It is a story of two women, one drug and political intrigues
Based on Menon's correspondence with his sister Janaki Amma,his grand niece Janaki Ram has written a book,V K Krishna Menon,a Personal Memoir.In it Janaki Ram(Janaki Ram is related to Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer too;she is the daughter of Menon's sister Janaki's elder daughter VA Madhavi Shastri) says that Menon was a believer in Astrology and after a failed love affair he remained a bachelor.The author,however suggests that in spite of his haughty temperament,many women were attracted to him.
The failed love affair,of course was the one with Marie Seton.As Janaki said,he had flings,but the only serious affair he had was with Marie.
Britain declassified a bunch of their Security Service MI5 files in 2007,in an effort to denigrate him.While he was Secretary of the India League during 1928-1947,they intercepted his phone calls at home,office and his letters.He was under surveillance.The MI5 dossier on him is of the view that Menon was a Communist agent and hence a threat to Britain.When I tried to corroborate the information in the files with other documents,I got the feeling that Menon was a single man army fighting the British and a true revolutionary.He agitated both Britain and the US.MI5 had even suspected African leaders Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah when they were in London.Britain considered Menon a weak link in the Commonwealth security chain.
The files are silent on Marie Seton,but refers to Menon's relationship with a woman,Bridget Tunnard-about that later.
In the 1930s,a period when both Menon and Marie met,Britain was under severe domestic pressure to grant India autonomy.Intellectuals such as Bertrand Russel, Harold Laski and Labour Party politicians such as Stafford Cripps,Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot batted for India.Laski was professor of Menon in the London School of Economics.According to Paul M McGarr of the University of Nottingham,Menon,above all others "transformed the British based campaign into a cohesive and dynamic political force".The India League under his leadership became a force to reckon with.He made an intelligent move to be associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain,CPGB.At that time the attendance for India League meetings was meagre.He met Nehru for the first time in 1935(the year of break down).He became Nehru's literary agent,acted as political chaperon to Indira Gandhi when she studied at Somerville College,Oxford.CPGB had 15000 members and had a newspaper with a circulation of 40,000.So Menon got enough people for his meetings and propaganda.Menon became friendly with Rajani Palme-Dutt,Marxist theoretician and Harry Pollitt,General Secretary of CPGB.Pollitt,years later rescued the Indian Communist Party from a split in the Madurai Party Congress.Menon co-opted leading British Communists to Executive Committee of India League.
In 1934 he became Labour Councillor from the North London borough of St Pancras.And then,four more terms.Though the MI5 files say that Menon was an opportunist,facts are otherwise.He would have been an MP from the constituency of Dundee which had connections with India's jute industry.But the ticket for him in 1939 was cancelled because he refused to condemn the Soviet invasion of Finland.This shows the strength of his association with CPGB.The invasion had its repercussions in the Indian Party,especially in the Kerala unit.Democratically speaking,the invasion was immoral.Though Menon tolerated it for the sake of CPGB,his relationship with the party soured after the Nazi invasion of USSR on 23 June 1941.The CPGB stopped attacking British colonialism because by then the Soviets had allied with the British.
British Viceroy Linlithgow had written to British Secretary of State for India Leo Amery in November 1942 to put Menon in jail:"...that it has been found possible to accept the suggestion which I have I think made once or twice that we should take pains to break up Menon and break up the India League with him.I am certain that so long as he is there he will be a focus of discontent and difficulty and I should myself have thought that he was really worth taking a little of chance."
This suggestion was not accepted;Britain feared the backlash.
I think this is enough to destroy the MI5 files and fix Menon's prominence before independence.Suffice to say that Menon was a man of character when he met Marie Seton.
Marie Seton(1910-1985)was an actress and an accomplished art,theatre,film critic,who remained a socialist throughout her life.She was the daughter of Captain Seton who served in India and got wounded in one of the uprisings.Mother,also a Marie,remarried Sir Charles Walpole after Seton's death.
