Vallabhbhai Patel

Vallabhbhai Patel (1949)

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Jhaverbhai ( Gujarati વલ્લભભાઈ પટેલ ^{? / I} [ ʋəlləbbʱaːi pəʈeːl ] * officially 31 October 1875 in Nadiad , Gujarat , † 15. December 1950 in Bombay , Maharashtra ) was an Indian politician, resistance fighter and statesman. The family name Patel (hindi paţel ), which is widespread in northern India, means "mayor, Schulze", the designation Sardar (hindi sardār , boss, chief ) was the nickname that Gandhi gave him because of his leadership qualities. His first name "Vallabhbhai" ("Vallabha brother") refers to the Shivaitic orientation of the family, which refers to the Hindu philosopher Vallabha (1479-1531).

life and work

Origin and education

Patel came from a family of small rural landowners from the Patidar caste near Surat , Gujara. His father is said to have participated in the 1857 Rani von Jhansi uprising against the British. Although there was no strong educational tradition in the family, Vallabhbhai was the fourth of six children to receive a secondary education and then studied law; admittedly only after his older brother Vitalbhai Jhaverbhai , to whom he gave precedence and whose training he financed. In 1893, at the age of 17, he married a girl from the neighboring village, Jhaverba (13 years old). She bore him two children and died of cancer in 1909. After her death - he was 34 years old at the time - he did not enter into a new relationship.

As a self-made man of his own career, he practiced in Borsad , Kheda district , initially as a criminal lawyer. He earned so much that he was able to continue his education in England from 1910 to 1913 with his own funds and was admitted to the law firm ( Barrister ) of the Middle Temple . This allowed him to plead before all higher courts in the British Empire - including India.

Lawyer and politician

Upon his return he settled in Ahmedabad , Gujarat , where he soon gained a prestigious position. It was here that he met, in 1916, the somewhat older Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), who had returned from South Africa in 1915 , who referred to himself as a “cynical cynical sarcasm” . Patel, who had devoted himself entirely to the English lifestyle, valued Gandhi's ideals of poverty and life little, but he did appreciate his sense of political action, as he successfully used them for the first time in 1918 in Champaran ("Champaran- Satyagraha ").

Especially after the experiences of the First World War , Patel's attitude changed: During the entire duration of the war, troops from the nominally independent princely states of India as well as from British India had put their lives at risk on many fronts on the side of the Allies without the colonial power at the end of the war a recognition, e.g. B. in the form of extended self-determination, would actually have been introduced. As a city deputy for health care, Patel had already made followers from 1917–1918 through his work during the plague epidemic and the famine of those years. As a member of the parliament of Gujarat, he won the respect of the rural population through the Kheda - Satyagraha (1918) - a tax boycott as part of the nonviolent resistance - by enforcing tax breaks because of the crop failures despite the repression of the British.

His skepticism towards Gandhi's path of Swaraj , India's “self-determination”, had given way to deeper sympathy. Since then he has been regarded as the “blind follower” of the Mahatma and from then on followed his mentor through all political ups and downs. Patel, like his son Dahyabhai and his daughter Maniben, now only wore khadi , the hand-spun and hand-woven traditional clothing, mostly made of cotton, and took part in Gandhi's campaigns against alcoholism , untouchability , caste discrimination and for women's rights .

Passive resistance in Gujarat

In 1922 Patel gave up his legal practice to devote himself entirely to politics, which in the 1920s meant the political struggle against British rule. He joined the congress party founded and led jointly by Hindus and Muslims in 1885 , the "Indian National Congress" (INC, also called "the Congress"). In 1928 Patel reacted to renewed rent increases in Bardoli , Gujarat, with widely organized tax boycotts , to which the British responded with mass arrests and police violence. Only a specially appointed commission recognized the illegality of the rent increase in view of the prevailing famine. Patel received from Gandhi in recognition of his organizational talent, assertiveness and fundraising talent the honorary title sardār , "Boss", which he retained until the end of his life.

Patel's great merit was to have established trust and cohesion between the various castes and “communities” for the first time through his work in the emergency areas of Gujarat .

