Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
From Freepedia
Image:Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.jpg Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel (October 31, 1875–December 15, 1950), popularly referred to as Sardar Patel ("Sardar" stands for "Chief" or "Leader"), was an Indian statesman, core leader of the Indian Independence Movement and of the Indian National Congress.
Following Independence on August 15th, 1947, he became the Deputy Prime Minister of India and Union Minister for Home Affairs and the States till his death in 1950.
For his leadership unrivalled in forcefulness, determination and wisdom in the most critical years of the Indian Independence Movement and the first years of a new-born nation, he is lovingly and reverently referred to as the Iron Man of India.
Contents |
Early life
Vallabhbhai Patel was born into a farmer family on October 31, 1875, in Nadiad, Gujarat, India. He was the fourth son of Jhaverbhai Patel and Ladba. Somabhai, Narsibhai and Vithalbhai Patel were his elder brothers; the latter was also a major figure in the struggle for Independence, although at odds with Gandhiji's leadership. He had a younger brother, Kashibhai, and a sister, Dahiba (she died at a young age).
Young Vallabh was the middle child, thus having to struggle the most. He entered school late, and received virtually no interest or support for his education from his family. He wandered from Nadiad to Petlad and Borsad to complete his schooling, living on his own with other boys like him, and taking his matriculation at the age of 22. At this point, he was seen as an unambitious, average young man with no perceivable future save as a householder.
But Vallabhbhai assiduously worked to a sober yet ambitious plan: he would pass the Pleader's examination and earn as a simple lawyer. Saving enough money, he would journey to England to become a barrister.
During the many years it took him to save money, Vallabhbhai the pleader earned a reputation of fierceness, ruthlessness as a lawyer that would set the stage for the Ironman of India. His name was revered by his peers. He had built a character of stoicism and discipline, lancing a painful boil without hesitation on his own, and living for years away from his parents and brothers to make his own way in life. Vallabhbhai also cared for a personal friend when the plague swept the state, and even briefly, yet terribly suffered from the killer disease. When he learned that he had caught the disease, he immediately sent away his young family to safety and left his home for a temple, where he mercifully recovered.
During these years, Vallabhbhai fetched his wife Jhaverba (they had been married when children), and set up his household. His wife bore him two children - Mani, a girl in 1904, and Dahya, a boy in 1906. Not much is known about his wife since she died tragically at the young age of 29 in 1909 in Bombay, and Vallabhbhai was an extremely reserved man.
In addition to his personal reserve that enabled him to bottle up the grief of his wife's death and raise 2 nascent children on his own, Vallabhbhai never flouted the code of reverence for his parents and elder brothers. Assiduously taking on the burdens of his homestead even while saving for England and supporting a young family, Vallabhbhai also made way for his brother Vithal to travel to England in place of him, on his own saved money and opportunity! The famous episode occurred as the tickets and pass arrived in the name of "V.J. Patel," and arrived at his brother's home, who bore the same initials. Vallabhbhai did not hesitate to make way for his elder brother's ambition before his own, and funded his trip as well.
Finally, at the age of 36, he journeyed to England and enrolled at the Middle Temple Inn in London. Finishing a 36 month course in 30 months, Vallabhbhai topped his class (which is remarkable for a non-Englishman of no college or city education experience, despite his professional credentials). He returned to the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad, and became one of the city's most sought-after and prominent barristers.
In 1918, he left his hard-earned wealth, his large house and life of respect and comfort for the frugal living and hardship of Mahatma Gandhi's freedom movement. The elder man's pure adherence to Indian values, a simple, pious existence, and the soul-liberating cause of national independence set the caged peasant within Patel free. The pure freedom of living a virtuous life without submission to high society, classes, castes and the British Raj appealed strongly when it was personified in the life of the Mahatma. The hard life and high honor of the struggle, and a commitment to action not seen before in political leaders drew Patel personally and spiritually close to Gandhiji.
