THE ENDURING RELEVANCE OF SARDAR
VALLABHBHAI PATEL
NANI A. PALKHIVALA
I FEEL PRIVILEGED and hononred to be asked to deliver the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial Lecture this year. The series started in 1955, and eminent men have spoken in the past decades on various matters of vital importance and significance.
Looking to the state of our democracy today, I thought no topic would be of greater importance than the enduring relevance of Sardar Patel. More than ever before, we need to recall what he stood for and tirelessly strove to create. “My life is my message.” said Mahatma Gandhi, and Sardar Patel could have said the same.
To question the enduring relevance of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to India today is like questioning the relevance of the sun to the solar system. You cannot conceive of a solar system without the sun, and you cannot conceive of modern India without Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
In recent world history, two events have thrown up a striking galaxy of talent. The first was when the thirteen colonies in America were fighting for their independence. From 1776 to 1783 the United States of America (as it came to be known later) produced an extraordinary cluster of outstanding men who were the founders of the great republic. In the twenty-five years between 1922 and 1947. India had a comparable galaxy of talent – no inferior to that which America produced and our leaders combined talent with sterling character. Undoubtedly Sardar Patel was in the top rank.
Sardar Patel was one of the founders of our Constitution. Luckily the Constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly which was not elected on the basis of adult franchise. First-rate minds were hand-picked from all parts of India–for their knowledge, vision and dedication. After three years of laborious and painful toil, they completed the drafting of the Constitution which a former Chief Justice rightly described as “sublime”. It was the longest Constitution in the world, till the new Constitution of Yugoslavia came into force a few years before the dismemberment of that ill-starred country.
Consider the sharp contrast between India in 1947 and the British Colonies in America after their successful war of independence. They started with every conceivable disadvantage. They were just a loose alliance of thirteen sovereign states bound only by articles of confederation. The thirteen Colonies had no unified nationality, no head of state, no central government, no central judiciary, no national currency, no common system of taxation. In the summer of 1787, the delegates in Philadelphia drafted a document only seven Articles long, which, with its twenty-seven amendments, has lasted more than two centuries and continues to be the fundamental laws of the world’s most powerful democracy.
The story of Sardar Patel’s life is easily told. The traditional date of his birth is 31st October 1875. But really speaking, nobody knows the exact day on which he was born. The traditional date is what he gave for his matriculation examination and he never changed it - rather typical of the constancy which characterized his mental make-up.
Sardar Patel was born to parents who were deeply religious. It is remarkable how frequently the children of deeply religious parents fare well in life. Vallabhbhai himself became the architect of modern India, while his brother, Vithalbhai, was the first Speaker of the Central Legislature. Vallabhbhai was a very affectionate man, though there were not many occasions when he displayed his affectionate nature. He has a very fine sense of humour. Mahatma Gandhi was gone on record to say that during the sixteen months when he was in jail, he was kept in peals of laughter by Vallabhbhai who was a co-inmate.
Vallabhbhai never courted publicity. He never projected himself anywhere but quietly did his work. He was a true Karmayogi. After he became a widower at the age of thirty-three, the only love in his life was his motherland to which he was passionately devoted.
He has three great ambitions. First of all, he wanted to consolidate India. In the five thousand years of its history, India was never united it had always been a group of different states. Vallabhbhai wanted to bring into existence a united, homogeneous India when it become a republic in 1950.
The Times (of London) said that Vallabhbhai’s achievement of the integration of the Indian States would rank with that of Bismarck and probably higher. The Manchester Guardian rightly said:
“Without Patel, Gandhiji’s idea would have had less practical influence and Nehru’s idealism less scope. Patel was not only the organiser of the fight for freedom but also the architect of the new State when the fight was over. The same man is seldom successful as rebel and statesman. Sardar Patel was the exception.”
While launching the PEPSU Union at Patiala, Sardar Patel said:
“This is the first time in history, after centuries that India can call itself an integrated whole in the real sense of the term ... We must work with unity. If we falter or fail, we shall consign ourselves to eternal shame and disgrace.
His second ambition was to ensure the survival of a united country through the instrument of a strong civil service. He conceived of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in place of the Indian Civil Service (ICS); and it was he who also conceived of the Indian Police Service (IPS). Both these services are very much extant today and have enabled India to survive as a democratic state, while the fortunes of political parties keep changing.