After the Salt March of 1930, who had the boycott of the salt monopoly of the Government to the destination and the failure of the Round Table Conference 1931 drew Patel after Gandhi's arrest with this a common cell in Yerwada -Gefängnis in Pune (1932-1933 / 1934). The shared experience of imprisonment established a close personal and political friendship for more than 15 years. From then on, Patel was Gandhi's confidante and liaison in the Congress Party, to which Gandhi was temporarily not a member. From his son's apartment in Bombay - Sandhurst Road, later Prabhadevi - he continued to organize the party's funding and candidate list until the end of his life. He often clashed with the President of the INC and later Minister of Education, the Muslim Maulana Azad .

Party leader of the INC

When the INC lifted the boycott of elections in 1934 and decided to work with the government at the provincial level under the Government of India Act 1935 , it was Patel who chaired the party committee that did the work of the ministers of Congress in the provinces coordinated at the national level. Under his leadership, the INC won seven out of eleven provinces in the 1937 provincial elections.

At the 1936 party congress, Patel turned against Nehru for his tendencies towards socialism , which he believed distracted from the goal of independence , and in 1938 against the influential mayor of Kolkata , Bengal , and then cogress president Subhash Chandra Bose for his violation of nonviolence .

Patel, who so far had hardly got beyond his native Gujarat, now also got an insight into the personal and political conditions of the whole of British India . In addition, he had to deal with the so-called "princely states". In the nearly 600 Indian princely states , which made up 40% of the land area and around 30% of the population, the Congress Party, according to Gandhi's instructions, held back with its work and agitation, but here too Patel soon became familiar with the people involved and the circumstances. a circumstance that helped him a lot with the surprising handover of the land and the unification process after the end of the war. The more important among them - Hyderabad , Mysore and Baroda - had the size of European middle states, their rulers were considered (with some restrictions) as loyal followers of the British.

INC members Maulana Azad, Kripalani, Patel and Bose at Wardha train station, around 1939

Quit India Movement, Imprisonment

When World War II broke out in 1939, Congress responded with acts of civil disobedience and the “Quit India” movement , the “most serious rebellion since 1857,” according to Viceroy Marquess Linlithgow . Congress politicians refused to work with the British and withdrew from all provincial parliaments. The British government, now headed by the unyielding Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill , responded with arrests and the declaration of a state of emergency. Patel, who campaigned strongly for the revolt, was, like all leading congressional politicians, imprisoned (1940-1941, again 1942-1945 in Ahmednagar , Maharashtra ).

Gandhi, Patel and Maulana Azad, Sept. 1940

In view of the paralysis of the most important political party in India, the INC, the hour had come for the previously almost insignificant Muslim League , which - founded in 1906 - under its leader Ali Jinnah, immediately filled the vacuum and in the provinces of British India the switching points accessible to Indians occupied by administration and politics. While the Congress Party was founded from the beginning as a party of all Indians regardless of religious affiliation and included Sikhs , Muslims, Christians and Jainas in its ranks - including in prominent positions - the Muslim League saw itself as a clientele movement of Muslims, which the fears of the represented the Muslim diaspora that was scattered all over India. Their fear of foreign infiltration and marginalization provided the British with the political means to counter the resistance of Congress on several occasions.

The loss of importance of the Congress party due to the arrest of its leaders and the image gain of the Muslim League turned out to be fatal at the end of the war. The separation of two parts of the country - Pakistan, propagated by the Muslim League, and East Pakistan, later Bangladesh - as the home of all Muslims was already out of the question; it was only about the organization of "Indian India".

Member of the interim government

In September 1946, Patel became a member of the interim government led by Nehru, which, under the supervision of Governor General Mountbatten , was supposed to prepare the independence of the respective successor states, Pakistan and India . He was one of the first on the Indian side to accept the secession of Pakistan.

Abdul Ghafar Khan, Nehru and "Sardar" Patel (in the rickshaw) 1946

Indian Unity Organizer

As the main person responsible for the negotiations that finally brought about the amalgamation of 562 Indian states in 26 administrative units before the declaration of independence of August 15, 1947 and affected 80 million people - a little more than a quarter of the Indian population - Patel mastered this herculean task with flying colors and within just three weeks. He was supported by his colleague, a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), the Keralese VP Menon, famous for its effectiveness . Menon brought with him an intimate knowledge of the Indian princely states and the constitutional problems from the more than ten years of unsuccessful negotiations by the British in the 1930s for a constitutional reform, and as a consequence he proposed to Patel an easy-to-use membership form; the proposal, combined with Patel and Menon's personal commitment, proved key to success. The dreaded “Balkanization” of India was averted, albeit at the price of a “vivisection” (Gandhi) into the components of Pakistan and India.

