POLITICAL LIFE

 POLITICAL LIFE

 

After his education Menon became the secretary of Malabar Home Rule League. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1915 and served as the secretary of the Malabar branch of the Home Rule League after setting up practice in Calicut. He was a member of the Home Rule League under Annie Besant which proceeded to London to present a memorandum to the Secretary of State in 1917.

       He also wrote a dozen of books and collections of essays. In 1919, in Madras he organised sweepers and rikshaw drivers. He was among the earliest in Kerala to argue for abolition of 'untouchability'. He gave Leadship for the Vaikkom Sathyagraham.

       In 1921 K. P. Kesava Menon joined the Non-Cooperation movement after giving up practice. He did relief work as secretary of KPC C during Moplah rebellion. He became the Founder-Editor of the Mathrubhumi in 1923. He was imprisoned for six months in the Trivandrum Central jail for leading the famous Vaikom satyagraha.

       Afer the imprisonment  he moved out of Kerala due to financial difficulties as a result of full time political activity.He decided to practice law in Malaysia and Singapore. In 1927 he set up practice in Malayasia and ingapore.  There also he actively involved in nationalist movements.

      He was very active in INA but when Subash Chandra Bose assumed the leadership and formed Azad Hind Government, Kesavamenon parted ways from it as he found it difficult to cope with Subash's way of functioning. When the Japanese attempted to exploit the Indian freedom fighter in Malaya he resisted it.

      At Singapore he was arrested and confined to solitary imprisonment by the Japanese and was released only after the second world war. He resumed the editorship of Mathrubhumi in 1946. he was appointed as the High commissioner of Ceylon, but resigned due to difference of opinion.

       Kesava Menon became a member of the action committee of the IndianIndependence League which was organised by Ras Behari Bose in 1947.

       When he was the president of the Aykya Kerala Committee he worked for the unified Kerala state.