It was the middle of the monsoon in New Delhi. At half past ten on a balmy, 2 September 1946, Vallabhbhai Patel, bent down to touch the feet of Mahatma Gandhi at his local residence. After receiving the blessings and garlands, Patel and his colleagues Rajendra Prasad, Jagjivan Ram, and Sarat Chandra Bose headed to the Viceregal House. Here they took the oath to office in the Executive Council of the Governor General also known as the interim government. Minutes later the newly sworn-in members encountered two sets of Indians outside the Viceroy House –enthusiastic Congress party members cheering wildly and vociferous Muslim League volunteers protesting with black flags. Journalists noted that despite the commotion a five-year-old boy dressed in the Indian National Army uniform attracted the maximum attention in the crowd.
Earlier that year the entire nation was electrified by the Indian National Army trials at the Red Fort, in New Delhi. Three former British Indian army officers turned patriots Captain Shah Nawaz Khan, Captain Prem Sehgal, and Lieutenant Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon were being tried for treason. Overnight, their leader Subhas Chandra Bose, and their army Azad Hind Fauj captured the hearts of millions nationwide. Sarojini Naidu declared that if it were possible to choose one’s sons, she would gladly choose these three INA officers. In this period Patel was the Chairman of the INA relief committee and the most outspoken critic of Hukumat-i-Britannia’s attitude towards Netaji’s army. Ultimately, in January 1946, Hukumat-i-Britannia commuted the sentences and set the three men free. This sparked a nationwide Naval mutiny within weeks followed by a revolt in the ranks of the British Indian army in Jabalpur. When scores of army soldiers visited Gandhi, he told them, “I know there is a new ferment and a new awakening among all the army ranks today… credit for this happy change belongs to Netaji Bose…” The soldiers responded with resounding shouts of ‘Jai Hind’ and the skies of India were filled with cries of ‘Jai Hind’. The terrifying and looming threat of the British Indian armed forces’ disloyalty to the crown paved the way for India’s freedom.
Hukumat-i-Britannia retracted swiftly. By 2 September 1946, an interim government was sworn in to begin a new chapter in India’s history. Later that day, Patel took charge of the portfolio of Home and entered the North Block on Raisina Hill in New Delhi. Home Secretary Alfred Ernest Porter carefully briefed the 70-year-old leader on the contents of the files piled on his desk. Suddenly, the sheer variety, volume, and complexity of the nation’s challenges became apparent. The Daily Herald in London noted, “Very few of the men in the new Government have prior administrative experience. They have spent their lives in opposition - sometimes even in goal - in the fight for a cause they cherished. Transitioning from this sphere of action to the role of constructive achievement is not easy.” As usual, British newspaper editors misjudged Indians. They were unaware that Patel was rarely overwhelmed and equal to the task.
Vallabhbhai Jhaveribhai Patel was the fourth son of Ladba and a farmer Jhaveribhai Patel, who is said to have fought on the side of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi in 1857. Born seventy-five miles south of Ahmedabad in Nadiad, Vallabhbhai Patel’s birth date on the matriculation certificate is 31 October 1875. Starting as a lawyer in Godhra, he joyfully relinquished an opportunity to become a London-trained barrister in favor of his elder brother Vithalbhai Patel. Later he became a barrister from the Middle Temple within just two years and obtained top marks in Roman Law. Gifted with a judicious mind and uncompromising grit, he soon established himself as a legal luminary in Ahmedabad. The bridge-playing and chain-smoking Patel known for his sense of humor met Gandhi in April 1916 and after a period of disparagement for the hero of South Africa was drawn towards satyagraha and ahimsa. On the battlefield of Kheda in the summer of 1918, he challenged the power of the Hukumat-i-Britannia over land revenue and emerged as an indefatigable campaigner. After the successful ‘no-tax’ agitation in 1928, the women of Bardoli bestowed him with the title Sardar, and Gandhi chose him to be his deputy commander in the non-violent civil disobedience movement. The highly anglicized Patel dramatically dropped his well-cut suits and gave up his lucrative legal practice to wear a spotless white kurta dhoti and spend time in the filthy jails. With each imprisonment, he came out even more strengthened. During the freedom movement, his nom-de-guerre was the ‘Iron Man of India’. In March 1931, after being elected the president of the Forty-Sixth Congress at Karachi, Patel stated, “You have called a simple farmer to the highest office, to which any Indian can aspire.”
At the end of the tumultuous freedom struggle, as India emerged from slavery to Swaraj, Patel who built the Congress machine with his special administrative talents was certain to become the Prime Minister. But surprisingly Gandhi’s irrevocable choice fell on the younger Nehru instead. With Nehru’s international recognition and immense popularity in India, Patel seemed destined for political oblivion. But the unofficial leader of the Congress and Gandhi’s foremost disciple was a quiet man of action who at each stage in his life managed to arrive at a broader view of things. As the second in command and the powerful Deputy Prime Minister of a nation that represented a fifth of humankind, he demonstrated his forthright leadership. Consistent in his disciplined predawn daily walks in the Lodi Gardens, he discreetly kept his family members away from the capital so that vested interests could not approach them for favors. Gandhi wrote in his journal, “Sardar is incorruptible”.
