independence. India League meetings would take place in Indian restaurants and cafes, which were seen as hubs attracting British Indians. Notable meeting places include Ayub Ali's Shah Jalal Coffee House and Shah Abdul Majid Qureshi's India Centre. The origins of what would become the policy of non-alignment were evident in Menon's personal sympathies even in England, where he simultaneously condemned both Britain and Germany, although he did march several times in anti-Nazi demonstrations. When asked whether India would prefer to be ruled by the British or the Germans, Menon replied that "[one] might as well ask a fish if it prefers to be fried in butter or margarine". Roles in post-independence India High Commissioner to the United Kingdom After India gained independence in 1947, Menon was appointed High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, a post in which he remained until 1952. Menon's intense distrust of the West extended to the United Kingdom itself, and his frequent opposition to British political manoeuvres eventually led MI5 to deem him a "serious menace to security". From 1929 onwards Menon had been kept under surveillance, with a warrant to intercept his correspondence being issued in December 1933, identifying him as an "important worker in the Indian revolutionary movement". Clandestine surveillance intensified following Menon's 1946 meeting in Paris with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and Indian independence. In 2007, hundreds of pages of MI5 files documenting their coverage of Menon were released, including transcripts of phone conversations and intercepted correspondences with other statesmen and Nehru himself. During his tenure as the high commissioner, Menon was accused of being involved in the Jeep scandal case of 1948, but the Government closed the case in 1955, ignoring suggestion by the Inquiry Committee. India's representative to the United Nations In 1949, Menon accepted the command of the Indian delegation to the United Nations, a position he would hold until 1962. He earned a reputation for brilliance in the UN, frequently engineering elegant solutions to complex international political issues, including a peace plan for Korea, a ceasefire in Indo-China, the deadlocked disarmament talks, and the French withdrawal from the UN over Algeria. Diplomacy and non-alignment During this period, Menon was a spokesman for Nehru's foreign policy, dubbed non-alignment in 1952, charting a third course between the US and the Soviet Union. Menon was particularly critical of the United States, and frequently expressed sympathies with Soviet policies, earning