Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel

Indian statesman

• Born: October 31, 1875
• Birthplace: Nadiād, Gujerāt, India
• Died: December 15, 1950
• Place of death: Bombay, India

Patel’s uncanny ability to inspire political cooperation among disparate personalities and groups served as the single most important element in the postindependence Indian government’s successful integration of the various princely states into a single national unit.

Early Life

Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel (VUHL-lewb-bah-ee JAH-vehr-bah-ee puh-TEHL) was the son of a fairly prosperous farmer of the peasant class. Within the family there was a tradition of opposition to the occupying British administration; Patel’s father had been involved in the Mutiny of 1857, although it has never been clear how far his participation went. Nevertheless, Patel and his elder brother Vithalbai were sent for their educations to the Nadiād and Baroda high schools, where the standard subjects were presented. After this level of education, Patel very much wished to study law and to that end inquired about the various criteria that would be necessary in England. The reply to his letter was apparently addressed to him by his initial, and his brother, who was also considering law, prevailed on Patel to sponsor his study in England first.

While Vithalbai studied in England, Vallabhbhai studied for and passed the local district pleaders’ examinations and set up his first practice at Godhra. He later moved his practice to Borsad, where he specialized in criminal law. To a degree this specialization was less a matter of personal interest than of opportunity, since the Borsad region was notorious as a criminal center.

In 1913, Patel was finally able to attend the Middle Temple in London, where his already well-developed legal talents allowed him to be called to the bar in two rather than the customary three years. When he returned to India, he decided to establish his practice at Ahmadabad, where as a defense counsel he was very much sought after. His practice very quickly made him quite wealthy, and, since much of his prosperity was dependent on the goodwill of those connected with the British administration, he was more than a little reluctant to participate in activities that might have jeopardized the relationship. Patel was during this period fully Westernized in attitude and behavior and was quite willing to allow the debates about nationalism and independence to take place without him.

At least part of Patel’s reluctance to involve himself in the political controversy was his doubt that men such as Mahatma Gandhi could succeed against the pragmatic British. Thus, while Patel actually met Gandhi in 1915, it was not until some two years later that Patel was able to reconcile his personal doubts as to Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign with his understanding of the campaign’s potential implementation. It was in 1917, at the time that Gandhi refused to abide by a judicial order, that Patel realized that other areas of Indian life might be equally susceptible to a policy of refusal. It was this realization that spurred Patel’s organization of the no-tax campaign for Gandhi, his participation as an advocate representing those accused by the British authorities of taking part in self-government activities, and his prominent role in local Gujerati politics. Between about 1917 and 1928, Patel’s activities in support of Gandhi’s effort to gain Indian freedom gradually expanded outside the province of Gujerāt, and his reputation as a pragmatic and astute political strategist was enhanced nationally.

Life’s Work

After Patel’s four-year term as president of the Ahmadabad municipality (1924-1928), he began to try to apply the principles of public responsibility and governmental obligation to a wider area. Committed to the ideas of Indian self-government, he led a massive civil disobedience campaign in the district of Surat in 1928, largely on behalf of small landowners of the class from which he had come. In this case, too, the matter at issue seems to have appealed to his legal experience, in that the farmers, having been severely overtaxed and underrepresented, chose tax refusal as the best method of fighting the injustice.

While Patel customarily chose legalistic and specific methods of depriving the British authorities, his methods were not without risk. His actions during the national civil disobedience campaign of 1930 caused his first imprisonment by the British, and he was jailed again in January, 1932. His prominence within the independence movement was recognized in 1931 when he was elected president of the Congress Party.

Patel during the 1930’s was largely responsible for the strategic foundations that were to allow the Congress Party to form an effective government as the British were gradually forced from power. His position on the 1935 parliamentary subcommittee meant that he, along with others similarly involved in long-range political planning, was to guide most of the decisions about the ways in which Hindus and Muslims within India were to cooperate within the government. Unfortunately, Patel and the subcommittee chose not to share their power with Muslim proponents of independence, a decision that was to have brutal consequences after partition.

Up until the outbreak of the war, Patel continued his work within the Congress Party, but when war was declared in 1939 all Congress ministries resigned and effectively cut off Patel and the party from further hope of reconciliation under any circumstances. Patel was again imprisoned, in 1940. By that time the activities of Congress and the independence movement generally had reached such a pitch that approaches to the Japanese were made in an attempt to force the British from India. The 1942 “Quit India” movement was the culmination of Congress’s hostility toward the British occupation, and the campaign’s planning was in very large part that of Patel. For the campaign, along with what Great Britain perhaps properly viewed as extraordinary disloyalty in time of war, Patel and other Congress leaders were imprisoned until June, 1945.

Thus, it was only in 1945, after some twenty-five years of active resistance, that the British finally began negotiations that would lead to their departure from India. At that time, and until the final transfer of power in August, 1947, Patel played his most important role, both behind the scenes and as a member of the interim form of government that was established in 1946. Eventually, Patel was to become, first, minister for the states and then deputy prime minister. The second position, which he achieved directly after independence, gave him authority over home affairs, information and broadcasting, and the matters that concerned the Indian states.

It was during the period immediately following independence that Patel’s talents in organization, conciliation, and political compromise were most used by President Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress Party generally. His pragmatism and sense of expedience in service of the goals of creating a unified India were of enormous value. The civil disorder that followed independence could have aborted Indian political unity completely; instead, Patel, as deputy prime minister, insisted on and achieved a level of discipline within the government that has not subsequently been matched. This discipline was especially important following partition, when the bitterness and violence that partition caused among both Muslims and militant Hindus threatened to destroy India altogether.

