By T.J.S. George
In the 1950s, the Urbs Prima in Indies was Bombay, not Delhi. All important people lived there, all influential newspapers were published there, all ideological battles were fought there. Into this theatre of war came V.K. Krishna Menon, all guns blazing. The theatre of the absurd followed. Krishna Menon was a Congressman and friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, but Bombay's Congress bosses saw him as a pretender, an imposter. He was dubbed the worst thing a human being could be — a Communist. He became an untouchable to all those who were touchable. Yet he got elected from North Bombay in 1957. Five years later, he repeated that triumph in sensational style, defeating Acharya Kripalani who was backed by all those who mattered in Bombay.
