Man who steeled an independent nation

“I size up a man,” Vallabhbhai Patel once said to Swami Anand, his and Mahatma Gandhi’s close colleague, “before he completes four steps from the door towards me.” This “boast” was made in private to an individual who could be trusted with one’s inmost thoughts. Twelve years younger than Patel and a popular writer, Swami Anand served as Patel’s personal secretary during 1928’s victorious Bardoli satyagraha, drafting his leader’s letters to the government and statements to the public.

Mobilising the peasants of Surat district’s Bardoli taluka, that satyagraha compelled Bombay Presidency’s British rulers to take back most of the land revenue increase they had levied. There may be meaning for us today in the way the Bardoli Satyagraha was launched almost one hundred years ago. No speeches were made. A peasant, his name unrecorded, moved a resolution advising everyone not to pay the levy. Five others from distinct caste or religious groups said they supported the call. A Hindu bhajan was sung, a passage from the Qur’an was read, and the resolution was passed in solemn silence.

After victory, Bardoli’s peasants called Patel their “Sardar”, their chief. The title stuck for the rest of Patel’s life and beyond. About twenty years thereafter, between 1946 and 1948, the Sardar’s ability to “size up the man opposite” was visible as he dealt first with British officers whose associates and allies had just defeated Hitler, and then with Indian rajas and nawabs who thought their grandfathers had been the English monarch’s special friends.

Although a section of the country seceded in 1947 and formed Pakistan, the bulk of independent India was unified, thanks in fair part to Vallabhbhai Patel’s clarity. Hundreds of potentially troublesome “princely states” quietly merged into the Indian Union.

Patel’s role in India’s consolidation is widely known. How many know that two decades earlier, not long before the Bardoli satyagraha, Patel had come close to becoming “Sir Vallabhbhai”? For six days from July 23, 1927, continuous heavy rains and floods had ravaged a large Gujarat area inclusive of Ahmedabad city. Then heading the Ahmedabad Municipality as also the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, Patel led a stupendous and successful people’s effort to save lives, homes, farm animals, and more.

In December of that year, Viceroy Lord Irwin visited Gujarat. A senior British “chief” for the region, Joseph Garrett, who had worked as “special officer for flood relief”, asked Vallabhbhai for permission to recommend him and some of his colleagues for “suitable honours”. Patel’s response was to “burst out laughing”. (Narhari Parikh, Patel, vol. 1., p. 305)

The “Sardar” title he received from Bardoli’s farmers in the following year was more acceptable, but Vallabhbhai had zero interest in labels. Later, being called deputy prime minister and home minister in the last three years of his life did not tickle him.

On May 5, 1932, 15 years before freedom, while Patel, Gandhi, and Mahadev Desai were imprisoned together in Pune’s Yeravada Jail, out of the blue, Gandhi asked Patel, “What portfolio would you like in the Swaraj cabinet?” His eyes staying on the envelope he was making, Patel replied, “I will take the beggar’s bowl.” (Desai’s Diary.)

For 10 months from November 1940 to August 1941, Patel was again in prison, once more in Yeravada, this time for his part in the Individual Satyagraha Campaign. Among Patel’s fellow prisoners were BG Kher (who had served from 1937 to 1939 as Bombay Presidency’s premier), the outstanding Mumbai lawyer Bhulabhai Desai, future prime minister Morarji Desai, and the novelist and future creator of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, KM Munshi.

For most of this prison-period, Patel was extremely unwell. His intestines had been damaged. Interviewed about 46 years later, Morarji Desai, younger than Patel by more than 20 years, recalled some jail scenes from 1940-41:

“We could see [Patel’s] stomach heaving, but he would not talk about his pain. He would make tea for us in the prison and serve us. He cared for party workers and took steps to help with their medical or financial problems before he was approached.” (Interview, Apr. 15, 1987)

I need not touch here on Patel’s later imprisonment for Quit India in Ahmednagar Fort, which lasted from 1942 to 1945. His fellow prisoners now included Abul Kalam Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru and Kripalani. This chapter of his life is detailed in my Patel book and elsewhere. But two points from subsequent history may be recalled here.

The first is this. In December 1946, after experiencing three months of “partnership” with members of Jinnah’s Muslim League in an interim all-India government, Patel decided that Partition was preferable to chaos. Nehru soon agreed with him, as did almost everyone else who mattered. Though bitterly disappointed, even Gandhi chose not to obstruct the widespread preference.

When the All India Congress Committee met in the middle of June 1947 to vote on Mountbatten’s Partition Scheme, Patel told the delegates: “We have 75 to 90 percent of India which we can make strong with our own genius. The League can develop the rest of the country.” (Pyarelal, Last Phase, vol. 2, pp. 254-55)

The second fact of historical significance is that while home minister Patel possessed a Hindu heart, his disciplined hand obeyed the Constitution and sought to protect everyone. Sucheta Kripalani would recall the “severe scolding” she received during 1947’s fragile days for releasing to the press an account of horrors on Rawalpindi’s Hindus and Sikhs. Moreover, Patel had ensured the suppression of the inflammatory report before rebuking Sucheta. (In Nandurkar, Centenary, vol. 1, p. 388)

With all their differences, Patel and Nehru stood as one in raising an India for all and of equals. In confirmation of this statement, I will cite only one of many sentences available. In May 1949, the Sardar told the Constituent Assembly: “Now with the grace of God and with the blessings of the Almighty we are laying the foundations of a true secular democratic state where everybody has an equal chance and an equal opportunity.” (HT, May 27, 1949)