When she was just 19,Marie Seton organised lectures for the Soviet film Director of the landmark film, Battleship Potemkin,and father of the technique,Dialectical Montage,Sergei Eisenstein when he toured Western Europe in 1929(I have seen two more films of him:Strike and Ivan the terrible).After two years,she went to Russia as an associate to Eisenstein,to study film making.After return she took keen interest in the formation of the British Film Institute.It was then,as Art Correspondent of Manchester Guardian,while moving in socialist circles,she heard about Menon and met him.She had once barged into Gandhi's room to meet him.
They fell in love.Marie described Menon thus:"He was strikingly unlike any Indian,thinner by far and extra ordinarly angular.It was hard to decide if he was a very handsome man in a hacked out sculptural manner,or if he was distinctly devilish to look at...when focused,his almond-shaped eyes resembled those of a hawk".
Menon's Social Secretary in the High Commission,Pamela Cullen remembered Marie thus:"Seton had a fascination for India and as a young woman she had been introduced to India's fight for independence by Menon,who was a struggling lawyer in London".
It is a fact that Menon was struggling and had been financed by Bob Cleminson,son of a Methodist preacher,especially during the war.
Marie was busy in the Cultural circle when she was going strong with Menon.In 1935,she helped in establishing the reputation of the Jamaican sculptor,Ronald Moody.She also became part of the circle of PD Ousepensky,the Russian esotericist.After his move to Newyork,she worked for him.She slowly drifted away from the struggling Menon.The broken Menon,during the course of his rehabilitation,became dependent on Luminal,a barbiturate-based sedative,the side effects of which included confusion,loss of consciousness and paranoia.Luminal was a brand name of phenobarbital marketed by Bayer in 1912.It had sedative/hypnotic properties.It was a first-line drug for partial and general epileptic seizures;was a sedative for anxious or agitated patients.It remained a commonly prescribed sedative until the introduction of Benzodiazepines in 1960s.
Marie went on with her work.She helped her friend,CLR James,the Trinidadian writer to stage his play,Toussaint Louverture,based on Haitian revolution,which had Paul Robeson in the lead role.Her first book was the biography of Robeson.She garnered public opinion when Robeson was victimized in the US.She published five seminal essays on British Cinema in Sight and Sound during 1937-1938.She married Donald Hesson,Chicago based lawyer and writer in 1938.They got separated in 1942.
When Menon was High Commissioner,Nehru asked Menon to find an expert of British origin to evangelise on the educational quality of films.Menon in turn asked his Social Secretary,Pamela Cullen.Pamela looked for Marie.It is said that Marie was suggested by S G Tendulkar,who was studying Cinema with Eisenstein in Moscow.Marie arrived in India in 1955 to help in establishing the film society movement in India.University Film Society and Childrens'Film Society were set up.In the 1960s she was a guest of Indira in the Tin Murti Bhavan.The Federation of Film Societies came into being with Ray as its President.Indira was its Vice President and Marie,Adviser.She was awarded the Padmabhushan in 1984 and was cremated on her death according to her wish.
MI5 continued to suspect him a person with Communist leanings and blocked all Top Secret files from going to him.In 1949, Guy Liddell,Deputy Director General of MI5,observed:"As long as Menon and his associates remained in his office,there could be no reasonable guarantee of (Commonwealth)security as far as India is concerned".In May that year reviewing the Menon dossier,he concluded that Menon's long term affair with Bridget Tunnard,an India League Secretary (she was Administrative Secretary till 1971)connected to the CPGB is of more concern to MI5.Liddell wrote,Menon's relationship with Tunnard suggested 'that anything of interest that Menon hears about will reach the Communist Party through her".
There were more threats.Menon had appointed PN Haksar ,another leftist to head External affairs(Haksar was Principal Secretary to Indira Gandhi later,1967-1973).Then came Patsy Pillai-she and her husband were members of the Communist Party of South Africa and joined the Brondsbury branch of the party on their arrival in London.Menon appointed her immediately in his private office.Sanjeevi Pillai,Director of IB was briefed by MI5 in 1948 and 1949 while he was in London.IB posted LL Nan in India office to spy on Menon and regular reports were sent to Nehru.
