QUESTION: How do you write a biography?
If you had asked me how to write a biography five years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer.
When I sat down to write the story of Vappala Pangunni Menon, I wasn’t thinking about the “how” of it. I was thinking more of the story I wanted to tell.
VP, as he was known, was the owner of a story that had, until today, never been fully told.1 At thirteen, he ran away from school (after setting it on fire)! In 1909, he would go on to become a coolie in the goldmines of Kolar, a mining town just outside modern Bangalore in India. Five years later, he would land himself a temporary job as a typist in the Home Department of the Government of India in 1914.2
One of the few formal photographs of a much younger VP. All images used are family photos provided by the author.
A school-dropout, who never attained either the educational or the professional qualifications required by the Crown to enter the bureaucracy, VP Menon nonetheless rose to become India’s highest–arguably the finest–civil servant, by the time of Indian independence. He had served as Reforms Commissioner to India’s last three Viceroys, and in 1937 added women to the Indian electoral rolls. VP’s hands were the ones that drafted the final plan to divide British India, giving birth to Pakistan and India its independence, thereby changing the face of South Asia forever.3
As Secretary, Ministry of States, VP would be the right hand that Home Minister Sardar Patel needed: traversing the length and breadth of the country to simultaneously cajole and coerce 565 recalcitrant princes into signing the Instrument of Accession (which he drafted in 1935).4 He was, as much as anyone else involved in the process, one of modern India’s architects.
He was also a bureaucrat. Bureaucrats are, by dint of easy stereotype, often consigned to the footnotes of history. So, when you think of a freedom struggle, you don’t think of it in terms of paperwork or personnel. My main challenge, then, lay in bringing a civil servant out from the shadows of the giants he walked with, and giving him his day in the sun.
VP Menon, immersed in his work.
Equally crucially, the challenge lay in avoiding the trap of hagiography. I am VP’s great-granddaughter, and I am often asked if this leads to the kind of bias that results in a skewed assessment. The final answer to that, of course, lies with the reader. But as the writer, I can tell you that for me, the key in telling VP’s story was to marry the personal with the public, as honestly as it might be possible to do.
VP’s personal story was difficult to tell, but only in terms of the unavailability of records. He was a fiercely private man, not given to revealing his emotions in words or on paper. He reserved those for the letters he wrote to his adored step-daughter, Meenakshi Anantan. However, in accumulating memories of his personal life, of telling the story of his troubled first marriage, credit must go to the entire family. By this, I mean both the immediate and extended Vappala clan, and the closest living relatives of VP’s second wife, Kanakam. It is often the estate–or the extended family–that acts as the custodian of its most prominent member’s secrets.
The Vappala clan proved eager to provide information that could easily have been whitewashed for public viewing. Visits to the Indian states of Kerala and Karnataka, where VP’s descendants and relatives still live, yielded an eclectic cache of memories. There were old black-and-white photographs; letters–in both English and Malayalam–to friends, erstwhile colleagues and family; a slim booklet of VP’s recollections of the men he worked with in government service; a trove of original cartoons drawn of VP’s efforts at integrating India, done by Shankar, the preeminent cartoonist of the day. Those who remembered VP within the family sat down and talked over his story in repetitive and exhaustive detail. But at no time was anything held back.
A reading of my book will tell you that this was a man who–despite his driving ambition and his extraordinary contributions to Indian history–was deeply flawed, and often capable of astonishing emotional cruelty. In telling me his story openly, and in giving me tangible memories so I could piece his life together, the Vappala clan as well those of Kanakam’s relatives I could reach, have helped me draw a portrait of both a hero and a human. VP Menon was indeed a great man, but still capable of the same flaws that make all of us mortal.
The Vappala clan outside the ancestral home in Kothakurussi. Standing (L to R) : Kuttisankara Menon, Narayana Menon, Kumara Menon, Achutha Menon, Gopalakrishnan Menon. Sitting (L to R): VP Menon, Madhavi Kutty, Kunjikutty Amma, Ammini Amma, Pangunni Menon. On the floor : Sundaram Menon and Krishnan Menon.
My research on VP’s professional career took me across India – to Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and within my own city, New Delhi. It also took me overseas, to London, where I worked at the British Library, at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, in Southampton’s Hartley Library, and at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London. It was at SOAS, however, that I struck real gold. As far as VP’s professional opinions were concerned, the only person he ever spoke to, on record and without reserve, was his erstwhile boss and one of his closest friends, Henry “Harry” Vincent Hodson. Hodson’s private papers are part of the Special Collections Archive at the School of Oriental & African Studies. Hodson’s interviews with VP comprise some 18 CDs, each an hour long. In them, VP’s own voice talks about his years in government service. More importantly, he talks about what happened behind the scenes–the egos, vanities, jealousies and quarrels–as India prepared to declare independence and usher in a new era of democratic self-determination. These are the last interviews that VP would record during his lifetime. They were taped over the course of six months, during which time Hodson stayed at VP’s home, Shelter, in Bengaluru.5
As a biographer and a great-granddaughter, it was a moment of real and rare delight for me. As a result, I allowed VP’s voice to do much of the talking in the book. It was a decision that landed my book in a controversial soup, specifically over Jawaharlal Nehru’s omission of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s name as Deputy Prime Minister on India’s first Cabinet list.6 Several eminent historians–and political figures–instantly leapt into the breach, damning the story as “fake news” and “mistaken recollections.” Letters from Nehru to Patel and vice-versa were held up as testament to the two leaders’ great appreciation of each other. Essentially, because I utilized an oral history source as primary evidence, my argument, it was contended, stood null and void.
Left to Right: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, HRH the Maharaja of Cochin, and VP Menon.
I beg to differ. Oral history is the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word. It is also one of the most modern types of inquiries, initiated with tape recorders in the mid-twentieth century. Oral histories provide a fuller, more accurate picture of the past by augmenting (and this is important) the information provided by public records, statistical data, and other historical material.7 We might know the facts of a major government or military decision. But when we hear someone who was an eyewitness to things he or she personally lived through, we hear a more intimate version of history. It is admittedly a personal form of history, but an individual understanding of why things happened as they did–particularly from those who were present at the scene during the time–helps to avoid sweeping generalizations that can stereotype political figures, engender prejudice and overlook important variables in historical narrative. They are treasure troves, with the power to fill gaps in knowledge or shed light on unclear moments in the historical record.
The use of oral history has been markedly selective, at least here, in India. It is only recently, for instance, that historians like Aanchal Malhotra (see her book Remnants of A Separation: A History of Partition through Material Memory) and Sparsh Ahuja (Project Dastaan) have extensively used oral histories to render fuller, more empathetic and almost visceral narratives of the wounds of the partition of India.8
Yet skepticism about the merits of oral history remains. One of the chief complaints is that the stories gleaned from interviews are highly subjective, and might contribute to the creation of a history that is far less accurate. In the case of my biography, for instance, it was pointed out that “human recollection can be wrong.”9
Sardar Patel reviews the constitutional progress of Indian states at a press conference in New Delhi on 29 January, 1948. Seen on Sardar’s right is VP Menon, while to Patel’s left is NC Mehta, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
Even if one accepts that oral history is subjective, it shouldn’t be forgotten that when it comes to history, defining accuracy and writing history is always going to be subjective. Today, historians often operate under constraints–societal or political–which might influence their ability to retell an “accurate” version of historical events. This leads to two things: an ideological weaponization of history, in which certain historical narratives are used to vanquish another. With this approach, a hard binary is drawn between what is perceived to be “right” versus “wrong.” The second, and often simultaneous, effect of dividing history in this way is that we lose the ability to see the past as it was meant to be seen–as a landscape dotted, not by demigods or symbolic figureheads of a particular ideological narrative, but with human beings in all their shades. More importantly, we tend to lose focus of reality. So, in the writing of my book, in addition to the usual primary and secondary sources, I also used oral histories. Several eminent bureaucrats–many of whom were VP’s peers during the transfer of power and integration of India–recorded their memories of the times they lived and worked in as part of oral history projects. So too did journalists, press attaches to Viceroys and politicians.
