INDIA: Folksy Diplomat

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To delegates and newsmen at the United Nations and his fellow politicians at home, India's U.N. Delegation Chairman V. K. Krishna Menon is by turns aloof, argumentative, arrogant. They would scarcely have recognized the homespun, jovial Menon who last week talked and traveled more than 4,000 miles from Kashmir in the north to the Communist-run state of Kerala, deep in the south.

In Poona, Menon played his role as India's Defense Minister by enveloping his frail frame in a flying suit, strapping on a crash helmet and climbing aboard a Canberra jet bomber of the Indian air force. Streaking into Bombay in eleven minutes, Menon next appeared—natty in a white suit and swinging a cane—aboard the cruiser Mysore, the new flagship of the Indian navy. But it was as a politician of the folksy, Estes Kefauver model that Menon drew the largest crowds. At New Delhi and Madras he packed meeting halls to the rafters, and dhoti-clad crowds filled the streets outside waiting to hear him. To a youth rally of 25,000, Menon cried defiance of Pakistan over the invasion of Kashmir, and drew roars of approval for a slashing attack on Portuguese Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's determination to keep the colony of Goa. Cried Menon: "We may have to send a realistic map of the world to Salazar to prove to him that Goa is not near the Mediterranean."

Rival politicians were glum at this triumphal progress. Krishna Menon was problem enough when he had only the ear of Nehru; now that he has discovered the knack of getting India's ear as well, he may become a power threat in the Congress Party's annual convention next week in Assam.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Nehru agreeably surprised a group of 36 world-touring newsmen by publicly criticizing Communism. Said Nehru: "I am unconcerned with Communist economics, but politically I dislike it for two reasons. Firstly, it tends too easily to violence and I am against violence. Secondly, Communism has not shown the regard for standards that I should like to see observed."