Word: menon
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...Mellow Menon...
...malevolent-looking, tea-colored bachelor, Menon has carried on what a Western diplomat has called "a 40-year war with the rest of the world." He tends to see intrigue and conspiracy whenever he is opposed, questions the honesty of almost everyone with whom he comes in contact, calls India's press "those rags." Once at the U.N., he threw his papers down on the floor in a rage; when an aide stooped to pick them up, he kicked him in the backside because he did not do it fast enough. One journalist at the U.N. gets so exercised...
...further. China is plainly working to put India into the jaws of a giant Himalayan nutcracker. Recently China concluded a road-building treaty with Nepal, is offering economic aid to the Himalayan kingdoms of Sikkim and Bhutan. The significance of the Chinese pincers movement finally occurred even to Menon. "A stab in the back," he com plained last month. "When did you realize this?" gibed Election Rival J. B. Kripalani in Parliament. "The day before yesterday?" But Menon still urged caution against "adventurism," said that the Chinese Communists should withdraw from Indian territory "in the interests of peace and socialism...
...Menon claims with some justice that India could not win a war with Red China, though it is a curious stance for a vain Defense Minister. But Menon's critics counter that defending Indian territory against further Red conquests need not lead to war. Trouble is that Menon has neglected to build up India's border defenses. While he and Nehru refuse to give details to Parliament, on the ground that such information would be useful to the Chinese, one fact is clear: north India's population centers are far closer to the frontier than Red China...
...Economic Issue. Menon has no direct responsibility for India's economy, but his political opponents in the campaign point out accurately that his ideas strongly influence Nehru. They are both old-school, doctrinaire socialists of the 1930s variety, and both insist, against considerable evidence, that all the world is inevitably turning to socialism. They refuse to recognize that all the older socialist parties of the free world have abandoned the rigid formulas since World War II, and that the greatest progress has been achieved (in Germany, Western Europe, Japan) by relatively free enterprise. Of that progress Menon says scornfully...