Before becoming Sardar Patel of national fame, he was also Ahmedabad's sanitation commissioner and municipal president in the 1920s, improving life for the common people while increasing his experience in public administration and politics. During his terms, Ahmedabad was extended a major supply of electricity, a massively improved drainage and sanitation system and major education reforms. He even took on sensitive Hindu-Muslim issues with an iron hand, with the overall objective of looking after the wider population of the city.
Movement for Indian independence
Sardar Patel never actually joined the Congress Party until after 1918. He became the secretary of the Gujarat Sabha, which became the Congress Party of Gujarat in 1920. He was elected its President, and served up till 1947.
Kheda and Bardoli Satyagraha
Sardar Patel's first major participation was during the Kheda Struggle. The Kheda division of Gujarat was reeling under a severe drought and the peasants asked for relief from the high rate of taxes. Mahatma Gandhi had approved of a struggle there, but could not lead it himself due to his activities leading a similar movement in Champaran, Bihar. Asking for one Gujarati activist to volunteer full-time to the Kheda cause, Patel raised his hand and stood up.
Along with Narhari Parikh and Mohanlal Pandya, two former lawyers and students of Gandhi, Patel began a village-to-village tour, detailed grievances and asking villagers for their support for a state-wide revolt. All throughout the state, almost every villager, Hindu and Muslim backed Patel's efforts and leadership. Patel emphasized complete non-violence despite any provocation, and unity amongst all villagers. Patel was greatly assisted by nationalists like Abbas Tyabbji and the Sarabhai family of Ahmedabad.
When revenue was refused, the government sent police and intimidation squads to seize property, including confiscating barn animals and whole farms. Thousands of activists and farmers were arrested, but almost no incident of violence from the villagers was reported. Many families throughout Gujarat attempted to help the resistors by supplying them with food, clothing and other necessities. The state's people socially boycotted and segregated individuals and villages that supported the government and paid revenues. The revolt evoked great sympathy around India, but was not fought for the explicit cause of Indian independence.
The revolt ended in 1919, when the government compromised and suspended payment of revenue, even scaling back the rate. Vallabhbhai Patel emerged as an icon and hero to Gujaratis, admired and hailed by Indian leaders throughout India, especially by his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi.
In the years between 1919 and 1928, Patel worked extensively against untouchability, alcoholism, ignorance and poverty. He was elected the President of the Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad in 1922.
In 1928, Bardoli suffered from a similar predicament. In this case, the revenue hike was steeper, and the famine worse and covered a large portion of Gujarat. Patel organized the first revolt since the suspension of civil resistance in 1922, and became a hero to the whole nation. The revenue refusal was even stronger here than in Kheda, and many sympathy satyagrahas were undertaken in different parts of Gujarat.
In both cases, after the revolt had ended, Patel worked hard to make sure each farmer got his lands and property back.
It was with his work in Bardoli, that Gujaratis and people across the country began referring to him as the Sardar, or Leader. His work won him the loyalty of thousands of Gujarati freedom-fighters and the Gujarat Congress Party, and the love and adoration of millions of people in Western India.
Civil Disobedience Movement
Sardar Patel became the President of the Indian National Congress in 1931, at the dawn of the Civil Disobedience Movement, or Salt Satyagraha. Patel organized Congress work before being arrested by police. He served his sentence with Gandhi in the Yeravda Jail till 1934. Gandhi and Patel grew very close, personally and spiritually in this time. Patel served Gandhi, affectionately looking after his personal needs, and Gandhi encouraged Patel to learn Sanskrit and read great Hindu epics. The two discussed many aspects of the freedom struggle, Indian history and national issues. Gandhi was especially proud of Patel's work in Gujarat, and of the inestimable help he was giving Gandhi in the work of revolution.