Menon appeared incoherent in public in several occasions in 1951.Rumours of TB,heart disease or addiction to drugs began to spread.A second nervous breakdown was suspected.Nehru described an encounter with Menon in Paris in 1951:"He staggered into the room,obviously very far from well...his appearance and general behavior was so odd that he attracted the attention of others...Malik,our Ambassador here,asked Nan if Krishna Menon was drunk.Nan was herself alarmed and came to me to say that Krishna was very ill and something should be done about him.He had the appearance of a person on the verge of going off his head..".
We do not know whether Menon began taking Luminal again.But his abuse of Luminal was well known to the British(see,Gordon Walker,Political Diaries,page 241).
Nehru dispatched his Secretary M O Mathai to London in September 1951 to inquire about Menon.Mathai's report mentions Menon's special bonding with Bob Cleminson.He saw Menon at least once daily.Menon took his girl friend from the High Commission to Cleminson's London apartment."On one occasion,she danced naked",Mathai informed Nehru.Foreign Secretary,N R Pillai informed Nehru on Menon's special interest in SCK Agencies,involved in defence deals.India ,it was reported then had overpaid them 1,40,000 pounds for ammunition contracts.Its Chief Associate was the murky Bob Cleminson.The money was going to India League and Menon's publishing venture,Meridian Books,which published Nehru's Discovery of India in 1951(The famous Penguin books was founded by Menon with Sir Allen Lane).
It has to be assumed that Mathai was sent after a private letter Nehru got from Mountbatten in September,1951 requesting him to remove Menon.Mountbatten cited only the ill health of Menon.Head of MI5,Sir Percy Sillitoe briefed the Prime Minister Clement Attlee.Later that year,Attlee told Rajkumari Amrith Kaur that "Menon too ill and incoherent to meet or talk with".
Menon had been pushed to the wall.He was offered a Cabinet Minister post or the post of Ambassador in Moscow or the Vice Chancellorship of the Delhi University by Nehru.Menon had sent Nehru medical certificates to prove that he was sober and normal and threatened to commit suicide if removed from London.Finally Menon was cajoled to be in the UN delegation.
Thus,in the downfall of Menon,a woman character,Bridget Tunnard played a part.His infatuation for her was not fiction-I have read in the reminiscences of Winnie Dadoo,wife of the South African Communist leader Dr Yusuf Dadoo (he had studied in Aligarh Muslim University,before doing Medicine in London)that when they met Menon in 1949,Ms Tunnard was with him.Inder Malhotra,well known journalist has written that the Menon-Tunnard relationship was known to everyone connected with India League office.
None except Menon could have survived such an international onslaught;Nehru would not have protected anyone else in a vulnerable position.Hence people said,Menon was the alter ego to Nehru,like Ezra Pound was to T S Elliot.
Reference:
1.'A Serious Menace to Society':British Intelligence,VK Krishna Menon and the Indian High Commission in London,1947-52/Paul M McGarr/The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,August,2010
2.Portrait of a Director/Marie Seton
3.For,Menon's nervous breakdown/British Archives file KV/2/2513-10
4.For,Menon's suicide threat/Note by Spooner,24 January 1951,British Archives file KV/2/2512-16,Brown,Nehru248
5.Panditji:A Portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru/Marie Seton
6.V K Krishna Menon,A Personal Memoir/Janaki Ram
7.Nehru:A Political Life/Judith M Brown
8.Left out in history/Inder Malhotra/Indian Express,March6,2007
See my post,KRISHNA MENON AS A HEADLOAD WORKER
.
V K Krishna Menon had a nervous break down in 1935 and was hospitalised in London.According to the letter of 1,January 1952,sent by Under Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations,Sir Percivale Liesching to Sir Archibald Nye,British High Commissioner to India,there were two reasons for the breakdown:death of his father Advocate Komath Krishna Kurup and the collapse of a long term relationship with a woman.I had read the biographies of Sergei Eisenstein and Satyajit Ray written by Marie Seton.But I never knew then that Marie was the woman in Krishna Menon's life.
