Vallabhbhai Patel

• 1. Introduction

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  Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel was born on the 31st of October 1875 in Nadiad, Gujarat, and he died on the 15th of December 1950 in Bombay. In the seventy-five years between those two dates, he transformed from a village boy without a recorded birth date into the man who stitched together more than 565 independent princely states into a single nation. Gandhi told him plainly: "The problem of the States is so difficult that you alone can solve it." Who was this man that India's founding father trusted above all others with its most impossible task? How did a self-taught lawyer who sent his own brother to England in his place become the Iron Man of India? And what does it mean that the world's tallest statue, standing 182 metres above the Narmada River, was built to honour him?

• 2. A Self-Made Lawyer

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  Patel passed his matriculation at the relatively late age of 22, and his elders regarded him as an unambitious man headed for a commonplace job. They were wrong. He had already hatched a private plan: study law on borrowed books, save money, travel to England, and become a barrister. He spent years away from his family, working through examinations in two years instead of the usual longer span, then fetched his wife Jhaverba and established a household in Godhra, where he was called to the bar. He practised law in Godhra, Borsad, and Anand, earning a reputation as fierce and skilled. He also cared for a friend stricken with the bubonic plague when the disease swept across Gujarat, and when he himself fell ill he immediately sent his family to safety and moved into an isolated house in Nadiad to recover alone.

  In 1909 his wife Jhaverba was hospitalised in Bombay for surgery for cancer. She died in hospital. Patel was handed a note informing him of her death while he was in the middle of cross-examining a witness in court. Witnesses said he read the note, pocketed it, and continued until he had won the case. He broke the news only after the proceedings ended. He never remarried. He raised his daughter Maniben, born in 1903, and his son Dahyabhai, born in 1905, with the help of his family.

  At the age of 36 he finally went to England, enrolling at the Middle Temple in London. He completed a 36-month course in 30 months, finishing at the top of his class despite having had no previous college background. Returning to Ahmedabad, he became one of the city's most successful barristers, wearing European clothes, playing bridge, and planning to accumulate great wealth. He had agreed with his elder brother Vithalbhai that he would support Vithalbhai's entry into politics while Patel remained in Ahmedabad to provide for the family. That arrangement held, until Gandhi arrived.

• 3. Organiser of Resistance

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  In September 1917 Patel delivered a speech in Borsad encouraging Indians to sign Gandhi's petition demanding Swaraj from Britain. A month later he met Gandhi for the first time at the Gujarat Political Conference in Godhra. On Gandhi's encouragement he became secretary of the Gujarat Sabha. When Gandhi needed a Gujarati activist to lead the Kheda peasants' struggle for tax exemption, Patel volunteered on the spot, abandoning his career and material ambitions entirely.

  Supported by Congress volunteers Narhari Parikh, Mohanlal Pandya, and Abbas Tyabji, Patel went village by village through the Kheda district, documenting grievances and preparing peasants for a revolt in which they would refuse to pay taxes. He emphasised the potential hardships and the absolute need for non-violence and unity. When the revolt began and tax revenue was withheld, the government sent police and intimidation squads to seize property and confiscate barn animals and farms. Patel organised a network of volunteers to help villages hide valuables and protect themselves against raids. Thousands were arrested, but Patel was not. The government agreed to negotiate, suspended payment of taxes for a year, and scaled back the rate. Patel emerged a hero across Gujarat.

  In 1920 he was elected president of the newly formed Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, a position he would hold until 1945. He toured the state recruiting more than 300,000 members and raising over Rs. 1.5 million in funds for Gandhi's Non-cooperation movement. He threw all his English-style clothes into a bonfire of British goods in Ahmedabad and switched entirely to khadi, as did his children. Elected Ahmedabad's municipal president in 1922, 1924, and 1927, he oversaw major improvements to the city's electricity supply, drainage, and sanitation, and fought for teachers employed in nationalist-run schools to be recognised and paid.

  In April 1928 Patel returned to active struggle when the Bardoli region suffered both famine and a steep tax hike. He initiated a complete denial of taxes, organised camps and an information network, and in August negotiated a settlement that repealed the tax hike, reinstated resigned village officials, and returned seized property. It was the women of Bardoli who first called him Sardar, meaning chief.

