Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (October 31, 1875-December 15, 1950) was one of the greatest unifiers of India and one of the main architects of modern India. As the first Home Minister in the Interim Government of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel had used all his skills to consolidate India, which had been in a fragmented and fluid state at the time of Independence in 1947.
Sardar Patel passed away on December 15, 1950, three years after Independence and less than a year after India declared herself a Republic on January 26, 1950. But within this short span of time, he had successfully completed the huge task of national consolidation he had been entrusted upon. Of course he had the entire nationalist leadership and the Prime Minister with him. The young nation was also solidly behind him. However, it was his strong will and political acumen that yielded the desired result. As a student of history, I strongly believe, had he been not there at the helm of affairs, probably the task of consolidation would not have been so smooth and nearly so bloodless, as it had been then during the period.
In 1947 along with Independence, India had inherited partition and communal riots, ugly, inhuman and anti-civilizational by any modern standard. Secondly, officially speaking India was still a dominion with a British Viceroy as the head of the State. Jawaharlal Nehru was only the vice-president of the Viceregal Executive Council.
Thirdly, and more importantly, there were more than 560 princely states, which had been formally independent but not integrated as part of British India. Nor were they ready to accede to British India which was scheduled to be democratic and republic in the days to come. These princely states with their feudal leadership had been harsh and hostile to the nationalist struggle throughout and had openly extended support to the British during the high days of nationalist agitation.
The Indian dominion between 1947 and January 1950 did not have the official autonomy to force these states to accede to India. Moreover, the newly created Pakistan had been luring them to join it and had promised to retain their feudal status without any state interference. It is a matter of fact that the princely states like Umerkot, Bahawalpur, Khairpur, Chitral, Hunza and Swat, etc., had been a part of Pakistan, but were not integrated with the federal state of Pakistan till 1955, unlike in India. This had created a queer situation in Pakistan and could be seen as one of the main reasons for the feudalization of Pakistan society. In other words, after Independence, Pakistan, instead of being modernized, was re-feudalized and fundamentalized, while India was consolidated as a modern democratic state, and this was possible largely due to the acumen and leadership of people like Nehru, Sardar Patel and Maulana Azad and Rajendra Prasad, etc.
When most of the princely states were convinced to naturally accede to India by Sardar Patel, three states remained adamant. One was Junagarh in Gujarat, another was Hyderabad in the South and the third one was Kashmir in the North West. Each of them had its own unique reasons. However, behind their arrogance and decision to defy India, was Pakistan. Sardar Patel used the popular will of people against their feudal decision and got them integrated. Junagarh and Kashmir were integrated in late 1947 and Hyderabad in 1948. On each of the cases, Patel also used the Indian Army. This means, popular will and if that did not succeed, armed forces would be used to realize the goal; unification of India was his ultimate goal, without which survival of India in the contemporary geo-political scenario would have been nearly impossible. Today India aspires to become a world power. The claim is never construed as rhetoric largely because of its magnificent size and leadership skill during the post-World War period. In other princely states also Sardar Patel had used the same acumen to unify the nation, though there was no need of army there. For example, Odisha had 26 princely states, which were locally called ‘Gadjat’. Each state had witnessed both anti-British and anti-feudal agitations in very intense form in the 1930s and 1940s. If these states had not been integrated or if the process of integration had been delayed on some pretext or other there, it would have been mis-construed as a betrayal of the states’ people’s faith in the nationalist leadership. In other words, what Sardar Patel did through integration was nothing, but sustaining states’ people’s faith in Indian nationalist leadership.
As a student of history, I see the integration of Pondicherry, a French territory, in 1954 and integration of Goa, a Portuguese territory, in 1961, as a logical corollary of the policy that Sardar Patel had initiated in his life time. Integration of Pondicherry was easy, but Goa gave some teething problem which India could overcome without much difficulty, though by then Sardar Patel had not been there.
When we look at Sardar Patel as a unifier with a strong will, his attitude to the issue of minority and communalism is also noteworthy. Pakistan was a religion-based state, where the non-Muslim minority had no hope of any future; the Muslims in general also had no hope in such a nation. Moreover, migrating to a new land only on the issue of religion at the cost of losing one’s societal and economic roots was not the desired option for many. They resolved against such migration and decided to stay back in India. On the other hand, in India the communal forces pressuring them to migrate were no less active, which was bound to impact the secular policy of new India. If there had been slightest mistake, India would have been lost to the communal forces, as in Pakistan. Had the nationalist leadership including Nehru and Sardar been indecisive and vacillating, India would have easily slipped into the hands of communal forces and turned into a poor replica of Pakistan. Probably that would have been the end of any perspective for India. The communal deaths would have been much more; further, India would have lost the chance of emerging as a modern state in post-World War time and India’s greatness as a harbinger of World civilization would have been in oblivion. The large number of colonies and ex-colonies of Asia, Africa and Latin America would not have got a leader in the name of India during the Cold War period.
While analyzing the role of Sardar as a unifier of the nation, one need not forget his leadership in the peasant’s movement both during the Kheda Satyagraha in 1918 and the Bardoli Satyagraha in 1928, which had fetched him the title ‘Sardar’. A follow up of this was his presiding over the famous Karachi Congress of 1931, where the Congress re-iterated its commitment to Purna Swaraj, and passed a resolution asking the state to protect the fundamental rights of all, especially of the industrial workers and agricultural labourers. Whether it is the peasants’ movement or the Quit India Movement, he stood like a rock with Mahatma Gandhi throughout the period, because he knew that the mission of nation-making and the goal of India’s unification was safe in the hands of the Mahatma.
Lastly, I would say, it is good to remember Sardar Patel and to discuss the significance of his role as a political and social unifier of India. He undoubtedly deserves it. But to see him in isolation would be a travesty of history. He was a product of the Indian national movement and what he had done is to be seen as a part of the broader nationalist goal. To see any dichotomy between him and other nationalist leadership would be an injustice to the great Sardar. He was neither smaller to, nor greater than any other leader of his time. He is to be analyzed in a larger nationalist perspective. As a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi he was solely committed to the idea of India. His India was an accommodative and integrated nation. To him, internal and social consolidation of India was as much necessary as its political consolidation. A diverse and composite India was his dream project. To see him as a rival of any other nationalist leader of his time would be like ignoring the facts of history and betraying the ideals of the Sardar. No doubt Sardar Patel was a great unifier. However, this sounds prophetic; great only when we see his nationalist colleagues as equally committed to the idea of an integrated well-knit and consolidated India; only then it will be a real tribute to the great Sardar of Modern India.
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