Hukumat-i-Britannia in its concluding act imposed a gruesome dissection with a diminished India and a two-part theocratic Pakistan. Millions of shattered, tortured, helpless, and furious men, women, and children were pouring into India as refugees from both the eastern and western borders in one of the twentieth century’s worst cases of blood-letting. Within hours of liberation, with the cities ablaze, men were not men and law was not law. Prophets of gloom predicted that the newly launched ship of the Indian Union would not survive the rocks ahead. India appeared to be on a crash course towards destruction. At that crucial juncture, Patel took on the communal Frankenstein that had overwhelmed the nation. He transformed into a giant who could save his bleeding and broken country. At great risk to his life, he put down the raging crises with an iron hand and pacified those with legitimate grievances. He spoke softly but his words carried the weight of mountains. His courage to call a spade a spade in every public address averted countless deaths on both sides of the border. With his characteristically pragmatic approach to civil administration, he steadily brought India’s ferocious strife under complete control. Patel’s unruffled bearing and even-handed approach proved that the nation was right to bet on him in that stormy era.
On the cold evening of Friday, 30 January 1948, just after 4 pm as the sun was fading over India, Gandhi was in critical discussion with his close confidante Patel at the Birla House. Patel’s delicate relationship with Nehru had reached a breaking point. Patel felt that his differences with a man who was fourteen years younger were irreconcilable. In the hardest decision of his career, he had tendered his resignation from the cabinet. For Gandhi, the presence of Patel was essential in the cabinet. Just before leaving for his everyday prayer meeting, Gandhi suggested a joint consultation between the three longstanding colleagues the following day to settle everything. On his advice, Patel agreed to retract his resignation and left as the Mahatma walked towards the lawns to pay for his convictions with his life. On hearing about the assassination a thunder-struck Patel returned to the Birla House. After the doctor confirmed the death, the grieving disciple took his place in stony silence next to the feet of his mentor. Nehru, his face ashen appeared shortly thereafter and wept like a child on seeing Gandhi’s lifeless body. As the father of the nation lay dead, conforming to his last wish of reconciliation, both the tough-minded realist Patel and the globally attuned idealist Nehru embraced each other to lead the newly liberated nation.
The single biggest challenge demanding Patel’s urgent attention at the time of India’s Independence was Winston Churchill’s desire to create a third dominion of Princestan comprising 562 independent indigenous monarchs within India. Churchill had famously said, “In handing over the Government of India to these so-called political classes we are handing over to men of straw”. Patel, ably assisted by V.P. Menon, the brilliant Secretary in the Ministry of States, struggled to salvage a united India from the wreckage of 1947. Earlier in October 1947, Pakistan had dispatched its military camouflaged as mercenaries to swiftly invade Srinagar. With time running out, Patel had taken command of the situation. He did not let events outpace him. On his initiation, Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir put his signature on the crucial instrument of accession and handed it to V.P. Menon. That document enabled military intervention by the Government of India and Srinagar was saved in the nick of time. The soft-spoken but tough negotiator also persuaded most rulers of the princely states to merge territorially and administratively in a spirit of goodwill and mutual accommodation into the newly formed Indian Union. One royal Osman Ali Khan Asaf Jah VII, the Nizam of Hyderabad nonetheless held out. Supposedly the richest man in the world, he fantasized about an independent state. However, Patel was unafraid to act boldly. Unyielding to the pressure, the Bismarck of India magnificently integrated Hyderabad by 17 September 1948, as also Junagarh, and smashed the British plans for the Balkanisation of India. The integration of the Indian princely states into a diverse country of continental size is one of the greatest success stories of contemporary Indian history. Admiring his dauntless colleague, Jawaharlal Nehru stated, “He has drawn the map of free India. He has had a great hand in securing the independence of India and later contributed greatly to preserving it.”
After Independence, over three hundred million multilingual, multi-religious, multiethnic, and multicultural Indians were floating on the world’s map without a democratic constitutional structure. Despite bullets being fired in his direction, his health at a stage of collapse, and even surviving an air crash, Patel was one of the primary persons involved in drafting the Indian Constitution. He also piloted important sections and key provisions. He carried the hopes and dreams of a brand-new postcolonial democracy on his broad shoulders with pride.
Patel also seized up people in no time and welded the civil servants into a united team to conclude the complicated division of assets and liabilities of India and Pakistan. In the final meeting of the Partition Council, Adbur Rab Nishtar, a stalwart of the Pakistan movement, while taking leave admired Patel’s sagacity and declared that the ministers of Pakistan would continue to look upon him as their elder brother. Behind his bold, blunt, and rock-like tenor, Patel had a heart of gold, and he immediately passed the praise on to the civil servants. Subsequently, the far-sighted Patel became the champion of the nationally recognized public administration framework for uniting the world’s seventh-largest nation. He ensured that an all-India public administration service cadre, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), along with other central services was established as the executive branch of the Indian Government. On 21 April 1947, Patel in a motivational speech to the first batch of the IAS in Delhi referred to them as the ‘steel frame of India’.
Then on the morning of 15 December 1950, in Bombay (Mumbai now), Vidhya Shankar, the Private Secretary to the first Deputy Prime Minister of India, informed Nehru on the phone that Sardar was no more. He was 75. Till his last breath, as promised to the Mahatma, Patel had maintained an efficient partnership with the Prime Minister under enormously stressful conditions and laid the path for India’s stable future. Industrialist J.R.D. Tata later noted; “While I usually came back from meeting Gandhi elated and inspired but always a bit sceptical, and from talks with Jawaharlal fired with emotional zeal but often confused and unconvinced, meetings with Vallabhbhai were a joy from which I returned with renewed confidence in the future of our country. I have often thought that if fate had decreed that he, instead of Jawaharlal, would be younger of the two, India would have followed a very different path and would be in better economic shape than it is today.”
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s life was filled with such triumphs that it astonishes us even decades later. His life story is an inspiring study of one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen. And he was the fearless voice of India.