Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Indira Gandhi are national icons. Both made unparalleled contributions to India in different spheres.
The former unified a nation of continental dimension in a year, saving it from being splintered into over 550 separate political entities.
Except in the case of Hyderabad, this was done peacefully. In Hyderabad, the Indian Army had to carry out police action. The Hyderabad Army surrendered within five days and casualties were minimum.
Integrating such a large nation so peacefully in a year is unmatched in the history of mankind. The Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck’s much lauded unification of Germany starting with the war against Denmark in 1824, followed by war against Austria and then France in 1871, took much longer to complete and was on a much smaller geographical canvas involving far fewer people.
Indira Gandhi’s contribution as a war leader has a unique place in the history of our country. India won a great military victory after over two millennia. Ninety-two thousand Pakistani soldiers surrendered.
A new nation of a hundred million was born. This was achieved against the teeth of opposition of the Nixon-Kissinger duo and also China’s higher-than-the-mountains and deeper-than-the-oceans friendship with Pakistan.
The threat from the US Seventh Fleet, including its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise, coming to the Indian Ocean, proved to be of no avail for Pakistan.
It was being shadowed by Soviet submarines. The Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation was a big deterrent.
The Himalayan passes, blocked with snow in winter, prevented any intervention by China. Atal Behari Vajpayee hailed Indira Gandhi as Ma Durga in Parliament.
This after two millennia, when India had last won a great military victory when Chandragupta Maurya defeated Alexander’s great general and his successor in the East, Seleucus, and annexed Afghanistan. During the medieval period invaders from West Asia, and later European maritime powers, repeatedly defeated our forces.
Normally a leader’s birth anniversary, and not death anniversary, is observed. Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation is an exception.
The Nehru-Gandhi family (Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi) are also treated alike. In the case of others, only birth anniversaries are observed.
October 31 is the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel and the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi. The Congress government observed October 31 as National Ekta Divas because Indira Gandhi sacrificed her life for the unity of the nation.
This is debatable. Her tragic assassination was a great loss for the nation but it occurred due to her ill-conceived policy of dealing with the Akali problem, and not for national unity as such. It was a travesty of history that Sardar Patel used to be reduced to a footnote on this occasion.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi very rightly turned the focus this time on Sardar Patel but did not omit to mention the martyrdom of Indira Gandhi on that day.
Her birth anniversary on November 19 should be observed as Rashtriya Shakti Divas in memory of her great contribution to India’s great victory in the Bangladesh War.
Yet on her birth or death anniversary functions, it will be inappropriate to criticise her. On Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary, the Bharatiya Janata Party paid rich tributes to Nehru but the Congress’ first family on that occasion made scathing remarks about of Mr Modi without naming him. This was most unbecoming.
One cannot ignore the grave blemishes of Indira Gandhi. She was outwitted by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during the 1972 Shimla talks, giving away the two trump cards we held at that time 92,000 prisoners of war and the highly cultivable land in Shakargarh bulge.
We should have got Pakistan to convert the Line of Control to an international border. Her imposition of the Black Emergency and throttling of democracy was unforgivable.
Some of the excesses during that period exceeded those by the British during their rule. She destroyed the bureaucracy and the police and even tried to politicise the judiciary and the Army.
Corruption in public life spread like wildfire with her attitude of permissiveness in saying that corruption was an international phenomenon. By blatantly perpetuating family rule, she made feudalism rampant in our democracy.
Apart from his great contribution as the unifier of the nation, Sardar Patel also made other remarkable contributions. Like the Mahatma’s successful non-violent mass movement against indigo planters in Champaran, he organised a successful non-violent mass movement in Bordoloi, Assam.
The Mahatma gave him the title of Sardar. The Congress Party wanted to abolish All-India Services in pursuit of the concept of autonomy of states, and replace them with Central Services and State Services.
There was much prejudice against the ICS and the IP who had acted against the freedom movement; some had even committed excesses.
Nehru had said the ICS was neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service. The Sardar ensured that All-India Services were retained. ICS and IP officers continued to get their old emoluments and privileges.
Their successor services, the IAS and IPS, were recruited on reduced emoluments but there was no change in their functioning pattern. This enabled us to pull through the chaotic period in the wake of Partition, when a vacuum was created as British officers, holding most of the senior positions in the administration, suddenly quit. He told the civil servants that they must unhesitatingly give independent advice to their ministers even when they knew that it was contrary to the minister’s views. But once the latter took a decision, they must implement that loyally.
He was totally incorruptible. When he died he had a bank balance of Rs 237 and no immovable property. Neither his son nor his daughter took any advantage of his official position.
The daughter, who devoted her life to looking after him, received no recognition or help and died in poverty in Ahmedabad. All the provincial Congress committees except three chose the Sardar to be Prime Minister, two chose Dr Rajendra Prasad and one Jawaharlal Nehru.
Yet the Mahatma chose Nehru to be the first Prime Minister and the Sardar bowed to that decision without a murmur, working most loyally as deputy Prime Minister.
The ailing Sardar’s remarkable letter to Jawaharlal Nehru three weeks before he passed away showed his strategic vision. He warned Nehru of the threat arising from China’s occupation of Tibet in 1950 and advised necessary defensive preparations.
Alas, Nehru ignored his advice. Thus India suffered the great national humiliation of 1962. Mr Modi has very rightly focused on Sardar Patel’s great contribution on his birthday and is promoting national awareness about him.
The new government hurriedly produced a documentary on the basis of an earlier film. This was shown on DD National without much publicity.
It does not do full justice to the Sardar. Like Attenborough’s Gandhi, the government should have a commercial film prepared on Vallabhbhai Patel; that would wash away all the efforts of the Congress in the past to underplay the memory and unique contribution of this great icon of India.
The writer, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir
