Sardar Ballabhbhai Jhaveribhai Patel
Sardar Patel, popularly known as the Iron Man of India, was destined to be the finest prime minister of his time that India never had. There was speculation that perhaps the person taking over as the first prime minister of independent India would be the “Sardar of Bardoli”, a title given to him by Mahatma Gandhi for successfully championing the cause of the peasants in Gujarat against anti-farmers policies of the British Raj.
Many historians believe that the Iron Man of India, whose “steely determination and pragmatism” in taking decisive action to consolidate the Indian Union and ordering direct police action against the Nizam of Hyderabad forcing him to merge his state into India, derved a better treatment from the successive Congress governments in commemorating his birth anniversary since his death in 1950.
Vallabhbhai Patel was born on October 31, 1875 at Karamsand in Gujarat. A barrister with a successful law practice, Vallabhbhai Patel joined the Indian National Movement under Mahatma Gandhi and grew up to become one of its tallest leaders. He played key leadership roles in organizing peasants’ movements in Kheda, Borsad and Bardoli in Gujarat and promoting the Quit India Movement against the British Raj.. The credit for the integration of over 500 independent princely states in 1947-49 by their merger from what was then a divided India to make it what it is today is due solely to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Sardar Patel, according to his contemporary historians, was a man of strong convictions with high moral character. Patel was a natural administrator who did not seem to need any prior experience.
Patel was born on October 31, 1875 at Nandiad (dist Khera, Gujarat), around 200 kms from Surat. He hailed from the community of Leva Patels, believed to have descended from warrior caste, though traditionally engaged in cultivation. They have a history of bravery and hard labour. Patel hailed from an agriculturist family, and virtually grew up in the fields. He always introduced himself as a farmer/agriculturist, even at the height of legal or political career. He had three brothers and one sister. Out of them Vithalbhai Jhaveribhai Patel (1873-1933), Bar-at-Law, became the first Indian President (Speaker) of the Central Legislative Assembly.
His wife Jhaverba died of cancer in 1909 when he was just 34. Leaving his daughter Maniben Patel and son Dahyabhai Patel to his family members for their upbringing, Patel, instead of marrying again, went to England to study Law and returned as a Barrister finishing a three-year degree course in 30 months as a topper in his class. He used to study 16 hours a day at the age of 36-37.
Sardar Patel returned to India as a highly westernised barrister and a keen bridge player. He soon set up a flourishing law practice in Ahmedabad and aimed to be a rich man. But his first meeting with Mahatma Gandhi, a chance encounter at the Gujarat Club in Ahmedabad in 1915, changed the entire course of Patel’s life and within a year the three-piece suit loving stylish barrister turned into a Khadi Dhoti-Kurta clad freedom fighter.
Patel showed his promise as a popular leader as an elected representative of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (1917-1928). He was able to not only outsmart the British officialdom, but took several constructive initiatives for the townspeople. While being President of the Corporation (1924-1928) he once presented a unique example of ‘Swachh Bharat’. Patel, along with volunteers, cleaned the streets of Ahmedabad with brooms and dustcart, beginning with Harijan Basti (Dalit quarters). As the Plague broke out in Ahmedabad in 1917, he worked almost round the clock with his volunteers to help the victims and their families. He worked at great personal risk of infection as Lokmanya Tilak had done during Pune Plague, 1896. The strain broke Patel’s robust health, but sealed his reputation as a mass leader. Around the same time Khera Satyagraha (1918), a forerunner to epic Bardoli No-Tax Campaign (1928), reinforced Patel’s leadership qualities.
Though the tax settlements demanded by the peasants at Kheda (Gujarat) were not fully met, it had two important results. First it led to recognition of peasants as stakeholders in determining land taxes, and it brought Gandhi and Patel together. A decade later Gujarat was ravaged by floods after the torrential rains of July 23, 1927. Patel mounted a Herculean mission to rescue and rehabilitate the flood victims, which brought him to nationwide focus. The Bombay government (Gujarat was then part of Bombay Presidency) recommended him for an award, which Patel politely declined.
This humility was the hallmark of Patel even after his great victory at Bardoli (1928). He was reluctant to stand up at Calcutta Congress in December, 1928. After repeated persuasion he stood up in the audience amongst delegates from Gujarat, and had to be physically forced to come to the dais. Bardoli (Dist. Surat) was Patel’s Kurukshetra. He gave extraordinary leadership to successful tax resistance campaign that rolled on for three months. Only Tilak’s Famine Relief Campaign in Maharashtra (1896) could be compared to it in organizational brilliance. Patel organized the Satyagraha on military pattern though completely non-violent. He himself was the Supreme Commander (Senapati) and under him were Sector Commanders (Vibhag Patis), and under then volunteers (Sainik). The battle field covered 92 villages and 87,000 peasants. He ran a thorough information network involving horse mounted messengers, bhajan singers, paper printers etc. His success at Bardoli, attracted the attention of the whole British Empire. But the best recognition came from a farmer of Nanifalod, in Bardoli Taluka. Kuverji Durlabh Patel said in an open meeting, “Patel you are our Sardar’. Thereupon the title ‘Sardar’ attached to him permanently.
Patel’s disciplinarian approach was legendary. Self-discipline was Gandhi’s mantra. But Patel brought the organizational discipline and cohesion necessary for mass movements. Patel arrived on the political scene exactly when Indian politics hit mass-movement stage. John Gunther, the American journalist, who surveyed Asian politics in 1930s found Patel ‘party boss par excellence’. He found Patel a man of action, of practicality, the man who got things done.
The Sardar was also an exceptional scholar and a prominent member of the Constituent Assembly and several provisions of the constitution, especially relating to the Fundamental Rights, carried his stamp of approval. It was at Sardar Patel’s insistence that Mahatma Gandhi persuaded a reluctant Nehru to induct stalwarts like Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee into the Union Cabinet.
Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who later formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh, described Sardar Patel as “the most valiant champion of India’s freedom and the strongest unifying force in our national life.” According to Dr. Mookerjee, Sardar Patel was “a rare combination of idealism and realism, of strength and generosity which made him a leader and a statesman who had no equal.”
Patel’s organizational capacities were at test as independence approached. There was a threat of India’s balkanization had the princely states, numbering around 565, not joined Indian Union. Some like Travancore wanted to remain free, whereas others like Bhopal and Hyderabad conspired to join Pakistan, though not contagious to it. Partly by diplomacy and partly by coercion, Patel won over the princely states to join the Indian union.
As the Union Home Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, Patel emerged as a statesman of integrity with practical acumen and resolve to accomplish the monumental task of integrating 565 princely states to merge into the independent Indian Republic. Patel is also affectionately remembered as the "Patron saint of India's civil servants" for having established the modern unified Indian Administrative Service and other all India services.
On the issue of Jammu & Kashmir, Sardar Patel was unequivocal in declaring: “I should like to make one thing clear, that we shall not surrender an inch of Kashmir territory to anybody.” Sardar Patel was perceived as the real boss of the Congress and a disciplinarian. When dissidence erupted against the then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Pt. Govind Vallabh Pant, It was Sardar Patel who took upon himself the ardours task of handling this unfortunate development.
Patel convened a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party in the Vidhan Sabha hall in Lucknow and asked for all the exit points to be thrown wide open and said in a commanding tone “those who want to leave are free to go”. He again said “I say those who want to leave are free to go” and repeated the same for the third time. There was a pin drop silence and no one moved from his/her seat. Patel then asked all the doors to be shut and gave the Congress legislators a dressing down for plotting dissidence against a great freedom fighter and a dedicated congressman like Pt. Pant. That was Sardar Patel’s style of tackling internal party dissidence.
Historians believe that one of Patel’s key achievements was the building of cohesion and trust amongst the different castes and communities which were divided on socio-economic lines. Sardar Patel played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of the ancient Somnath Temple in Saurashtra through a public trust.
But on the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid issue, Patel wrote to UP Chief Minister Govind Vallabh Pant in 1949, "I feel that the issue is one which should be resolved amicably in a spirit of mutual toleration and goodwill between the two communities. . . . such matters can only be resolved peacefully if we take the willing consent of the Muslim community with us. There can be no question of resolving such disputes by force."
Very little is known about Sardar Patel’s role in the growth and consolidation of the Press after independence. As the first Information & Broadcasting Minister in the Nehru cabinet, Sardar Patel played a key role in bringing round the British transnational News Agency Reuters to enter into a reasonable partnership agreement with the Indian premier news agency the Press Trust of India for supply of international news to the newspapers in free India.
Eventually, when the terms were accepted by Reuters and an agreement was announced on 21 September 1948, PTI had to raise funds quickly for buying the shares of Reuters. PTI issued 10,000 debentures of Rs. 100 each and Sardar Patel helped by persuading the ruler of Baroda to buy a large portion of the debentures. That was how PTI remitted the money and became a partner of Reuters.
Sardar Patel did not live long after independence to further shape India’s destiny.
One unique feature of the condolences which poured from all over the world on his demise was that even the erstwhile rulers of the princely state which Patel merged into the Indian Union paid their respectful homage to the great son of India. In a departure from the British service rules, member of the I.C.S and the I.A.S assembled in the capital and passed a condolence resolution paying glowing and affectionate tributes to the man who launched the unified All India Services. Patel completed 75 years in 1950, in a broken health due to excessive strain. He died in Mumbai on December 15, 1950. On the death bed he betrayed no anxiety about his family, but about the condition of the country.
Patel was awarded Bharat Ratna (highest civil decoration) in 1991, forty one years after his death, by the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. Today a grateful nation commemorates Sardar Patel’s 140th birth anniversary as the Rashtriya Ekta Divas (National Unity Day), introduced for the first time in the calendar of national events by the Narendra Modi’s BJP-led NDA government in 2014, to be officially held annually on his birth anniversary, 31 October.
Even India’s first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad at one stage said - “No attempt has been made in Delhi to erect a memorial. Even the portrait in the Parliament House is the gift from the Prince of Gwalior. Let us not, therefore, run away with the thought that his (Sardar Patel’s) services are any the less valuable because we choose not to recognize them.”
Prime Minister Modi had always believed that "India will forever be indebted to Sardar Patel for his tireless efforts to unite the Nation," In a befitting tribute to Sardar Patel, 182 metres (597 feet) high Statue of Unity monument dedicated to Sardar Patel is being constructed facing the Narmada Dam near Vadodara in Gujarat. The world’s tallest iron statue was built by the Gujarat Government with people’s participation. The Statue of Unity Movement organized a marathon entitled Run for Unity in which millions of people participated at several places throughout India.
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