Power within the Congress
Sardar Patel was Gandhiji's right-hand man, and Congress Party chief. He commanded the wide loyalty and respect of the millions of Congressmen who had fought in the hot sun and been beaten, tortured and imprisoned for many years. He was Gujarat's chief, and no other Congress leader, not even Gandhiji could have overcome his strength in his home state. His great integrity, strict discipline and adherence to core principles of the struggle, complete disinterest in office and power as such, and fatherly care for his associates and fellow Congressmen made him the only man capable of standing up to Gandhiji. Thus even though he had been Congress President only once in 1931, he remained its second-most important leader after Gandhiji, exceeding the younger and charismatic Jawaharlal Nehru in authority and influence within the party and in government. It was acknowledged by many veteran freedom-fighters and his British opponents that only Sardar Patel could stand up to Gandhiji in a contest for the loyalty of most Congressmen and Indians.
No one was a stronger ally of the Mahatma. Patel would break many other bonds of power, office, leadership, friendship and family before splitting from the Mahatma. Throughout his life, he viewed himself as a "soldier in Bapu's Army." He enjoyed a close spiritual bond with the Mahatma, and the Gandhi-Patel relationship has been described as one of older and younger brothers. In Indian society, the older brother is a father-figure, with the younger brother bound with love, loyalty and respect to him.
Sardar Patel assumed a wide range of responsibilities by raising funds for the Party from businessmen and sympathizers, developing an election strategy and selecting candidates for the provincial and central elections of 1934 and 1937, and guiding the work of many Congress organizations dedicated to social upliftment and service. He was the guide and boss of the various Congress Ministries that took power in the provinces in the 1930s - never indulging in power and interfering in the work of public service, but holding an iron discipline over the ministers, preventing the British thus from dividing the leaders and ruling, and any corruption of power from hurting the purity of the overall cause for freedom.
Quit India Movement
Main Article: Quit India Movement
Sardar Patel strongly supported Gandhi's call for a final, definitive struggle to obtain the exit of the British in India, after he realized that the British would not reward India with freedom even if India supported Britain in the World War II. Patel's support was critical, since the movement was received with criticism and caused many political divisions and controversy.
Although Nehru and Maulana Azad backed the struggle, it was Patel's leadership that mobilized hundreds of thousands of Congress supporters, especially in latter-day Mumbai, Gujarat and Maharashtra. After making a fiery speech in Mumbai to a crowd over 100,000 strong, Patel energized thousands of nationalists, removing political exhaustion, division and confusion.
Patel and the whole Congress leadership were soon arrested, but Quit India became the most dangerous revolt in the history of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people courted arrest, and whole cities and provinces shut down. But the British did succeed, by rigorous imposition of martial law, in breaking the strength of the revolt by 1944.
Patel and the entire Congress Working Committee was jailed in Ahmednagar till 1946. In these years, Patel was recorded as having kept up the spirits of his comrades by constant care and service to them.
Patel and the others were released by early 1946. The revolt and the war had exhausted Britain, and negotiations were about to begin for the future independence of India.
The Independence of India
Vallabhbhai Patel's most important contributions came in the period between 1946 and 1948, when the Congress negotiated India's independence; when the Partition of India took place, and India's independence was greeted by intensive communal violence, an exodus of 10 million people, war over Kashmir and the pending integration of 565 princely states.
The Congress Presidency
Patel famously stepped down in favor of Nehru from the 1946 election for the Congress Presidency, upon the request of Gandhi. Patel had the support of 11 out of 15 Congress Party provincial organizations, while Nehru had none. The election's importance is in the fact that the elected man would lead free India's first Government.
Gandhi is often criticized for not backing Patel, a battle-hardened leader who had the support of the entire Congress Party. But Patel respected Gandhi's judgment, and knew that he did not have Nehru's assets: health and youth, mass popularity and a likeable image with the country's Muslims and youth.
But until his death, Gandhi's true wish was that Patel and Nehru head the Government together, and that the distinction be only titular. Patel took the most powerful portfolio, the Home Ministry, and retained his control over the organization of the Congress Party.