Marie,who later became a friend of Indira Gandhi and lived in India for two decades,has also written a biography of Nehru,Panditji:A Portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru.In it Marie says her first meeting with Menon was in 1932.Menon told her:"The only man to lead India into the modern world is Jawahar Lal Nehru.Gandhi can't do this.Nehru has a modern scientific mind". |
| Marie Seton |
Based on Menon's correspondence with his sister Janaki Amma,his grand niece Janaki Ram has written a book,V K Krishna Menon,a Personal Memoir.In it Janaki Ram(Janaki Ram is related to Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer too;she is the daughter of Menon's sister Janaki's elder daughter VA Madhavi Shastri) says that Menon was a believer in Astrology and after a failed love affair he remained a bachelor.The author,however suggests that in spite of his haughty temperament,many women were attracted to him.
The failed love affair,of course was the one with Marie Seton.As Janaki said,he had flings,but the only serious affair he had was with Marie.
Britain declassified a bunch of their Security Service MI5 files in 2007,in an effort to denigrate him.While he was Secretary of the India League during 1928-1947,they intercepted his phone calls at home,office and his letters.He was under surveillance.The MI5 dossier on him is of the view that Menon was a Communist agent and hence a threat to Britain.When I tried to corroborate the information in the files with other documents,I got the feeling that Menon was a single man army fighting the British and a true revolutionary.He agitated both Britain and the US.MI5 had even suspected African leaders Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah when they were in London.Britain considered Menon a weak link in the Commonwealth security chain.
The files are silent on Marie Seton,but refers to Menon's relationship with a woman,Bridget Tunnard-about that later.
In the 1930s,a period when both Menon and Marie met,Britain was under severe domestic pressure to grant India autonomy.Intellectuals such as Bertrand Russel, Harold Laski and Labour Party politicians such as Stafford Cripps,Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot batted for India.Laski was professor of Menon in the London School of Economics.According to Paul M McGarr of the University of Nottingham,Menon,above all others "transformed the British based campaign into a cohesive and dynamic political force".The India League under his leadership became a force to reckon with.He made an intelligent move to be associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain,CPGB.At that time the attendance for India League meetings was meagre.He met Nehru for the first time in 1935(the year of break down).He became Nehru's literary agent,acted as political chaperon to Indira Gandhi when she studied at Somerville College,Oxford.CPGB had 15000 members and had a newspaper with a circulation of 40,000.So Menon got enough people for his meetings and propaganda.Menon became friendly with Rajani Palme-Dutt,Marxist theoretician and Harry Pollitt,General Secretary of CPGB.Pollitt,years later rescued the Indian Communist Party from a split in the Madurai Party Congress.Menon co-opted leading British Communists to Executive Committee of India League.
 |
| Marie with Satyajit Ray,London |
In 1934 he became Labour Councillor from the North London borough of St Pancras.And then,four more terms.Though the MI5 files say that Menon was an opportunist,facts are otherwise.He would have been an MP from the constituency of Dundee which had connections with India's jute industry.But the ticket for him in 1939 was cancelled because he refused to condemn the Soviet invasion of Finland.This shows the strength of his association with CPGB.The invasion had its repercussions in the Indian Party,especially in the Kerala unit.Democratically speaking,the invasion was immoral.Though Menon tolerated it for the sake of CPGB,his relationship with the party soured after the Nazi invasion of USSR on 23 June 1941.The CPGB stopped attacking British colonialism because by then the Soviets had allied with the British.
 |
| Marie's book on Ray |
British Viceroy Linlithgow had written to British Secretary of State for India Leo Amery in November 1942 to put Menon in jail:"...that it has been found possible to accept the suggestion which I have I think made once or twice that we should take pains to break up Menon and break up the India League with him.I am certain that so long as he is there he will be a focus of discontent and difficulty and I should myself have thought that he was really worth taking a little of chance."
This suggestion was not accepted;Britain feared the backlash.
I think this is enough to destroy the MI5 files and fix Menon's prominence before independence.Suffice to say that Menon was a man of character when he met Marie Seton.
