K. P. S. Menon

Kumara Padmanabha Sivasankara Menon CIE ICS (October 18, 1898 – November 22, 1982), usually known as K. P. S. Menon, was a diplomat, a career member of the Indian Civil Service and later of the Indian Foreign Service, who after independence became India's first Foreign Secretary, serving from 1948 to 1952. He was Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union from 1952 to 1961, and finally Ambassador to the People's Republic of China. His overland trip from Delhi to Chungking via the Karakoram during the second world war resulted in the classic book Delhi-Chungking: A Travel Diary (1947). He was the first member of Indian origin in the political service when he joined in 1921 and was a signatory on behalf of India at the formation of the United Nations. He was a member of the Royal Central Asian Society.

Menon was born in Palakkad, India, in 1898. His father Kumara Menon was a lawyer from Ottapalam. His mother Janaki Amma came from Vellayani in Travancore, a niece of Kesava Pillai of Kandamath and cousin of Neyyattinkara N. K. Padmanabha Pillai. Upon her marriage to Kumara Menon,in a previously unprecedented manner (see Matrilineality in Kerala society), she moved to Kottayam to set up house with Kumara Menon. The children were also given titles from their father's side and not from the uncle on the mother's side. He was christened Kumar Padmanabha after the tutelary deity of the Kayamkulam and Venad branches of the Travancore Royal Family He attended the CMS College, Kottayam, and then Madras Christian College and the University of Oxford, where he was president of the Oxford Majlis Asian Society.

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