His third ambition was to make India economically strong, prosperous and progressive. This ambition was not fulfilled. After the death of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on 15th December 1950, the Government consciously discarded the economic policies of the Sardar and adopted a sterile form of socialism which was the bane of India till the present Government started its new policy of liberalization.
The nation has not realized the greatness of Vallabhbhai as it should have done. If Vallabhbhai had not lived. India would not be what it is today. He aimed at integration in two ways – not only territorial integration, but the integration of the different communities by developing a sense of national identity. There were 554 Indian States which comprised two-thirds of India, while only one-third was British India. He brought all of them together, while continuing to remain on terms of mutual affection and respect with the former Rulers. When the Russian leader Khrushchev visited India in 1956, he expressed his surprise that India had managed to liquidate the Princely States without liquidating the Princes.
Sardar Patel was also the Chairman of the Minorities Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly. He sought to forge communal integration. He made different communities give up their claim for separate electorates.Even the spokesman of the Parsis had in mind a separate electorate. But Vallabhbhai merely smiled at the ridiculous idea and the matter was, not discussed again. The Parsis were a microscopic minority, but the Muslims, the Sikhs and the Christians were in substantial numbers. Even in those days the Sikhs demanded Khalistan. Sardar Patel dealt with the problem with great understanding. He went to the heart of the Sikh hinterland. He talked to the Sikhs in Amritsar and impressed upon them how we all have to live together as brothers and sisters. The passionate plea of Sardar Patel worked. In a powerful speech he made at Patiala in October 1947 he said that we should not involve ourselves in endless disputes and that we could not afford to follow the mirage of “stans” like Khalistan, Sikhistan or Jatistan. He pointed out that such separatism could only turn India into “Pagalistan”, a land of lunatics.
He was a true leader, in the sense that he did not flatter the people but plainly told them where they were wrong. In August 1947 he said again in ringing words how and why India could not be divided. India, he said, is one and indivisible. You cannot divide the sea or split the running waters of a river. He said this not merely to the Muslims and the Sikhs but also to the Hindus when the RSS made a strong plea that India should become a Hindu state. His words were:
“We in the Government have been dealing with the RSS movement. They want that Hindu Rajya or Hindu culture should be imposed by force. No Government can tolerate this.”
Valabhbhai was not against anybody except the fanatic. If you were a fanatic he was against you, whether you were a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh. It is wrong to portray him as being anti-Muslim. Vallabhbhai, as the Home Minister, had the courage to ban the RSS. That conclusively shows how totally secular and non-communal Sardar Patel was in his approach. He told the Hindu Mahasabha:
“If you think that you are the only custodians of Hinduism, you are mistaken. Hinduism preaches a broader outlook on life. There is much more of tolerance in Hinduism than is supposed.”
In his speech in January 1948 at Calcutta, Sardar Patel warned the country that there could never be any serious talk of a Hindu state. India had elected to be a secular state. He solemnly declared:
“If the Government could not act as trustee for the entire population irrespective of caste, religion or creed, it does not deserve to continue for a single day.”
In 1947 when people were jubilant that we attained swaraj, there were two persons who struck a note of dissent – Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. The response of Sardar Patel to independence gained in 1947 was memorable:
“What we have is not swaraj, but only freedom from foreign rule. The people have still to win internal swaraj, abolish distinctions of caste or creed, banish untouchability, improve the lot of the hungry masses, and live as one joint family – in short to create a new way of life and bring about a change of heart and a change of outlook.”
To Sardar Patel, the unity and integrity of India was of paramount importance. He shared the view of the Indian thinker who, when he was told that the British divide and rule, gave the profound response. “No, it is not the British who divide and rule. It is we who divide and they rule.” That is why he was against the creation of linguistic States. In December 1949, the Working Committee of the Congress directed that a separate Andhra State should be created forthwith. In spite of this directive, Sardar Patel took no action. On the contrary, he criticized openly this directive of his own party. At a public meeting in Trivandrum in May 1950 he said:
“Some people say they want provinces on a linguistic basis like Andhra, Tamil and Kerala. What will be its effect in the North or in the West nobody cares to consider. We should cease to think in terms of different states or provinces. Instead we should think that we are Indians and should develop a sense of unity.”
