• Research
  • Diwan
  • About
  • Experts
Carnegie Middle East logoCarnegie lettermark logo
LebanonIran
{
  "authors": [
    "Srinath Raghavan"
  ],
  "type": "legacyinthemedia",
  "centerAffiliationAll": "",
  "centers": [
    "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
    "Carnegie India"
  ],
  "collections": [],
  "englishNewsletterAll": "",
  "nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
  "primaryCenter": "Carnegie India",
  "programAffiliation": "",
  "programs": [],
  "projects": [],
  "regions": [
    "South Asia",
    "India"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Domestic Politics"
  ]
}

Source: Getty

In The Media
Carnegie India

Nehru Never Excluded Patel from Cabinet List. Louis Mountbatten and V.P. Menon Got it Wrong

At a time when pitting Patel against Nehru has become the stock-in-trade of the Narendra Modi government, it is not surprising that this particular point in Basu’s important book has attracted attention.

Link Copied
By Srinath Raghavan
Published on Feb 12, 2020

Source: Print

In his last week’s National Interest column analysing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s seeming obsession with India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru, Shekhar Gupta noted that a new biography of V.P. Menon — a senior civil servant who worked closely with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — by Narayani Basu “asserts with much documentation that Nehru had indeed excluded Patel from the list of his first Cabinet members. Referring to this claim, Karan Thapar wrote on 2 February that the book “more or less confirms something about which there has been a lot of speculation”.

At a time when pitting Patel against Nehru has become the stock-in-trade of the Narendra Modi government, it is not surprising that this particular point in Basu’s important book has attracted attention.

Read the Full Text

This article was originally published by the Print.

About the Author

Srinath Raghavan

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Security Studies Program

Srinath Raghavan is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie India. His primary research focus is on the contemporary and historical aspects of India’s foreign and security policies.

    Recent Work

  • Paper
    Recovery, Resilience, and Adaptation: India From 2020 to 2030
      • +3

      Rajesh Bansal, Anirudh Burman, Rudra Chaudhuri, …

  • Commentary
    View From New Delhi

      Srinath Raghavan

Srinath Raghavan
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Security Studies Program
Srinath Raghavan
Domestic PoliticsSouth AsiaIndia

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

More Work from Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center

  • Commentary
    Diwan
    Reading Tripoli’s Tea Leaves

    Municipal elections in the city may be a harbinger of developments in the Sunni community.

      Issam Kayssi

  • Commentary
    Diwan
    Disquiet on the West Asian Front

    In an interview, Abhinav Pandya discusses the multiple facets of India’s ties with the Middle East.

      Armenak Tokmajyan

  • Smoke rising from among houses
    Commentary
    Emissary
    Israel’s and Hezbollah’s Default Option: Keep Fighting

    Political calculations on both sides make a ceasefire unlikely.

      Yezid Sayigh

  • Paper
    Borders Without a Nation: Syria, Outside Powers, and Open-Ended Instability

    In Syria’s border regions, changes in demographics, economics, and security mean that an inter-Syrian peace process will require consensus among main regional powers that Syria must remain united, that no one side can be victorious, and that perennial instability threatens the region.

      Kheder Khaddour, Armenak Tokmajyan

  • Research
    The Military and Private Business Actors in the Global South: The Politics of Market Access

    The interaction of national armed forces and private business sectors offers a useful lens for viewing the politics of numerous countries of the so-called Global South. A rising trend of military political activism—often accompanied by military commercial activity—underlines the importance of drivers and outcomes in these relationships.

      Yezid Sayigh, Hamza Meddeb

Get more news and analysis from
Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center
Carnegie Middle East logo, white
  • Research
  • Diwan
  • About
  • Experts
  • Projects
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • Privacy
  • For Media
Get more news and analysis from
Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center
© 2026 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All rights reserved.