• 4. Prison, Gandhi, and the Quit India Speech

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  As Gandhi launched the Dandi Salt March, Patel was arrested in the village of Ras and put on trial without witnesses, with no lawyers or journalists allowed to attend. His arrest, followed by Gandhi's, intensified the Salt Satyagraha across Gujarat. Once released, Patel served as interim Congress president and was elected president of the Congress for its 1931 session in Karachi, where the party ratified the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and committed itself to secularism, a minimum wage, and the abolition of untouchability.

  In January 1932, when the struggle reopened after the failure of the Round Table Conference in London, Gandhi and Patel were both arrested and imprisoned together in the Yeravda Central Jail. During this imprisonment the two grew close in a way they had not before. Gandhi taught Patel Sanskrit. They read Hindu epics, discussed national and social issues, and cracked jokes. Gandhi's secretary, Mahadev Desai, kept detailed records of their conversations. Their relationship, Patel later reflected, resembled that of an elder brother in Gandhi and a younger in Patel. Patel was later moved to a jail in Nasik and refused a British offer of brief release to attend the cremation of his brother Vithalbhai, who had died in October 1933. He was finally released in July 1934.

  By the time of the Quit India movement, Patel was the campaign's most fervent supporter, arguing to colleagues that the British would retreat from India as they had from Singapore and Burma. While Nehru, Rajagopalachari, and Maulana Azad were initially critical of Gandhi's call for all-out civil disobedience, Patel stated his intention to resign from the Congress if the revolt were not approved. On the 7th of August 1942, after the AICC approved the campaign, Patel made a climactic speech to more than 100,000 people at Gowalia Tank in Bombay. He told the crowd: "This is going to be the opportunity of a lifetime." Historians credit the speech with electrifying nationalists who had been sceptical, and credit Patel's organising work with ensuring the rebellion spread across India. He was arrested on the 9th of August and held with the entire Congress Working Committee from 1942 to 1945 at the fort in Ahmednagar.

• 5. Partition and Its Violence

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  Vallabhbhai Patel was among the first Congress leaders to accept partition as a solution to the Muslim separatist movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He had been outraged by Jinnah's Direct Action campaign, which provoked communal violence across India, and by the viceroy's vetoes of his home department's plans to stop it. In December 1946 and January 1947, Patel worked with civil servant V. P. Menon on a plan for a separate dominion of Pakistan formed from Muslim-majority provinces. Communal violence in Bengal and Punjab in January and March 1947 further hardened his view. Patel obtained the partition of those two provinces, blocking any possibility of their Hindu-majority areas being absorbed into Pakistan. At the All India Congress Committee meeting called to vote on the Mountbatten plan, Patel told colleagues: "The choice is between one division and many divisions. We must face facts."

  Neither Patel nor any other Indian leader foresaw the scale of what followed. The death toll from partition is estimated at between 500,000 and 1 million people. The number of refugees in both countries exceeds 15 million. Patel took the lead in organising relief, establishing refugee camps, and visiting border areas to encourage peace. He called out the Indian Army with South Indian regiments to restore order in Delhi and Punjab, imposing curfews and shoot-on-sight orders. Visiting the Nizamuddin Auliya Dargah in Delhi, where thousands of Muslims feared attacks, he prayed at the shrine and reinforced the police presence.

  When reports reached Patel that large groups of Sikhs were preparing to attack Muslim convoys heading to Pakistan, he hurried to Amritsar and met Sikh and Hindu leaders. He argued that attacking helpless people was cowardly and dishonourable, and that any such actions would provoke further attacks against Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. He then addressed a crowd of approximately 200,000 refugees who had surrounded his car, telling them: "To fight against the refugees is no fight at all. No laws of humanity or war among honourable men permit the murder of people who have sought shelter and protection." Following that speech, no further attacks occurred against Muslim refugees in the area.

• 6. Integrating the Princely States

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  Under the plan of the 3rd of June, more than 565 princely states were given the option of joining India or Pakistan, or choosing independence. Patel was considered the one man with both the practical acumen and the resolve to bring them in. He asked V. P. Menon to become his chief secretary at the States Ministry. On the 6th of August 1947, Patel began lobbying the princes through social meetings and unofficial surroundings, inviting them to lunch and tea at his home in Delhi. He invoked their patriotism and proposed favourable terms for merger, including the creation of privy purses for their descendants. He set a deadline of the 15th of August 1947 for them to sign the instrument of accession. All but three of the states willingly merged into the Indian union; only Jammu and Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad held out.