The Partition of India
Sardar Patel was one of the first Congress leaders to accept partition of India as a solution to the rising Muslim separatist movement led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He was greatly angered by Jinnah's wrecking of attempted coalitions between his party and the Congress, and by his embrace of violence, such as the Direct Action Day, when over 5,000 people were killed in violence instigated by Jinnah. But he was also aware that Jinnah did enjoy popular support amongst Muslims, and that an open conflict between him and the nationalists could degenerate into a Hindu-Muslim civil war of disastrous proportions and consequences.
When Nehru and the others had approved the idea, it was Patel who took the job of convincing a deeply saddened Gandhi of the inevitability of partition as the pragmatic solution.
Patel also represented India in the Partition Council, watching over the fairness of the division of assets and government machinery. With Pakistan being the smaller country with a smaller population, Patel made sure Jinnah did not obtain more resources for his state than was justifiable. a Nehru and Patel jointly named India's first Council of Ministers. Patel took the Ministry for Home Affairs, and the title of Deputy Prime Minister.
At 72, Patel assumed the "Himalayan" responsibilities of the integration of 565 princely states into the Union, advancing democracy and self-government in these fiefdoms, developing the national security apparatus and strategy, and welding Bharat into one, united country. Patel would assume a leading role in writing the free nation's Constitution as well, responsible for inculcating separation of powers, religious freedom and equality (ironically, he was often portrayed with an anti-Muslim bias) and the right to property.
Integration of Princely Statess
Even during the transition period before Independence, assisted by civil servant V.P. Menon, Patel worked towards the integration of the numerous Indian states into the Indian union. Patel and Menon attempted to persuade the princes of the impossibilty of autonomy from the Indian republic, especially in the presence of growing opposition from their subjects. He also proposed favourable terms for the merger, including creation of privy purses for the descendants of the rulers. All but three of the states willingly merged into the Indian union leading to the comment that Patel “liquidated the princely states without liquidating the princes”. Only Jammu and Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad did not fall into his "basket";. Junagadh joined the union, following protests against the Nawab, who then fled to Pakistan. When the Nizam of Hyderabad refused to join the union, Patel sent the Army and Hyderabad surrendered in a few days.
Sardar Patel to Hindus and Muslims
Many people see the Sardar as a man opposed to Muslims and pro-Hindu. But the Iron Man and Gandhiji's most fervent disciple had no such animosity in his heart.
Sardar Patel fiercely opposed the demand of the Muslim minority to be treated on equal terms as with the Hindu majority. Patel was merely defending the Congress policy of equal freedom for all, but he acquiesed to a division of the country after an increasingly violent and destructive campaign for Pakistan proved to command the support of a vast majority of Muslims, and threatened to degenerate into a mass civil war; an eventuality abhorrent to veterans of the non-violent struggle for freedom.
During the partition riots and the massive exoduses of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from Pakistan and Bharat respectively, Sardar Patel organized the police and Army strategy to curb violence, and several government organizations providing relief to refugees. He personally visited a heavily Muslim area of the city of Delhi to calm the nervous people, who feared a bloody attack by Hindu extremists. Disorder was put down by an iron hand as soldiers shot to death any rioter or murderer, Hindu, Sikh or Muslim. In action, if not in words, Sardar Patel thus guaranteed the safety of Muslims without overlooking the national interest.
In words, Sardar Patel often appealed to Muslims to make a final choice and stick with it: if they chose to go to Pakistan, go and live in peace. If they chose to live in Bharat, do so with absolute loyalty and pride. This logical and straight-forward leadership brought criticism, but also comforted tens of millions of Hindus around the country who were traumatized and enraged by partition and violence. Although the anger of an extremist minority claimed Mahatma Gandhi's life, he and Sardar Patel prevented the whole country from being consumed by communal hate
The Sardar decided to forcibly annex Junagadh and Hyderabad only after their rulers proved oppressive to the majority of the people, anti-democratic and anti-national. He would not let Jinnah and Pakistan weaken the Union by supporting stooge states in its heart. At the time of the annexation of Junagadh and Hyderabad, the Indian Muslims roundly backed the Sardar's actions and policies, raising the Sardar's hopes for Bharat's future.
