ILL-TREATMENT OF SARDAR PATEL

On how Nehru usurped the positions that should rightfully have gone to Sardar Patel, please check Blunder#1 and Blunder#6 above. Despite those crafty usurpations that cost India dear, Nehru’s machinations against Sardar Patel continued after independence.

Jayaprakash Narayan(JP), a socialist, used to be in Nehru’s camp. After independence the socialists had been plotting to unseat Patel from his post as Home Minister. JP had commented: “A man of 74 [Sardar Patel] has the department of which even a man of 30 would find it difficult to bear the burden.” Mridula Sarabhai, who was close to Nehru, had launched a whisper campaign for Sardar’s resignation. It is difficult to believe that the campaigns of both JP and Mridula did not have the blessings of Nehru, both being close to him.

Later, in 1972, JP regretted his actions: “Rajaji once unburdened his heart by publicly confessing to a wrong he had done to Sardar Patel. I find myself in a similar situation: the dominant feeling within me today is one of self- reproach, because during his lifetime, I was not merely a critic, but an opponent of the Great Sardar.”

Wrote Brig. BN Sharma: “…he [Nehru] could be down-right petty to others. His silent encouragement of a whispering campaign branding Patel as fascist is too well known.”

After the death of Gandhi the only impediment to Nehru’s dictatorship was Patel, and Nehru did all he could to dent his position. Patel’s death had removed the only brake on Nehru. Nehru&Dynasty saw to it that Bharat Ratna was never awarded to Sardar Patel (Blunder#111).

When Sardar died in Mumbai, Nehru (who did attend the funeral), advised the then President, Dr Rajendra Prasad, to not attend the funeral —the reason given by him was that as per the protocol, President need not attend funerals of ministers! So he treated Sardar Patel as a mere minister—what arrogance! A disgraceful attitude, particularly when Sardar Patel had so selflessly supported him, even though Nehru had usurped the PM’s post from him most undemocratically. But, of course, Rajendra Prasad went. Sardar was not just the Deputy PM, but was Rajendra Prasad’s colleague of many, many years in the Independence Struggle.

Wrote Stanley Wolpert: “Gandhi’s death reunited Nehru and Patel. Their reconciliation not only saved Congress and India’s central government from collapse, but it kept Nehru in power. Without the Sardar’s strength and support Nehru might have broken down or been forced out of high office. Vallabhbhai ran India’s administration for the next two years [before his death] while Nehru indulged mostly in foreign affairs and high Himalayan adventures.”

MKK Nair, an IAS officer who was close to both Sardar Patel and VP Menon, states in his book ‘The Story of an Era Told Without Ill-will’:
“Incessant differences of opinion between Nehru and Patel caused Nehru to treat Patel with personal animosity. If… Nehru was not above harbouring personal hatred, he would not have done two things he did on the day Patel died. He sent two orders to the Home Ministry and they arrived at V P Menon’s desk. The first was that the Cadillac car that Patel used should be returned the very next morning to the Foreign Ministry. Patel died in Bombay. Nehru’s second memo asked officers who wished to attend his funeral to travel at their own expense. VP Menon called officers of his Ministry and, without divulging Nehru’s order, asked who all were interested to attend the funeral. About a dozen officers wanted to. He bought their air tickets at his expense. When Nehru learnt about it, he was annoyed even more.”

The above was confirmed when KM Munshi wrote: “When Sardar died in Bombay, Jawaharlal issued a direction to the Ministers and Secretaries not to go to Bombay to attend the funeral. Among the Ministers, I was in Matheran (Bombay) at the time. Sri NV Gadgil, Sri Satyanarayan Sinha and Sri VP Menon disregarded the direction and attended the funeral. Jawaharlal also requested [President Dr] Rajendra Prasad not to go to Bombay; it was a strange request, to which Rajendra Prasad did not accede.”

It is hard to believe the supposedly cultured person Nehru could be so ungracious and could go to such lengths upon death of a colleague and a great national leader and freedom fighter!
This is from the preface of ‘Patel–A Life’ by Rajmohan Gandhi:                                                          “The establishment of independent India derived legitimacy and power, broadly speaking, from the exertions of three men, Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. But while its acknowledgements are fulsome in the case of Nehru and dutiful in case of Gandhi, they are niggardly in the case of Patel.
“‘That there is today an India to think and talk about,’ President Rajendra Prasad wrote in his diary on May 13, 1959, ‘is very largely due to Sardar Patel’s statesmanship and firm administration.’ ‘Yet,’ added Prasad, ‘we are apt to ignore him.’
“Falling in 1989, the centenary of Jawaharlal’s birth found expression on a thousand billboards, in commemorative TV serials, in festivals and on numerous other platforms. Occurring on October 31, 1975 … the Patel centenary was, by contrast, wholly neglected by official India and by the rest of the Establishment, and since then the curtain drawn on the life of one of modern India’s most remarkable sons has been occasionally and partially lifted…”

In the capital, in the prime area, you have Rajghat for Gandhiji, Shanti Van for Nehru, Shakti Sthal for Indira Gandhi, Veer Bhumi for Rajiv Gandhi, Vijay Ghat for Shastri, Kishan Ghat for Charan Singh, besides many museums or memorials for the Nehru-Gandhis, but no memorial to either Subhas Bose or to Sardar Patel in the capital, when next to Gandhiji the latter two deserve the highest respect! The residence in Delhi where Sardar lived when he was the Deputy Prime Minister of the country has been razed and there is no sign that he had ever lived there. Nehru’s house (Teen Murti), on the other hand, has been turned into a museum.

Nehru’s meanness and small-mindedness can be gauged from the fact that he made NO arrangements to have a portrait of Sardar Patel put up in the Central Hall of Parliament, like it was done for other prominent leaders. Apparently, he saw to it that such a portrait was not put up—he had done the same in case of Netaji Subhas Bose. It was Maharaja Jivaji Rao Scindia of Gwalior, who had since become the first Rajpramukh of Madhya Bharat, who felt much irked by that glaring (and, apparently, deliberate) omission, and presented a Sardar Patel’s portrait to be put up in the Central Hall of Parliament in 1954. The unveiling ceremony was performed by President Dr Rajendra Prasad.

This is from the foreword of S Nijalingappa to the book, ‘Inside Story of Sardar Patel—The Diary of Maniben Patel: 1936-50’ : “Strangely, however, while the collected works of many other leaders [notably, Nehru and Gandhi] have been published by the government since Independence, the collected or selected works of two foremost leaders, namely Sardar Patel and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, were never taken up by any official agency. It is for this reason that we constituted the Sardar Patel Society, had it registered, collected funds and published the Collected works of Sardar Patel in fifteen volumes…”