Vallabhbhai Patel

I had imagined that the government would shower bullets, but it indulged in a lathi charge, which is a new thing. The government it seems is civilized, and so it shows its sophistication in various ways. Yet this is only the beginning of war. We have yet to go a long way. Then why worry about going to jail?

—Vallabhbhai Patel

One day in 1915, four lawyers were playing bridge at the Gujarat Club in Ahmedabad. They were successful men, prosperous, in tailored suits and ties. Then a thin, frail-looking man wearing the clothes of a Kathiawar peasant, a homespun dhoti, long jacket and turban came up to their card table and politely requested that they come and listen to his lecture. One of the lawyers, Vallabhbhai Patel, turned his heavy-lidded eyes towards the man, listened, dismissed him as another crank and went back to his bridge game.

However, he read a copy of the lecture and, out of curiosity, went and listened to this man from South Africa everyone was talking about. What he heard from Gandhi was a logical, carefully reasoned plan of action that he called Satyagraha. Logic and strategy always worked with Patel and he finally found the cause and the leader that he would follow for the rest of his life.

Vallabhbhai Patel was born on 31 October 1875 into a small landowner family in Nadiad in Gujarat. His father Zaverbhai had fought in the Uprising of 1857 in the army of Rani Lakshmi Bai and Vallabhbhai grew up listening to stories of the brave exploits of the rebels. So patriotism and a commitment to the country was a family tradition and his older brother Vithalbhai too would join the freedom struggle. Both the brothers managed to go to England to study law. Vallabhbhai saved for years to get his barrister’s degree from the Middle Temple in London. He walked ten miles every day from his lodging to save the bus fare, then completed the course six months ahead and topped his class. On the day he got his degree he walked to the port and booked a passage to India. He never left his country again.

The brothers chose different paths in the freedom movement. Vithalbhai believed in the old constitutional way where one gained political rights through joining the Legislative Assembly and by petitioning the government. He joined the Swaraj party with CR. Das and Motilal Nehru. For Vallabhbhai the inspiration came from Gandhi’s Satyagraha, which meant campaigns of boycott and civil disobedience, building up a mass movement.

When Patel first met Gandhi, he was still talking about the strategy of Satyagraha that he had used in South Africa but he did not know if it would work in India. Patel became his organizer of two campaigns in rural Gujarat, at Kheda and Bardoli, where the strategy was tested on the ground. Patel gave up his lucrative law practice, threw his hats and suits into a bonfire, and donned the plain khadi dhoti and kurta. And that’s how we remember him—the straight, spare body and the calm visage with craggy features that seemed carved out of granite. He became Gandhi’s right-hand man, fund-raiser and party boss, the pragmatic realist who ran the unwieldy party machine with ruthless efficiency.

In 1917 Gandhi was elected the president of the Gujarat Sabha and Patel became the secretary. A year later the farmers of Kheda District came to them for help. Heavy rains and floods had destroyed their crops and killed their cattle. They had requested the administration to annul the taxes but the officials had refused. Patel, a farmer’s son, knew what they were going through. He first petitioned the government once again and only after another refusal did he start the Satyagraha.

The Kheda Satyagraha was a ‘No Tax’ campaign. Farmers were told not to pay any taxes but stay peaceful even if the government retaliated. Patel moved in among the villagers, living with the farmers and sharing their food, suffering all their daily deprivations. After Gandhi in Champaran, where the indigo planters had protested against the government’s exploitative policies, this was the first time that a leader had lived among the peasants and it gave them courage. The police was sent in, government agents seized land, crops and cattle, but the farmers did not yield. Finally the government gave in, an enquiry was held, the taxes were cancelled and the farmer’s properties returned. Gandhi was delighted at how well Patel had organized the Satyagraha and kept it peaceful in spite of great provocation.

During the Non-cooperation Movement, Patel helped Gandhi with raising funds and organizing boycotts and demonstrations. He completely trusted Gandhi’s political instincts and was one of the few who supported him when he suspended the agitation after the violence at Chauri Chaura. The political scene became very quiet after this as Gandhi withdrew to concentrate on his social reform activities. Then the Satyagraha at Bardoli exploded on the national scene and this was completely Vallabhbhai Patel’s show.

A bigger challenge came at Bardoli in 1928 and it caught the attention of the entire country. Officials regularly assessed the taxes to be paid by farmers and in Bardoli a new assessment by an official named Jayakar suddenly raised the taxes by thirty per cent. When the farmers protested, it was lowered to twenty-two per cent but even then it was much too high. Once again Patel moved into Bardoli, in the Surat District of Gujarat, and started a No Tax campaign. This time it was a long drawn out, nerve-wracking battle of wills between the farmers and the Bombay government. Land revenue was one of the biggest sources of earnings for the government and officials felt that if they gave in to the Bardoli farmers, then other regions would also make similar demands.

At first sight, it was a highly unequal struggle. Hundreds of farmers were arrested and jailed. Land, crops, cattle and even carts and ploughs were confiscated. Trying to create a rift in the agitation, government began to offer concessions to farmers who paid up. Bands of armed Pathans were sent into villages to bully the farmers into paying and it took all of Patel’s persuasive skills to prevent the situation from turning violent. At his suggestion, whenever the government agents arrived, the farmers withdrew into their homes with their cattle, dismantled their carts and ploughs and buried them. By then the national press had begun to report about Bardoli and other regions began to join the protest. Factory workers in Bombay threatened to go on strike in support of the farmers.