  Junagadh, in Patel's home state of Gujarat, had acceded to Pakistan under pressure from Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, despite being far from Pakistani territory and having an 80% Hindu population. Patel combined diplomacy with force, sent the Army to occupy three of Junagadh's principalities, and after both Bhutto and the Nawab fled to Karachi, ordered Indian Army and police units to march in. A subsequent plebiscite produced a 99.5% vote for merger with India.

  Hyderabad was the largest princely state, encompassing parts of what are today Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. Its ruler, the Nizam Osman Ali Khan, was a Muslim governing a population that was over 80% Hindu. Muslim forces called the Razakars, under Qasim Razvi, pressed the Nizam to hold out against India while organising attacks on Indian soil. After a Standstill Agreement broke down and the Nizam rejected negotiated deals, the invasion of Hyderabad was launched on the 13th of September, two days after the death of Jinnah. The Nizam signed an instrument of accession after the defeat of the Razakars. Patel's achievement in this regard earned him lasting comparison to Otto von Bismarck, who unified the German states in 1871.

• 7. Builder of Institutions

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  Patel described the All India Services as the country's "Steel Frame". On the 21st of April 1947 he addressed probationers with a caution that has remained on record: "A civil servant cannot afford to, and must not, take part in politics. Nor must he involve himself in communal wrangles." He was instrumental in founding the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service, and his defence of civil servants from political attack earned him the title of "patron saint" of India's services.

  When a delegation of Gujarati farmers told Patel they could not get their milk to market without being exploited by intermediaries, he guided them to create the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Limited, which preceded the Amul milk products brand. He also pledged the reconstruction of the ancient and dilapidated Somnath Temple in Saurashtra, overseeing the restoration work and creation of a public trust; the temple was inaugurated after his death by the first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad.

  Patel was also a senior leader in the Constituent Assembly of India, chairing committees on minorities, tribal and excluded areas, fundamental rights, and provincial constitutions. His intervention was key to two articles that protected civil servants from political involvement and guaranteed their terms and conditions. He was deeply committed to ending separate electorates for minorities and opposed reservations of parliamentary seats along religious lines. After Gandhi's assassination on the 30th of January 1948, Patel suffered a major heart attack within two months; the timely action of his daughter, his secretary, and a nurse saved his life. Patel attributed the attack to grief over Gandhi's death that he had kept bottled up.

• 8. Death and Remembrance

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  Patel's health declined rapidly through 1949 and into 1950. He began coughing blood, and his daughter Maniben began limiting his meetings and working hours. After losing consciousness frequently from the 2nd of November, he was flown to Bombay on the 12th of December on medical advice. Nehru, Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad, and Menon all came to see him off at the Delhi airport. He was so weak he had to be carried onto the aircraft in a chair. In Bombay, large crowds had gathered at Santacruz Airport; to spare him the stress, the aircraft landed instead at Juhu Aerodrome, where Chief Minister B. G. Kher and Morarji Desai received him.

  After suffering a second massive heart attack, Patel died on the 15th of December 1950 at Birla House in Bombay. In an unprecedented gesture, more than 1,500 officers of India's civil and police services congregated to mourn at his Delhi residence the following day, pledging "complete loyalty and unremitting zeal" in India's service. Messages of condolence came from the Secretary-General of the United Nations Trygve Lie, President Sukarno of Indonesia, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan of Pakistan, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Nehru declared a week of national mourning. At Patel's request, conveyed by Maniben, his cremation was held at Sonapur in Bombay, in the same place as his wife and his brother had been cremated before him. One million people attended.

  Patel was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 1991. In 2014 his birthday, the 31st of October, was designated Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, National Unity Day. The Statue of Unity, erected at a cost of 29.8 billion rupees, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the 31st of October 2018, the 143rd anniversary of Patel's birth. Its height of 182 metres was deliberately chosen to match the total number of assembly constituencies in Gujarat.