V. P. Menon

Vappala Pangunni Menon CIS CIE (1894-1966), also known as V. P. Menon, was an Indian civil servant who played a vital role during the partition of India and the integration of independent India, from the period 1945-1950.

Menon was the son of a school headmaster in Kerala and worked as a railway stoker, coal miner and Bangalore tobacco company clerk before gaining a junior post in the civil service. Menon had begun as a clerk in the Indian Civil Service, but working assiduously hard, Menon rose through the ranks to become the highest serving Indian officer in British India. In 1946, he was appointed Political Reforms Commissioner to the British Viceroy.

In Patrick French's book, India - a portrait, it is mentioned that VP Menon moved in with his Keralite friends after his wife left him and returned to south India. The couple had actually arranged his marriage and helped raise his two sons. When the husband dies, Menon married his widow.

Partition of India

See Also: Indian Independence Movement, Partition of India

Menon was the political advisor of the last Viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten. When the interim Government had collapsed due to the rivalry between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, Menon had proposed to Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Indian leaders, the Muslim League's plan to partition India into two independent nations - India and......
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