The point I am trying to make is that each of these men left behind their memories of the days leading up to the transfer of power. They remembered the bloodshed, the clash of egos, the politics behind the scenes, and the tension on the streets better than anyone else. To leave out their voices would have been akin to leaving out the seasoning in a dish!
This brings me back to the voice of VP Menon. Like the others profiled in my book, his recollections were recorded years after he had left government service. Again, as was the case with everyone else, he was speaking, then, as a private individual–without any fetters or inhibitions. He remembered a time when India stood at a fluid moment in her political history, when he was Reforms Commissioner to the Governor General, and a key and trusted player in India’s political network. VP’s interviews with Harry Hodson revealed the high-octane atmosphere under which independent India’s political history began.
The background drama to politics and diplomacy is real, and rarely documented. What goes on behind effusively worded public records could easily be a matter of speculation, were it not for oral history. The recollections of diplomats, aides or political leaders present at the scene are vital in providing truthful insights where there were previously none, and if used well, to depict a richer, more complex history.
If I had to be honest, I think the answer to how do you write a biography came to me only after controversy exploded. So, in hindsight, I would say that there is a strong need, especially in this day and age, to use a biography as a platform to humanize historical leaders and moments. We don’t do history–its study, writing and learning–any service by clinging obstinately to old tropes, by pitting one historical leader against the other, by eulogizing the leaders of our past or by sanitizing events that defined a nation.
History is like its subjects: flawed, great, and human. And that is how it should be told.
The press conference of June 4th 1947, to announce the Menon Plan for the transfer of power.
- Biographies of Indian political leaders of the time are numerous. Historical narratives of the period are equally richly documented. In many of them, VP Menon plays a crucial but significantly underplayed role. There has been, until now, no comprehensive biography on the man.
- Narayani Basu, V.P. Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India (New Delhi: Simon & Schuster India, 2020), 25.
- The plan for the transfer of power in India–known to the world as either the June 3rd Plan or, more popularly, the Mountbatten Plan–was, in fact, crafted by VP Menon. The story behind the writing of the plan is a long one, full of last-minute complications. A footnote won’t do it as much justice, but interested readers may read my book for VP’s own role in its crafting. Several wonderful biographies of the period itself also exist, such as Patrick French’s Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division.
- The Instrument of Accession permitted each of the rulers of the 565 princely states to either join the new dominions of India or Pakistan, after the partition of British India.
- The house still stands today, in modern Bengaluru’s Cooke Town. It is inhabited by Meenakshi Anantan’s son, Vivek.
- It should be noted that this was an incident that makes up precisely two pages, if that, of a more than 400 page book. My book is not an explanation of the formation of India’s first government, but of the life of VP Menon. That being said, critics will always exist–and so will historical debate and disagreements. That’s par for the course in academia, and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a hard binary between right and wrong.
- Writing this biography as VP’s great-granddaughter, I worked using the personal and professional papers of key figures in India’s independence movement and political leadership. I used government records of India’s Viceroys and its Secretaries of State for India as well as the records of the Home Department, Political Department, Reforms Branch and States Ministry. Readers of my book will find that I used edited and collected volumes as well as special projects devoted to the history of Indian independence. Furthermore, I found useful material at Indian state archives (Bhopal), and the National Archives (Delhi). The kinds of sources I used were many. Oral histories formed a vital part of them.
- Dastaan, in several South Asian languages, means “story.” This is a project based on the stories of the survivors of Partition. The stories are, in themselves, vital in knitting together communities ripped apart by Partition in ways that policy-makers often overlook–by focusing on shared memories of loss, identity, trauma and conflict. These, too, are oral histories–and yet they provide a far more empathetic look at the people behind the politics of India and Pakistan, by allowing for a wider, more intimate look at otherwise dry issues like migration and spatial dislocation.
- Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor, responding on Twitter to Minister of External Affairs, Dr. S. Jaishankar, who launched my book in February. For further information, see IANS, “The legacy of the Nehru-Patel rivalry: Jaishankar v/s Guha,” Outlook Magazine, 13 February 2020.
