India 1: A Passage to India

A bit of India in Nigeria: a signed portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru in Nnamdi Azikiwe's library.
Plus my reflection because I'm not a great photographer.

Turns out Krishna Menon is at the end of this street.

On May 31, I left Nigeria, and through the magic of time zones, I landed in Delhi on June 1. Leaving behind Nigeria, I came to India to continue my quest for knowledge and/or a dissertation topic. In this third country of my odyssey, I came seeking V.K. Krishna Menon. Krishna Menon was the irascible, cranky, and very leftist advocate for Indian independence in London during the 1930s and 1940s, thorn in the side of the United States at the United Nations throughout the 1950s, and India's Minister of Defence from 1957 to 1962. Despite a nearly thirty year long tenure as Jawaharlal Nehru's confidant, Nehru had to remove Krishna Menon as Defence Minister during the Indian Army's disastrous performance against the Chinese invasion in the fall of 1962 (which by complete coincidence occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis).

I did some light sightseeing, including at the Rajpath, in the very new part of New Delhi (built by the British in the 1910s to house their governmental offices, relocated from Calcutta in 1912). The building photographed here now houses India's Ministry of Defence, and thus served as Krishna Menon's offices in the late 1950s.

Much of my time in Delhi has been spent either at the National Archives of India, or at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, a truly world-class institution housing Jawaharlal Nehru's papers, as well as the papers of many of his colleagues and collaborators, including Krishna Menon.

Teen Murti

"The Nehru" is located at Teen Murti, on the grounds of Nehru's old home, where he stayed from 1947 to 1964 as India's first prime minister. Next to the old house is the Library building, which is where I spend my time.

The Library

Krishna Menon lived just around the corner from Nehru, and even after his sacking in 1962, used to go over to Nehru's house in the evenings to talk about the politics of the day. Krishna Menon never married or had children, and so his house was not kept as a museum, but a statue stands to him on his namesake street, not far from Teen Murti.

In future posts I will offer more about my life in Delhi, but I wanted to finally get the blog up to the current country, at least before I leave India in about two weeks. A blog's work is never finished.

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The video for today is an interview (I believe from 1954) with Krishna Menon. You can marvel at the former substance of television news: