s contributions to modern India were both immense and immensely understated. Today, VP Menon is remembered for being Sardar Vallabhbahi Patel’s right-hand man, for assisting in the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union. An invaluable asset to the Sardar, it is VP Menon’s signature on every Instrument of Accession(HT Archives) He would remain with the Reforms Office until 1947. In 1924, he would join the Reforms Office, a branch of the government of India, which would shepherd India along the path to self-governance. He was the principal typist of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. Over the course of the next four decades, VP - as he would come to be known - would be at the frontline of India’s progress towards Independence. He was all of 19-years-old, and he came with nothing but a letter recommending him for a typist’s job in the home department. Nobody knew who Vappala Pangunni Menon was then. Drawing from documents-scattered, unread and unresearched until now-and with unprecedented access to Menon’s papers and his taped off-the-record and explosively frank interviews-this remarkable biography of VP Menon not only covers the life and times of a man unjustly consigned to the footnotes of history but also changes our perception of how India, as we know it, came into being.On a sunny spring day in 1914, a young Malayali walked into the Government of India’s summer offices in Gorton Castle (in the then Simla). She takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party to his final relegation to relative obscurity.Įqually, the book candidly explores the man behind the public figure- his unconventional personal life and his private conflicts, which made him channel his energy into public service. In this definitive biography, Menon’s great-granddaughter, Narayani Basu, rectifies this travesty. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucrat, patriot and visionary.

Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his seniormost Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon-or VP-giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence.

Narayani basu vp menon