While the unification and integration of India was his greatest achievement, only next in importance was his creation of a strong and independent civil service. He trusted and respected the officers and gained their affection and deep regard. This put the civil servants on their honour to work for him to the limit of their capacity and never, as far as humanly possible, to let him down. H.V.R. Iyengar in his “Administration in India - A Historical Review” relates one typical incident:
“On one occasion. I took a decision in his absence and reported it to him afterwards. He told me that if he had been consulted he would not have taken that decision. I was very unhappy about this, but he asked me not to worry and said that every human being makes mistakes. When the matter subsequently came before the Cabinet he told them that the decision was his, and there the matter ended.”
In Sardar Patel’s words, “The most dangerous thing in a democracy is to interfere with the Services. “If today the police force is wholly demoralized in most States, it is entirely due to the political interference by ministers and other politicians in the discharge by the police of their professional duties.
The greatest tragedy of India has been that Sardar Patel’s economic policies were not implemented. His realism and pragmatism in economic matters were foolishly ignored after his death, as I have said earlier.
Sardar Patel never posed as a socialist. He had no property of his own, except his personal belongings. Once an ardent socialist approached him with an appeal to abolish inequality of wealth and cited as an instance that X was master of several millions. The Sardar let him expatiate on the distribution of surplus wealth. When he had finished, Sardar Patel coolly looked at him and said:
“I know the extent of X’s wealth. If all of it were distributed equally among the people of India, your share would be about four annas and three pies. I am willing to give it to you from my own pocket if you undertake to talk no more about this.”
He wanted to purge capitalism of its ugly face. But he realized that wealth has to be created first, before it can be distributed.
So long as Sardar Patel was alive, there was no nationalization. He said:
“Some people want us to nationalize an industry. How are we to run nationalized industries if we cannot run our ordinary administration? It is easy to take over any industry we want to, but we do not have the resources to run them, enough experienced men, men of expertise and integrity.”
Sardar Patel started the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) because he wanted a fair deal to be given to labour. But he was not in the popularity contest and he had no patience with people who were. He was against the mindless calls for strikes made by trade union leaders who lived in a thought-free zone. He said in Calcutta in January 1948:
“Regarding strikes, I feel that it is deplorable that they have been made so cheap. They are now props of leadership of labour and have ceased to be a legitimate means of redressing grievances of labour ... The maxim should be “produce and then distribute equitably”. Instead they fight before even producing wealth. It is to restore sanity and a fair deal between labour and employers and to give a correct lead to labour that we set up the Indian National Trade Union Congress.”
To Sardar Patel, the plighted word was sacred: he never broke his word. He had a sense of honour and good faith which successive governments so sadly lacked. He never dreamt that the promise contained in Article 291 of the Constitution to give privy purses to the Princes would be broken later. The aggregate amount of privy purses guaranteed to the Rulers of different States came to an insignificant sum of less than Rupees Five Crores. Rulers died in normal course, and the privy purse was reduced when their successors were recognised as Rulers. Yet, the then Government abolished privy purses disregarding the constitutional mandate. Referring to the guarantee regarding pensions to the covenanted services, which was to be embodied in Article 314, Sardar Patel said in the Constituent Assembly on 10th October 1949:
“Have you read history? Or, is it that you do not care for recent history after you have begun to make history? If you do that, then I tell you we have a dark future. Learn to stand upon your pledged word...Can you go behind these things? Have morals no place in the new Parliament? Is that how we are going to begin our new freedom? Do not take a lathi and say “Who is to give you a guarantee? We are a Supreme Parliament.” Have you supremacy for this kind of thing? – To go behind your word? – If you do that, that supremacy will go down in a few days.”
Like Article 291, Article 314 was also brazenly deleted after the Sardar’s death.
In 1950, the last year of his life, Sardar Patel repeatedly expressed his total disillusionment with the debased standards of politicians and the malfunctioning of Indian democracy. On 27th May 1950 at Porbandar (Gandhiji’s home town), in a mood of introspection, he said:
“We have not digested Gandhiji’s teachings. We are merely imitating. We have adult franchise but do not know how to use it. If we continue to indulge in personal jealousies and power-hunting, we shall turn into poison what Gandhiji had got for us.
“During the last three years we have worked in a manner which has brought us only shame. We have strayed from the right road and must get back to it and understand Gandhiji’s teachings and apply them in life.”
