Resurrecting Sardar Patel

Sardar Vallabhai Patel is now unwittingly 'trending' in the consciousness of mango people, thanks to the Congress-BJP  dogfight over his legacy. In our country it is a sad fact that 'honouring' any late leader has been reduced to ceremonial gestures such as erecting statues, naming roads and buildings; garlanding his or her statue or photograph on birth and death anniversaries. Our nano attention span rarely goes beyond that. Little is done to understand what they stood for and how to propagate their values.

Patel, the country's first home minister, and many freedom struggle stalwarts such as Subhash Chandra Bose, C Rajagopalachari and numerous others became fading memories, mainly relegated to their home states, after the country attained freedom and the citizens began taking that freedom for granted. Moreover since Rajaji and Patel had right wing views on economy, they did not find much favour in the era of Nehruvian socialism and licence permit raj.

After Indira Gandhi came to power the ruling political and bureaucratic class realised that hero worshipping the First Family of Indian politics - the Nehrus was the only way forward and many took to it with gusto. All governmental schemes were named after members of the Nehru family. All others got blanked out, even roads named after Mahatma Gandhi are at best known as 'MG Road', with hardly anyone aware what 'MG' stands for.

As for Patel whatever little remembrance the Indian populace had about him got further diminished in 1984, after  the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi fell to assassins bullets on his birth anniversary - October 31. Since then the Congressmen face the yearly quandary whether to celebrate Patel's birth anniversary or mourn Indira Gandhi's death. No prize for guessing what they usually choose.

Little do the people know that had it not been for Patel we would have got a 'moth eaten' (my apologies to Mohammed Ali Jinnah) India with 563 petty princely states wreaking havoc and Pakistan fishing in those troubled waters. We would have required a passport to go to cities such as Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Patiala, Agartala and Jaipur; and not to speak of Kashmir. Patel persuaded the princely states (arm twisted the recalcitrant ones with threat of military action) to fall in line.

For this he is often compared to Otto Von Bismarck, the man who unified Germany with 'blood and iron' and the original practitioner of realpolitik. But while the Prussian Chancellor had to deal with principalities that were far more homogeneous in terms of language and culture, Patel had to contend with princely states that were as diverse as they could get.

For Narendra Modi and BJP a neglected Patel was an easy picking to bolster their political future, since Hindu Mahasabha leaders like Veer Sawarkar or Shyama Prasad Mukherjee don't enjoy a pan-Indian appeal. It has been in the works even when L K Advani was leading the party, under Modi it has become shriller.

What followed was a clever propaganda campaign. He sparked off a debate by saying Patel would have made a better Prime Minister and then went on to plant a lie that Jawaharlal Nehru did not attend Patel's funeral. In this era of Google and Wikipedia such lies have a very short shelf life. The last word on this issue has still not been said.

Modi’s plan for a grand statue of Patel, spending humungous Rs 2,500 crore, sounds more like Mayawati-isation of an illustrious leader, who discarded his flourishing law practice and brown sahib ways to become a dyed in khadi Congressman.

Picture courtesy: Wikipedia

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