There is an unmistakable false note in the BJP’s bid to appropriate Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for its own. The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is walking the extra mile to restore Sardar Patel to his rightful place after he was pushed into the shadows by the sycophants of Jawaharlal Nehru. What seems to impel the BJP and the PM is the grudge against Nehru more than anything else. So they forget to give the just praise that is due to Patel.
The most important thing the BJP forgets about Patel is that he was a formidable Congressman, just like Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and others. Of course, their stature was larger than the party, but they worked within the party framework. The fight between Patel and Nehru, and it’s futile to pretend they didn’t have strong differences and even hated each other in the way only strong individuals hate their peers, which also carries a grudging respect behind it, was between two Congressmen. Patel was an unapologetic right-wing politician, who had nothing but contempt for much of the socialist rhetoric of Nehru and his acolytes, and particularly Jayaprakash Narayan.
He was a right-wing Congressman. He didn’t believe in the ideas and arguments of either Syama Prasad Mookerjee or Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The BJP’s bid to latch on to him as they know Savarkar the politician faded away too long back for his name to resonate with people, and that Mookerjee, with his admirable talents, abandoned the national role he could have had if he didn’t choose a narrower ideology. The ideas of Mookerjee/Jan Sangh/BJP were at one end of the political spectrum, with the Communists at the other. Patel was in the middle, and he didn’t agree with either. He remained a Congressman.
He wasn’t a Hindutva politician in the Congress either, as some liberal secularists have hinted. Patel didn’t leave the Congress and didn’t walk away from Gandhi. He would have if he believed in the argument of India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. He didn’t profess secularism as Nehru and others did in fine liberal language. He was a practical man, never given to high-flown phrases. He was determined that Muslims in India who stayed back would remain equal citizens, but he refused to handhold them. That was the man. As India’s first home minister, Patel left no stone unturned to see that there was no massacre of Muslims moving from this side to the other. Muslims were killed in the Partition riots despite that. Even his most implacable critics can’t cull out evidence to show he left Muslims to fend for themselves at a time when the communal frenzy was at its peak.
Patel could have walked out of the Congress over his differences with Nehru, and even Gandhi. He could have joined the Hindu Mahasabha, or set up a party in the Jan Sangh mould as Mookerjee did long after. What both the BJP and Nehru camp followers forget is that it was Nehru who was in a minority in the Congress, and Patel who had the majority with him. He could have pushed Nehru out of the Congress after Gandhi’s death on January 30, 1948 and before his own passing on December 15, 1950. There were nearly three years when Patel and Nehru were face to face with each other, and their sharp differences didn’t disappear. Nehru too could have threatened to walk out of the party. But he didn’t. He didn’t drop Patel from the Cabinet, which he could have. Nehru and Patel just pulled along. They didn’t put aside their differences. Patel still rallied his supporters in the party. But they worked together. Patel and Nehru shared information and notes when Patel set to work pulling in all the princely states into the Indian Union.
Even over Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir, the two stayed in close touch. They had different perspectives, but one didn’t undermine the other in the Cabinet and the government. There is a famous letter that Patel wrote to Nehru on the issue of Tibet in 1949. It is more likely that Nehru would have agreed with Patel on Tibet, but it wasn’t an easy situation. The Tibetan government before the Chinese takeover was arrogant and claimed Sikkim and the present Arunachal Pradesh for itself, a fact not many experts seem to have noticed.
At the end of the day, despite their growing irritation with each other, Nehru and Patel stood by each other. Patel didn’t endure Nehru due to any sentimental deference to Gandhi’s memory and wishes. He knew Nehru was the man to be there where he was. That is why he didn’t do anything to undermine Nehru’s position. At the same time, he didn’t let go his control of the party. He checkmated Nehru. But the rivalry stopped there. It was Nehru and Patel who were fed up with the Muslim League’s intransigence during the short coalition phase in the Provisional Government, and they knew that Partition was inevitable.
So when the BJP and Narendra Modi want to praise Patel to denigrate Nehru, they are going against the facts. Nehru and Patel trusted each other and they worked together. That is the plain truth. There is quite a bit of gossip that Nehru didn’t want any home ministry officials to attend Patel’s funeral in Bombay at the government’s expense. It isn’t necessary to deny the narration as he might have been worried about precedents for the future, or may have hated Patel so much that he thought this was the time to get his way. Apparently, he didn’t even want President Rajendra Prasad to go as well. It is, however, based on anecdotal evidence that is not sufficient to qualify as historical evidence. But what stands against talk about personal animosity is the fact of Patel and Nehru working closely from the days when the Provisional Government was formed in 1946 and till Patel died in 1950.
The author is a Delhi-based commentator and analyst
