Vengalil Krishna Kurup Krishna Menon was an Indian academic, independence activist, politician, lawyer, and statesman. During his time, Menon contributed to the Indian independence movement, India's foreign relations as de facto foreign minister, one of the major architects of Indian foreign policy, and acted as Jawaharlal Nehru's diplomat.
Menon, c. 1950s
V.K. Krishna Menon (age 62) giving a luncheon in 1958 in honour of His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sihanouk and Andrei Gromyko, Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union.
1st Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru with V. K. Krishna Menon (age 60) in United Nations in December 1956.
Menon was frequently vilified in the Western press, which described or depicted him as a "snake-charmer", as in TIME magazine's 1962 cover portrait.
Jawaharlal Nehru was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, statesman, secular humanist, social democrat, and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20th century. Nehru was a principal leader of the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s and 1940s. Upon India's independence in 1947, he served as the country's first prime minister for 16 years. Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and science and technology during the 1950s, powerfully influencing India's arc as a modern nation. In international affairs, he steered India clear of the two blocs of the Cold War. A well-regarded author, his books written in prison, such as Letters from a Father to His Daughter (1929), An Autobiography (1936) and The Discovery of India (1946), have been read around the world.
Nehru in 1947
Anand Bhawan the Nehru family home in Allahabad
Swarup Rani and Motilal Nehru in England with their children from l. to r. Krishna (b. November 1907), Vijaya Lakshmi (b. August 1900) and Jawaharlal
Nehru and Kamala Kaul at their wedding in Delhi, 1916