Marie Seton(1910-1985)was an actress and an accomplished art,theatre,film critic,who remained a socialist throughout her life.She was the daughter of Captain Seton who served in India and got wounded in one of the uprisings.Mother,also a Marie,remarried Sir Charles Walpole after Seton's death.
 |
| Krishna Menon |
When she was just 19,Marie Seton organised lectures for the Soviet film Director of the landmark film, Battleship Potemkin,and father of the technique,Dialectical Montage,Sergei Eisenstein when he toured Western Europe in 1929(I have seen two more films of him:Strike and Ivan the terrible).After two years,she went to Russia as an associate to Eisenstein,to study film making.After return she took keen interest in the formation of the British Film Institute.It was then,as Art Correspondent of Manchester Guardian,while moving in socialist circles,she heard about Menon and met him.She had once barged into Gandhi's room to meet him.
They fell in love.Marie described Menon thus:"He was strikingly unlike any Indian,thinner by far and extra ordinarly angular.It was hard to decide if he was a very handsome man in a hacked out sculptural manner,or if he was distinctly devilish to look at...when focused,his almond-shaped eyes resembled those of a hawk".
Menon's Social Secretary in the High Commission,Pamela Cullen remembered Marie thus:"Seton had a fascination for India and as a young woman she had been introduced to India's fight for independence by Menon,who was a struggling lawyer in London".
It is a fact that Menon was struggling and had been financed by Bob Cleminson,son of a Methodist preacher,especially during the war.
 |
| Eisenstein |
Marie was busy in the Cultural circle when she was going strong with Menon.In 1935,she helped in establishing the reputation of the Jamaican sculptor,Ronald Moody.She also became part of the circle of PD Ousepensky,the Russian esotericist.After his move to Newyork,she worked for him.She slowly drifted away from the struggling Menon.The broken Menon,during the course of his rehabilitation,became dependent on Luminal,a barbiturate-based sedative,the side effects of which included confusion,loss of consciousness and paranoia.Luminal was a brand name of phenobarbital marketed by Bayer in 1912.It had sedative/hypnotic properties.It was a first-line drug for partial and general epileptic seizures;was a sedative for anxious or agitated patients.It remained a commonly prescribed sedative until the introduction of Benzodiazepines in 1960s.
Marie went on with her work.She helped her friend,CLR James,the Trinidadian writer to stage his play,Toussaint Louverture,based on Haitian revolution,which had Paul Robeson in the lead role.Her first book was the biography of Robeson.She garnered public opinion when Robeson was victimized in the US.She published five seminal essays on British Cinema in Sight and Sound during 1937-1938.She married Donald Hesson,Chicago based lawyer and writer in 1938.They got separated in 1942.
 |
| Guy Liddell |
When Menon was High Commissioner,Nehru asked Menon to find an expert of British origin to evangelise on the educational quality of films.Menon in turn asked his Social Secretary,Pamela Cullen.Pamela looked for Marie.It is said that Marie was suggested by S G Tendulkar,who was studying Cinema with Eisenstein in Moscow.Marie arrived in India in 1955 to help in establishing the film society movement in India.University Film Society and Childrens'Film Society were set up.In the 1960s she was a guest of Indira in the Tin Murti Bhavan.The Federation of Film Societies came into being with Ray as its President.Indira was its Vice President and Marie,Adviser.She was awarded the Padmabhushan in 1984 and was cremated on her death according to her wish.
Now the Second phase of Menon.
He was made the High Commissioner in London in 1947.His eccentric character encouraged both Indian and UK officials to question his psychological stability.But Nehru stood behind him like the rock of Gibraltar.MI5 continued to suspect him a person with Communist leanings and blocked all Top Secret files from going to him.In 1949, Guy Liddell,Deputy Director General of MI5,observed:"As long as Menon and his associates remained in his office,there could be no reasonable guarantee of (Commonwealth)security as far as India is concerned".In May that year reviewing the Menon dossier,he concluded that Menon's long term affair with Bridget Tunnard,an India League Secretary (she was Administrative Secretary till 1971)connected to the CPGB is of more concern to MI5.Liddell wrote,Menon's relationship with Tunnard suggested 'that anything of interest that Menon hears about will reach the Communist Party through her".
