Mumbai's districts. The electoral results established Menon as second only to Nehru in Indian politics. 1967 By 1967, Menon had completely lost his public image after India's debacle in the 1962 war with China. However, he still wanted to contest elections and be a member of parliament. He was denied a seat from Mumbai by the Congress on the grounds that he was a non-Maharashtrian. This followed the surge in popularity for the Shiv Sena, with its sons-of-the-soil agenda. He was not offered a seat anywhere else in the country either. Menon resigned from the Congress and stood for elections as an independent candidate from the North East Mumbai constituency, of which he was the sitting member of parliament. He lost to the Congress candidate, Mr. S.G. Barve, a retired ICS officer, by a margin of 13,169 votes. Mr. Barve died later that year, and his sister, Mrs. Tara Sapre, contested the by-election which ensued as the Congress candidate. Menon again stood as an independent, and lost to Mrs. Tara Sapre by a wider margin than had been the case with her brother. 1969 In 1969, Menon contested a seat in the Lok Sabha from the Bengal constituency of Midnapore, running as an independent in a by-election, and defeating his Congress rival by a margin of 106,767 votes in May of that year. 1971 In 1971, Menon contested as an independent candidate and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Trivandrum, in his home state of Kerala. Controversies Evaluations Menon was an intensely controversial figure during his life, and has remained so even well after his death. Widely described as brilliant and arrogant, he was known for the sheer force of his personality, and for his eloquence and wit as an orator. In response to US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' assertion that US weapons supplied to Pakistan were intended solely for defence against a Soviet invasion, Menon snapped that "the world has yet to see an American gun that can only shoot in one direction", and that "I am yet to come across a vegetarian tiger". In London, Menon responded to novelist Brigid Brophy's surprise at the quality of his English with the retort: "my English is better than yours. You merely picked it up: I learnt it." When criticised for the Rolls-Royces he kept as official vehicles, he replied, "I can scarcely hire a bullock-cart to call