prasad1
Active member
The best biography of Vallabhbhai Patel has been written by Rajmohan Gandhi. Based on full access to Patel’s own papers, it is a rich account of his life and struggles, set against the context of the historical forces which shaped them.
Rajmohan Gandhi’s Patel: A Life was first published in March 1991. The preface, written in April 1990, begins thus: “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 the case of Gandhi, they are niggardly in the case of Patel.”
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In 1991, and for several decades before that, it was certainly true that Nehru was celebrated and Patel neglected. One reason was that Patel died a mere two and a half years after independence. On the other hand, Nehru served three full terms as prime minister. The India of the 1970s and 1980s was the India that Nehru shaped politically, socially, economically.
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In his election campaign, Narendra Modi seized on Patel as one of his heroes. Accusing the ruling dynasty in Delhi of deliberately suppressing Patel’s memory, he vowed to build a massive statue in his honour. Patel, he went on to say, would have made a better prime minister than Nehru.
Because of such partisanship, many Indians have come to believe that Nehru and Patel were personal rivals and political adversaries. This is because Nehru is now affirmed and avowed by the Congress (and Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in particular), and Patel by the Bharatiya Janata Party (and Narendra Modi in particular).
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In April 1948, Robert Trumbull of the New York Times wrote a long essay on the Nehru-Patel jugalbandhi. The men had different temperaments, but wrote Trumbull, “their differences are too easily overdramatized”. Both Patel and Nehru recognised that after Gandhi’s death, they had to work together to unite a fragmented nation. In the partnership between the two men, wrote Trumbull, “lies a great deal of the Government’s strength, for they complement each other”.
In a recent election speech in Haryana, Narendra Modi praised Nehru for the first time. Let us hope it is not the last. Patel’s treatment by the post-Nehru Congress was a travesty. Influential elements in the RSS and the BJP would now like to answer that by consigning Nehru to oblivion. That would be a tragedy, not just because Nehru was a real maker of modern India, but because in those crucial years after
Independence and Partition, Nehru and Patel worked shoulder-to-shoulder in building a united and democratic nation.Nehru does not belong to Sonia Gandhi’s Congress; nor Patel to Modi’s BJP. Indians of all parties (or none) should have the grace and understanding to celebrate both individuals, for having contributed jointly and separately to the nation we call our own.
Ramachandra Guha’s most recent book is Gandhi Before India Nehru and Patel: Rivals or comrades? - Hindustan Times
Rajmohan Gandhi’s Patel: A Life was first published in March 1991. The preface, written in April 1990, begins thus: “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 the case of Gandhi, they are niggardly in the case of Patel.”
................................
In 1991, and for several decades before that, it was certainly true that Nehru was celebrated and Patel neglected. One reason was that Patel died a mere two and a half years after independence. On the other hand, Nehru served three full terms as prime minister. The India of the 1970s and 1980s was the India that Nehru shaped politically, socially, economically.
............................
In his election campaign, Narendra Modi seized on Patel as one of his heroes. Accusing the ruling dynasty in Delhi of deliberately suppressing Patel’s memory, he vowed to build a massive statue in his honour. Patel, he went on to say, would have made a better prime minister than Nehru.
Because of such partisanship, many Indians have come to believe that Nehru and Patel were personal rivals and political adversaries. This is because Nehru is now affirmed and avowed by the Congress (and Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in particular), and Patel by the Bharatiya Janata Party (and Narendra Modi in particular).
....................................
In April 1948, Robert Trumbull of the New York Times wrote a long essay on the Nehru-Patel jugalbandhi. The men had different temperaments, but wrote Trumbull, “their differences are too easily overdramatized”. Both Patel and Nehru recognised that after Gandhi’s death, they had to work together to unite a fragmented nation. In the partnership between the two men, wrote Trumbull, “lies a great deal of the Government’s strength, for they complement each other”.
In a recent election speech in Haryana, Narendra Modi praised Nehru for the first time. Let us hope it is not the last. Patel’s treatment by the post-Nehru Congress was a travesty. Influential elements in the RSS and the BJP would now like to answer that by consigning Nehru to oblivion. That would be a tragedy, not just because Nehru was a real maker of modern India, but because in those crucial years after
Independence and Partition, Nehru and Patel worked shoulder-to-shoulder in building a united and democratic nation.Nehru does not belong to Sonia Gandhi’s Congress; nor Patel to Modi’s BJP. Indians of all parties (or none) should have the grace and understanding to celebrate both individuals, for having contributed jointly and separately to the nation we call our own.
Ramachandra Guha’s most recent book is Gandhi Before India Nehru and Patel: Rivals or comrades? - Hindustan Times