There were more threats.Menon had appointed PN Haksar ,another leftist to head External affairs(Haksar was Principal Secretary to Indira Gandhi later,1967-1973).Then came Patsy Pillai-she and her husband were members of the Communist Party of South Africa and joined the Brondsbury branch of the party on their arrival in London.Menon appointed her immediately in his private office.Sanjeevi Pillai,Director of IB was briefed by MI5 in 1948 and 1949 while he was in London.IB posted LL Nan in India office to spy on Menon and regular reports were sent to Nehru.
Menon appeared incoherent in public in several occasions in 1951.Rumours of TB,heart disease or addiction to drugs began to spread.A second nervous breakdown was suspected.Nehru described an encounter with Menon in Paris in 1951:"He staggered into the room,obviously very far from well...his appearance and general behavior was so odd that he attracted the attention of others...Malik,our Ambassador here,asked Nan if Krishna Menon was drunk.Nan was herself alarmed and came to me to say that Krishna was very ill and something should be done about him.He had the appearance of a person on the verge of going off his head..".
 |
| NR Pillai with Ambassador Richter,1957 |
We do not know whether Menon began taking Luminal again.But his abuse of Luminal was well known to the British(see,Gordon Walker,Political Diaries,page 241).
Nehru dispatched his Secretary M O Mathai to London in September 1951 to inquire about Menon.Mathai's report mentions Menon's special bonding with Bob Cleminson.He saw Menon at least once daily.Menon took his girl friend from the High Commission to Cleminson's London apartment."On one occasion,she danced naked",Mathai informed Nehru.Foreign Secretary,N R Pillai informed Nehru on Menon's special interest in SCK Agencies,involved in defence deals.India ,it was reported then had overpaid them 1,40,000 pounds for ammunition contracts.Its Chief Associate was the murky Bob Cleminson.The money was going to India League and Menon's publishing venture,Meridian Books,which published Nehru's Discovery of India in 1951(The famous Penguin books was founded by Menon with Sir Allen Lane).
It has to be assumed that Mathai was sent after a private letter Nehru got from Mountbatten in September,1951 requesting him to remove Menon.Mountbatten cited only the ill health of Menon.Head of MI5,Sir Percy Sillitoe briefed the Prime Minister Clement Attlee.Later that year,Attlee told Rajkumari Amrith Kaur that "Menon too ill and incoherent to meet or talk with".
Menon had been pushed to the wall.He was offered a Cabinet Minister post or the post of Ambassador in Moscow or the Vice Chancellorship of the Delhi University by Nehru.Menon had sent Nehru medical certificates to prove that he was sober and normal and threatened to commit suicide if removed from London.Finally Menon was cajoled to be in the UN delegation.
Thus,in the downfall of Menon,a woman character,Bridget Tunnard played a part.His infatuation for her was not fiction-I have read in the reminiscences of Winnie Dadoo,wife of the South African Communist leader Dr Yusuf Dadoo (he had studied in Aligarh Muslim University,before doing Medicine in London)that when they met Menon in 1949,Ms Tunnard was with him.Inder Malhotra,well known journalist has written that the Menon-Tunnard relationship was known to everyone connected with India League office.
None except Menon could have survived such an international onslaught;Nehru would not have protected anyone else in a vulnerable position.Hence people said,Menon was the alter ego to Nehru,like Ezra Pound was to T S Elliot.
Reference:
1.'A Serious Menace to Society':British Intelligence,VK Krishna Menon and the Indian High Commission in London,1947-52/Paul M McGarr/The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,August,2010
2.Portrait of a Director/Marie Seton
3.For,Menon's nervous breakdown/British Archives file KV/2/2513-10
4.For,Menon's suicide threat/Note by Spooner,24 January 1951,British Archives file KV/2/2512-16,Brown,Nehru248
5.Panditji:A Portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru/Marie Seton
6.V K Krishna Menon,A Personal Memoir/Janaki Ram
7.Nehru:A Political Life/Judith M Brown
8.Left out in history/Inder Malhotra/Indian Express,March6,2007
See my post,KRISHNA MENON AS A HEADLOAD WORKER
.