The last Independence Day message which Sardar Patel delivered was on 15th August 1950. His eloquent words deserve to be taught and read in every school and college. They come from the deep anguish in his heart, and require to be quoted in extenso:
“Certain tendencies and developments in our administrative and public affairs fill me with some disquiet and sadness of heart. The country can realize the feelings of one who has spent the major part of his public life in witnessing epics of sacrifice and selfless endeavour and feats of discipline and unity and who now finds enacted before him scenes which mock at the past.
“Our public life seems to be degenerated into a fen of stagnant waters; our conscience is troubled with doubts and despair about the possibilities of improvement. We do not seem to be profiting either from history or experience. We appear helplessly to be watching the sickle of time taking away, the rich corn, leaving behind the bare and withered stalks.
“Yet the tasks that confront us are as complex and taxing as ever. They demand the best in us while we face them with indifferent resources. We seem to devote too much time to things that hardly matter and too little to those that count. We talk, while the paramount need is that of action. We are critical of other people’s exertions, but lack the will to contribute our own. We are trying to overtake others by giant strides while we have hardly learnt to walk...
“On this, the third milestone of our career as a free country. I hope my countrymen will forgive me, if I have tried to turn their searchlight inwards. In my life, I have now reached a stage when time is of the essence. Age has not diminished the passion which I bear to see my country great and to ensure that the foundations of our freedom are well and securely laid. Bodily infirmity has not dimmed my ardour to exert my utmost for the peace, prosperity and advancement of the Motherland. But ‘the bird of time has a little way to fly, and lo! it is on the wing’.
“With all the sincerity and earnestness at my command and claiming the privilege of age, I, therefore, appeal to my fellow countrymen on this solemn and auspicious day to reflect on what they see in and around themselves and with the strength and faith that comes from self-introspection, sustain the hope and confidence which an old servant of theirs still has in the future of our country.”
He had the strength to speak out bluntly and fearlessly, to his own party. At the Nasik session of the Congress on 19th September 1950, he said:
“The goal of Purna Swaraj must claim our constant attention. The question which every Congressman must ask himself, or herself, is whether we have met this claim or demand. If we are honest with ourselves and true to our conscience, I am afraid, the reply must be in the negative. The greatest danger to the Congress comes from within rather than without.”
Our greatest tragedy is that the lessons taught by this outstanding Indian patriot and statesman who unquestionably ranks in the world class, are so little remembered today.
Winston Churchill said that one of the marks of true greatness is the impact which a man makes on his contemporaries. By this test, Sardar Patel must be regarded as one of the greatest Indians of this century.
“Jawaharlal is a thinker and Sardar is a doer,” said Gandhiji at the Karachi session of the Congress in 1931. The Sardar was also a thinker but not an impractical visionary.
Lord Wavell wrote in his diary that Sardar Patel “is certainly the most impressive of the Congress leaders and has the best balance.” The Sardar shared Wavell’s belief that India can be governed firmly or not at all.
President Rajendra Prasad wrote in May 1959:
“That there is today an India to think and talk about, is very largely due to Sardar Patel’s statesmanship and firm administration ... Yet we are apt to ignore him.”
The India of today is certainly not the India of Sardar Patel’s dreams. After five and forty years of independence, the picture that emerges is that of a nation potentially great but in a state of moral decay. We suffer from a fatty degeneration of conscience and an unchecked dissolution of values. We have no sense of shame or shock that under a first-class Constitution we run a third-class democracy. The country with the noblest cultural heritage has become the most criminalized and the most violent democracy on earth.
What a transformation could be effected if we relearn the values which Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stood for! The environment will change beyond recognition when we install dharma on the throne again. The country is crying aloud for moral leadership, fearless and forthright, which will tell the people - as Sardar Patel did - what does not flatter them and what they do not want to hear.
Just as we celebrate 15th August as the Day of Independence, we should celebrate the anniversary of Sardar Patel’s birth - 31st October - as the Day of Inter-dependence: the dependence of the 26 States upon one another, the dependence of the numerous castes upon one another, the dependence of our manifold communities upon one another, in the sure knowledge that we are one nation. A regenerated India, freed from petty squabbles, violence and communal bitterness - and cured of the cancer of divisiveness - would be the greatest monument to the Sardar’s memory.
* This is the text of the Patel Memorial Lecture delivered in 1992 by Sri Nani Palkhivala, the renowned jurist, expert in finance and formerly Ambassador to U.S.
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