As part of his responsibilities as deputy prime minister, Patel was in charge of maintaining civil order as much as possible. In a real sense, his position may have been unique within modern politics. Essentially, as one of the leaders of a national revolution as expressed through the “Quit India” movement, he was then called on to restructure the revolution, halt the protests that had almost become a way of Indian life, and rechannel an entire pattern of conduct directed against authority; in short, he was asked to create methods for a newly independent nation to function within its ideology.

Without Patel, it is unlikely that India would have survived the extremely difficult period after partition. Further, he also had the responsibility for somehow unifying the Indian princedoms, which composed in large measure the political superstructure that had sustained the independence movement. That superstructure was certainly unwieldy, and the powers of the princes were such that very few were willing to give them up easily; Patel, however, was determined that the nearly six hundred different jurisdictions be forced into orderly and mutually supportive units.

If Patel’s work in maintaining order was difficult, the work he undertook to reorganize the princely political states was virtually overwhelming, although for rather different reasons. Since the eighteenth century, most of these states had been granted treaty privileges that gave them legal paramountcy within their borders. These rights were not automatically transferred to a central Indian government when independence came, and as a result each had to be dealt with separately by the Nehru government. Patel’s methods of dealing with the states was utterly straightforward they were merged into larger administrative units, the larger states became provincial units, and princes themselves were retired or became elected officials. In some cases Patel took military or police action against recalcitrant states, and the central government occupied the district. The entire national realignment took him two years, but at its conclusion India was indeed a single, independent nation, and the real threat that it would simply collapse into anarchy.

In this administrative work, Patel had the support of Nehru and the other members of the government, but it is doubtful that he was entirely influenced by Nehru’s sometimes more expedient point of view. Patel was ruthless in his belief that the consolidation of the various political structures had to be accomplished as quickly as possible. He was not prepared to allow any interference with the achievement of that end goal, regardless of whether it might be temporarily desirable. Perhaps of greater importance, given the likelihood of such a philosophy being perverted toward personal gain, Patel was instead completely focused on the benefits to be accrued for India. He was ready to abandon his own views when they came into conflict with the greater ambitions that the Congress held for the nation.

Significance

Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, called “Sardar,” or leader, by his peers, was that most unique political figure, the intellectual pragmatist. In his early life, he put his family responsibilities before his own preferences; in his active life within the Congress Party and later the Indian government, he was able to see consequences and effects of actions where others saw only short-term benefits or losses. In the largest sense, Patel was India’s éminence grise after independence, allowing Nehru to present as accomplished fact what Patel forced into creation: a unified India.

Patel’s private behavior was always secondary to the necessities of public life, so much so that he gained a reputation for both cynicism and coldness. He has been compared to Otto von Bismarck in his ruthless suppression of the princely resistance; if the comparison is apt, then it is so because after independence India desperately needed a Bismarck. Patel was in many ways an idealist, but of a kind specifically necessary to his time and completely without the sentimentality that affected other Congress leaders. Patel took up the cause of an independent India early in his life and never varied his belief that it was both politically and emotionally achievable. His early training and natural disposition toward order, when combined with an overwhelming sense of public duty and responsibility, illuminated the path for India to follow into the modern political structure.

Bibliography

Ahluwala, B. K., ed. Facets of Sardar Patel. Delhi: Kalyani, 1974. A collection of personal and political assessments of Patel and of all facets of his life, this volume tries to present the whole man within the context of his political importance. Included are reminiscences by Vapal P. Menon, B. Shiva Rao, and the Earl Mountbatten of Burma. An invaluable portrait of Patel as both his friends and opponents saw him.

Menon, Vapal P. The Transfer of Power in India. London: Longmans, Green, 1957. In this volume, written at the behest of Patel, Menon examines India’s constitutional history and the mechanisms that Patel and others used to effect a transfer of power from Great Britain to the centralized Indian government. Menon’s account is straightforward, devoid of unnecessary verbiage, and a valuable and scholarly record of events that were at the time often confusing.

Moraes, Frank. Witness to an Era: India 1920 to the Present Day. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973. Moraes, former war correspondent for the Times of India, was present at almost every step of India’s road to independence and offers a personal account of the leadership of the movement. His insights and recollections of Indian life before and after independence are accessible, and his understanding of Patel’s difficult position enlightening.

Patel, Sardar. Sardar Patel: In Tune with the Millions. Edited by C. M. Nandurkar. Ahmadabad: Navajivan Press, 1975. A chronological collection of Patel’s speeches and writings during the period 1947-1950. Nandurkar has selected those writings that shed the most light on Patel’s work across India to unify the nation and has traced Patel’s attitudes toward those who placed personal gain above that unity. While a difficult volume if used as an introduction to Patel, it provides much primary information on the way in which Patel’s mind worked and his hopes for India’s future.

Subramanya Menon, K.P. Homage to Sardar Patel. Bombay: Patel Institute, 1976. Menon’s extensive examination of the relationship between Nehru and Patel and his role as the “Bismarck of India.” Menon dwells on Patel’s devotion to India and his loyalty to principle, although he points out it was often at odds with Nehru’s convictions.

Weber, Thomas. Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Includes information about Gandhi’s relationship with Patel and its influence on Patel’s political ideas and career.