Kumara Padmanabha Sivasankara Menon Sr.CIEICS (18 October 1898 – 22 November 1982), usually known as K. P. S. Menon, was a diplomat and diarist, a career member of the Indian Civil Service. He was appointed independent India's first Foreign Secretary, serving from 1948 to 1952.
Menon's overland trip from Delhi to Chongqing (Chungking) across the Himalayas, the Karakorams and the Pamirs during the Second World War was recorded in his book Delhi-Chungking: A Travel Diary (1947).[2] He was a signatory on behalf of India at the formation of the United Nations. He was a member of the Royal Central Asian Society.[3]
Early life
K. P. S. Menon was born in Kottayam, Travancore, British India (present-day Kerala, India) in 1898. His father Kumara Menon was a lawyer from Ottapalam. His mother Janaki Amma came from a aristocratic family near Vellayani, Thiruvananthapuram in Travancore, a niece of Kesava Pillai of Kandamath and cousin of Neyyattinkara N. K. Padmanabha Pillai. Upon her marriage to Kumara Menon, she moved to Kottayam to set up house with Kumara Menon who himself had moved away from his family in Ottapalam.[4] The children were also given titles from their father's side . He attended Madras Christian College and then University of Oxford,[5] where he was a contemporary of the future Prime Minister Anthony Eden and served as co-officers of the Asiatic Society. He served as the president of the Oxford Majlis Asian Society.[6][page needed] He was admitted to the Middle Temple on 30 November 1918,[7] but withdrew without being Called to the Bar on 15 March 1928.[citation needed]
Public service career
In 1922, Menon secured the first rank in the combined Civil Services Examination and joined the ICS.[8] He served as Sub-Collector of Tirupattur, Vellore District, then as District Magistrate in Trichy, Agent of the Government of India at Fort Sandeman, now Zhob, in Baluchistan, in the North West Frontier Province and Ceylon, then as Resident of India in Hyderabad State. In 1934, he was sent as Crown Representative to investigate the state of Indians in Zanzibar, Kenya and Uganda. As Dewan of Bharatpur State, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in the New Year Honours of 1943.[9] After independence, he was India's first Foreign Secretary from 1948 to 1952, then Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union, Hungary and Poland from 1952 to 1961, being the last foreigner to see the alive Stalin in person (on February 13, 1953). On retirement, he was a member and later Chairperson of the Union Public Service Commission.