Last Years, and Legacy
Sardar Patel had been the last man to see and talk to Gandhiji before his brutal murder on January 30, 1948. The Mahatma had asked Sardar Patel to stay on in government in support of the Prime Minister Nehru, and to provide the joint national leadership that the country was in dire, crucial need of to survive as a free nation.
The death of the man for whom he gave up a life of comfort to withstand 30 years of hardship, jail and overcome terrible trials of fate and history, deeply hurt the Iron Man. At Gandhiji's funeral, the Sardar gave solace, support and leadership to countless Congressmen, associates, friends and the wider population. He immediately moved to forestall retaliation against the political body that the assassin belonged to and wider violence. But within two months of the murder, he had a major heart attack that unleashed the massive bottled-up grief. Thanks to the presence of his caring daughter, his loyal secretary and nurse, his life did not end sooner than it ultimately did.
Sardar Patel was the man of legends as heroes of films and folktales are portrayed: the young rebel and defiant man who educated himself and raised his own house against all the odds; the man who turned away from comfort and wealth for the hard work of national freedom; the man whose integrity and morals were unimpeachable even in the hardest of trials; the man who sacrificed all power, office and opportunity to respect his elders; the man who was jailed for 5-6 years and spearheaded three major popular national uprisings against tyranny and oppression; the man who made one country, free democratic republic out of a patchwork of 565 kingdoms and fiefdoms; the man who united Hindus and Muslims by a ruthless application of logic, that they were either bound to sail together, or kill each other and sink as a nation; the man who brought order to Delhi and East Punjab in face of murderous violence and an exodus of tens of millions of people.
Sardar Patel died in Mumbai (then Bombay) on December 15, 1950, after suffering a massive second heart attack. He was 75 years old. Just 11 months earlier, Bharat had adopted its Constitution, and become a Republic. Till his last few days, he was constantly at work as Home Minister, redeeming to his absolute last, his pledge to Mahatma Gandhi to stand by Prime Minister Nehru and provide the joint leadership that the country was crucially in need of in its first turbulent years since the birth of freedom.
Since his death, he has largely been ignored by Government and the mass media, thanks to the overpowering personality cult of Jawaharlal Nehru and his family, which has cumulatively produced three Prime Ministers so far.
In 1993, the film "Sardar" was released which sketched his life and work, and he has been seen as the Godfather of the rising political right-wing in national politics. More and more educated young people are seeing the vital contributions of the Sardar over the burnished glory of Nehru as more crucial and important to the country. It is often the complaint of many that things for the country would have gone considerably better had the Sardar, and not Nehru, been its first Prime Minister.
And some anti-Gandhi politicians even champion Sardar Patel as their hero. Nothing could be more tragically ironic, or further from the truth.
Manibehn Patel lived in a flat in Mumbai for the rest of her life following her father's death, and often led the work of the Sardar Patel Memorial Trust and other charitable organizations, but kept out of politics in general. Dahyabhai Patel was a businessman, and eventually went on to serve in the Lok Sabha, lower house of Parliament as an MP in the 1960s.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel was awarded the Bharat Ratna, the nation's highest civilian honor, posthumously in 1991.
Lionized in Gujarat, his birthplace in the village of Karamsad is still preserved in his memory. The Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad serves as the state's gateway to the world. The Sardar Patel College of Engineering in Mumbai is one of the nation's premier engineering schools. A highly prestigious school, the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya was established in 1960 by his name in New Delhi. And the major Sandhurst Road along which he lived in his family's flat on Mumbai's eastern coast, is today the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Road.
But his true legacy is preserved in the unhesitating reverence demonstrated by common village folk and intellectuals in Gujarat and all over Bharat alike, for the Iron Man of Bharat.
References
Gandhi, Rajmohan (1987). Patel, A Life. Navajivan publishing house, Ahmedabad.
Categories: Indian freedom fighters | Bharat Ratna recipients | People of Gujarat | 1875 births | 1950 deaths | British rule in India