The most effective strategy was of social boycott. The farmers who were weakening found the whole village boycotting them. Even the families of government officers were not spared. Barbers, sweepers and washermen refused to work for them. They were not supplied with milk or vegetables unless they produced a chit from the local Satyagraha committee. Donations poured in from across the country as volunteers came to help. They published a daily report, Satyagraha Patrika, distributed free in the villages. Pamphlets were given out and women moved from house to house spreading the word. As a matter of fact, it was the women of Bardoli who anointed Vallabhbhai with the title of ‘Sardar’ that he carried with great pride for the rest of his life.

The battle for the mind and heart of Bardoli went on for six long months. Patel was successful in keeping the peasants united in spite of their differences and divisions of caste and religion. The farmers began to migrate by the thousands to the neighbouring districts. Patel expected to be arrested, so Gandhi moved into Bardoli, ready to take his place. Meanwhile, Vithalbhai brought the situation at Bardoli to the notice of the Central Legislative Assembly and finally got the attention of the viceroy. An enquiry was held and taxes lowered to earlier levels, farmers were released from prison, and their land and property returned. Bardoli had won.

After Chauri Chaura many had doubted that Satyagraha could work in a complex land like India. Champaran, Kheda and finally Bardoli proved that a peaceful mass movement could succeed if it was organized and controlled properly. It also built greater political awareness among peasants who realized that the Congress was willing to listen to their grievances and fight for their rights. With the efforts of Gandhi and Patel the Congress finally moved out of the drawing rooms of the cities and became a truly national party. Congress offices opened in every district as Gandhi led a planned effort to widen the membership of the party.

Patel was beside Gandhi in every Satyagraha as one of the crucial organizers of campaigns across the huge landscape of India. Even when he disagreed with Gandhi, he never rebelled openly. In 1929 he was the favourite for the post of president of the Indian National Congress but Gandhi wanted Nehru, so Patel gracefully withdrew. Then in 1930 he got busy again, organizing the Dandi March, taking care of every detail from the route to the food and shelter for the marchers. He was arrested soon after. In 1931 he was elected the president of the party and jailed again in 1932. This time he shared his jail sentence with Gandhi at Yeravada prison in Poona. The two old friends spent time spinning at the charkha, having long discussions, and Gandhi taught him Sanskrit. In 1939, fearing that Subhas Chandra Bose would break up the party, Patel led the rebellion of the Working Committee by threatening to resign. In 1942 he was imprisoned at Ahmednagar Fort with other leaders and later said that he had a relaxed break reading and playing bridge.

During the long and complex negotiations of the Cripps Mission and the Cabinet Mission, to discuss and finalize plans for the transfer of power from the British to Indians, Patel was one of the crucial players with Nehru and Maulana Azad. Jinnah had demanded the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, but Patel fought to keep the Hindu majority areas in India. He was also realistic enough to accept a partition of the country as being the only way to keep the country united, though he faced criticism from both Gandhi and Azad for this tough, realistic assessment. During the communal riots that followed, he worked ceaselessly to maintain peace. For instance, when the police in Delhi was accused of not protecting Muslims, he brought in south Indian army regiments to control the situation.

He became independent India’s first Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister, Minister for States, and Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Being Home Minister during the chaotic days after Partition was the hardest job in the cabinet, but Patel’s greatest contribution to a united India was as Minister for States. In 1947 the map of India was like a patchwork quilt with over five hundred princely states dotted across the subcontinent. Some were as large as provinces like Hyderabad and Kashmir, others just a cluster of villages, but they all had to be legally brought into the Indian Union. The maharaj as, raj as and nawabs had to sign the Instrument of Accession immediately. Except for Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir, all the states made a smooth transition from monarchy to democracy mainly because of the persuasive skills of this ‘Iron Man of India’. Clearly it was not easy to refuse the Sardar. In the case of Junagadh and Hyderabad, Patel used the threat of an armed invasion to bring the rulers in line. Only Kashmir has remained controversial till today.

On 30 January 1948, Patel was the last person to meet Gandhi before he was assassinated. He was devastated by the loss and was deeply hurt by a whispering campaign that accused him of not taking enough precautions for the Mahatma’s safety. In fact, he had been begging Gandhi to allow guards, but Gandhi, with his unswerving faith in ahimsa, had always refused. Patel’s health, already fragile, soon began to deteriorate and he died in Bombay on 15 December 1950.

During the crucial final years of the freedom movement the Congress party could not have done without the skills of Sardar Patel. He was the courageous, practical, disciplined and organizing core of the movement; the calm, practical balance to the charisma and passion of leaders like Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. If they could sway the people with their emotional speeches, he could make them nod and smile with his ironical comments. He was the party boss who kept the unwieldy machine of the Congress moving smoothly and was tough enough to keep its fractious members in line. Among all the leaders, his loyalty to Gandhi was absolute.

During those chaotic years of Partition, Patel kept the administration working by the pragmatic decision to continue with the the civil and police services. He was criticized for doing this because the ICS was considered loyal to the British and there were demands that they should all be sacked. Patel knew that at this crucial juncture he needed their skills to keep the country running and this foresight laid the foundation of our administrative services. If today we have a united country without feudal rulers, with democratic institutions and a functioning bureaucracy, it is because of a man the women of Bardoli recognized as the Sardar.