Review: INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
The Hindu
May 20, 2008
New light on Patel's contribution to nation-building REVIEW BY La. Su. Rengarajan
INDIA'S BISMARCK -Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel: Balraj Krishna; Indus Source Books, P.O. Box 6194, Malabar Hill PO, Mumbai-400006. Rs. 300.
Variously hailed as the Iron Man of India, Mahatma's Muscle Man, Lenin of Bardoli, Chanakya-cum-Bismarck and saviour and architect of New India, Sardar Patel was a robust statesman in the Gandhi-Nehru-Patel triumvirate, which was responsible for shaping India's destiny during the freedom struggle. Immediately after Independence, Patel as Deputy Prime Minister of India adroitly dealt with the bewildering problem of integrating into the Indian Union 560 odd princely states.
This book is not exactly yet another biography of Patel inasmuch as the author, a seasoned journalist, has artfully re-aligned the known (and some unknown) facts on the role of the Sardar before and after Independence, drawing largely on reports appearing in Indian and foreign press. More than that, he has conversed and corresponded with select top-ranking ex-bureaucrats and army chiefs to flash new light on the role of Patel in post-independent India.
Partition
Patel's tactful but firm dealings with the revolt of Travancore and Hyderabad states and his brush with the rulers of Jodhpur, Kathiawar, Bhopal and Junagadh finally and swiftly demolishing the princely order are dealt with in detail.
Immediately on receiving Prime Minister Nehru's letter of December 23, 1947 informing Patel of his decision to take Kashmir from Patel's charge to place it under the charge of Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, an outraged Patel forthwith penned his letter of resignation as a member of the government. But, on Gandhiji's intervention, the letter remained undelivered.
According to H. V. Kamath's memoirs quoted by the author, Patel once told Kamath that “if Jawaharlal Nehru and Gopalaswamy had not made Kashmir their close preserve, separating Kashmir from my portfolio of Home and States, I would have tackled the problem as purposefully as I had already done in Hyderabad.”
The author's elaborate argument that the Partition of India was a churchillian plan is far from convincing. The fact remains that both Nehru and Patel finally agreed to the Partition and prevailed upon an unwilling Gandhiji to acquiesce in the fait accompli of their decision as the only alternative to civil war, a gory rehearsal of which was staged by the Muslim League in the Calcutta killings of August 1946 repeated in Noakhali and Tripura.
On the whole, the book is a refreshing re-exposure of a sturdy stalwart of the Indian freedom movement that Patel was who could have been the first prime minister but for Mahatma Gandhiji's intervention.