Lahore (1929) and Karachi (1931) are perhaps the two most important landmark sessions of the Indian National Congress (INC) before the Quit India Movement. It was here that Mahatma Gandhi chose his two ablest lieutenants to preside. Forty-year-old Jawaharlal Nehru, with his magnetic appeal amongst the masses, especially the youth, was nominated by Gandhi for the Lahore session of INC where for the first time, the call was given for Purna Swaraj (complete independence).

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, at 56, was chosen by his mentor to preside over the Karachi Session where not only the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was ratified, but the resolution on Fundamental Rights drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru was adopted. Many of the points in the resolution were later incorporated in the Constitution of free India. To the impatient youth of India, some of whom had shown him and Gandhiji black flags for the latter's alleged inability to stop the execution of Bhagat Singh, Patel uttered these words in his concluding address: "Gandhiji is now almost 63 years old. I am 56. Should we, the old, be anxious for independence or you, the young! We are interested in seeing India free before we die. We are far more in a hurry than you."

When the interim government was formed on September 2, 1946, with Nehru as the vice-president of the Executive Council (the Viceroy being the president), Patel was given the home portfolio along with information and broadcasting. On August 1, 1947, Nehru, the prime minister designate wrote to Patel, formally inviting him to join his Cabinet: "The writing is superfluous because you are the strongest pillar of the Cabinet." Patel promptly wrote back: "My services will be at your disposal, I hope, for the rest of my life and you will have unquestioned loyalty and devotion for me in the cause for which no man in India has sacrificed as much as you have done. Our combination is unbreakable and therein lies our strength."

Patel became India's first deputy prime minister and was allocated the portfolios of Home, States and Information and Broadcasting. Thereafter, began the vital task of consolidating India's newly won freedom. He integrated 562 princely states within the Indian Union with tact, vision and statesmanship. According to former prime minister Morarji Desai, "the integration of the states could certainly be termed as the crowning achievement of Vallabhbhai Patel's life." But while giving full credit to the "Iron Man", posterity should not forget that his task was made much easier by his extremely able aide, V.P. Menon and India's last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten who had warned the princes that they could not remain independent and had to join one dominion or the other.

Patel supported Nehru on many crucial issues

There were, no doubt, differences between Nehru and Patel on various issues, both before and after independence, but these were much less than the major problems on which they thought alike. For example, Patel supported Nehru on the January 1949 ceasefire and special status for Kashmir as also on the 1950  Nehru-Liaqat accord for which the deputy prime minister spent six days in Calcutta, appealing to the people of West Bengal to support Jawaharlal Nehru.

The question of India's prime ministership was settled by Mahatma Gandhi many years before Independence, and more than once. On January 25, 1942, months before the Quit India Movement, Gandhiji declared: "I have said for some years, and say now, that not Rajaji, not Sardar Patel but Jawaharlal Nehru will be my successor."

Yet, 78 years after independence, and 75 years after Patel's death, vested interests keep grumbling it was unfair that Patel was not chosen as the prime minister. They forget even if he had become, it would have been a short-lived tenure of three years and, in his failing health, might not have done full justice to his heavy responsibilities.

Only a year earlier, Patel in a message to a publication brought out on the sixtieth birthday of Jawaharlal Nehru had written: "Having known each other in such intimate and varied fields of activity we have naturally grown fond of each other, our mutual affection has increased as years have advanced how much we miss each other when we are apart. No one knows better than myself how much he (Nehru) has laboured for his country in the last two years of our difficult existence."

Such were the emotional and close bonds between Jawaharlal Nehru and Patel. Those who are trying to break this "unbreakable combination" by distorting and twisting historical facts today do not realise the disservice they are rendering to the memory of Patel, whose name they often invoke for their narrow political objectives. In November 1948, 10 months after Gandhiji's assassination that led to a ban on the RSS, Patel had said: "Since Gandhiji's death we have realised that our leader's judgement was correct."

Two months before he died, Patel wrote: 'Today I see before me the whole picture of life ever since I joined Bapu's army. The love which Ba bore me I never experienced from my own mother. Whatever parental love fell to my lot, I got from Bapu and Ba. We were all soldiers in their camp. I have been referred to as the deputy prime minister. I never think of myself in these terms. Jawaharlal Nehru is my leader. Bapu appointed him as his successor and had even proclaimed him as such. It is the duty of all Bapu's soldiers to carry out his request. Whoever does not do so from the heart in the proper spirit will be a sinner before God. I am not a disloyal soldier. I never think of the place I am occupying. I know only this much, and am satisfied, that I am where Bapu posted me.' (Patel: A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi, Page 527-8).

According to historian Rajmohan Gandhi (grandson of both Gandhiji and Rajaji (C. Rajagopalachari)): "If Vallabhbhai was abler or sounder than Nehru in some crucial areas, does it follow that Gandhi could or should have named Patel as the rightful future helmsman in the thirties, or installed him at the head of the government in 1946-7? To picture Gandhi as one who could have imposed his preferences on India may be to misread the India of his time. Certainly he did not read India that way. He said to Nirmal Bose in August 1947 that his gift lay "not in creating a new situation but in sensing and giving shape to what is stirring in the heart of the masses." And there seems no doubt that in the thirties and the forties the Indian people entertained a fondness for Jawaharlal in a degree not extended to Patel."

Rajmohan Gandhi adds: "In any case, the India of Gandhi, Patel and Nehru was different from the India that today debates the question of Nehru versus Patel. Its sentiments and moods were different. In 'nominating' Jawaharlal, Gandhi did not override public opinion. Neither can it be said that he allowed personal considerations to override national ones. For representing and uniting Indians of all ages, classes and religions, Jawaharlal seemed more suitable than Vallabhbhai."

Also, the debate focusses too narrowly on the choice of the Congress President in the summer of 1946, overlooking that the succession in Nehru's favour had been settled and announced much earlier, and more than once. It also overlooks the crucial age factor as well as Patel's own sense of the soundness of Gandhi's decision.

In November 1948 he had said: "Mahatma Gandhi named Pandit Nehru as his heir and successor. Since Gandhiji's death we have realized that our leader's judgment was correct." (The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi by Rajmohan Gandhi, Page 388).

Those in power today obviously cannot be wiser than Gandhi and Patel. Unfortunately, they think they are.

December 15 is Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's death anniversary.

Praveen Davar is an ex Army officer, columnist and author of Freedom Struggle and Beyond.

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