Division of the country in 1947, murder of Gandhi

When there were outbreaks of violence on both sides on the occasion of the division of the state, Patel, as Home Minister , succeeded, despite his call to the colonial power, to take tougher measures up to the imposition of martial law, and neither did the British themselves succeed in preventing the excesses of the division. He was just as unable to prevent the violent unrest in Delhi as the subsequent murder of Gandhi by Hindu nationalists (January 30, 1948); Shortly before, however, Gandhi himself had strictly rejected increased personal protection. He rejected the responsibility of the Hindu nationalists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for the murder and also condemned the organization's banishment from political life.

In the following two years, Patel succeeded in transforming the heterogeneous historical states of India into linguistically structured structures that resulted in a unified national state by means of a quick, sometimes ruthless or diplomatic approach. Only in Junagadh and Hyderabad (1948) were there police actions, the peaceful annexation of Kashmir failed. The formation of viable units in such a short period of time is the culmination of Patel's political career. In contrast, the attempts at autonomy of the South Indian Tamil nationalists, which remained virulent until the 1950s, also proved to be impracticable, and despite numerous subsequent regional changes, the division of the Sardar from 1947 still proved to be a great success. Patel was critical of the division of Indian states according to linguistic criteria, as it was later realized; as the protagonist of a strong central government, he promoted Hindi as the national language.

Minister of the Interior, Constitution

At Gandhi's insistence, Patel had already renounced the post of future Prime Minister after the 1946 congressional elections, although 13 of 16 states had spoken out in favor of him as the leader of a future, free India and cleared the way for the youthful, very popular Jawaharlal Nehru , under which he worked as party chairman and interior minister . He dealt with the integration of refugees from the Muslim East and West Pakistan (today: Pakistan and Bangladesh ) and rebuilt the public service after the departure of the British colonial rulers.

Patel added changes to the Constitution of India , which was adopted on November 26, 1949, in several points that were characteristic of him:

• Art. 356 allowed the central government access rights to the individual states in an emergency;
• the expropriated landowners were entitled to adequate compensation;
• the dispossessed princes were given a prerogative to compensate for their lost dominions;
• the former British Indian Civil Service , now reorganized as the Indian Administrative Service , remained integrated into the administration;
• the (disastrous) principle of separate electoral lists for Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, which in British India had become the explosive device of national unity since its inception, has been repealed.

The appointment of the casteless politician Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar , the political and spiritual leader of the Dalit , as chairman of the constitutional committee, was largely due to Patel.

Patel took several positions against the communists in India. He appeared to religious groups as a staunch representative of the secular state, but as a conservative Hindu he sometimes showed a paternalistic attitude towards Muslims.

The neutrality of this article or section is disputed. A reason is given on the discussion page . You can get more information here .

In addition to his extensive administrative tasks, Patel controlled the party apparatus of the INC. His experience in dealing with the organization, everyday political life and the party's election campaigns were invaluable for the political leaders of the time - Gandhi as well as Nehru after him. Unlike his much more popular colleagues, however, he lacked popularity. In the ranks of the administration and party, however, he was held in high regard. It was only after Patel's death that Nehru succeeded in imposing his own mark on the party.

Patel around 1940

Nehru and Patel

Sardar did not represent Nehru's foreign policy - the Third Way - and his state-controlled economic policy in imitation of the Soviet Union . He also remained skeptical of neighboring China : he condemned its invasion of Tibet as well as North Korea's attack on South Korea in 1950 and advocated closer ties to the United States and the Commonwealth . Nevertheless, out of a sense of duty, he always remained loyal to the "pundit". Due to his market economy attitude, Patel always had the support of the entrepreneurs, as a staunch Hindu he belonged to the conservative camp within the party. Patel (like Nehru) threatened to resign several times, but unlike his party friend and colleague, the last Governor General of India, C. Rajagopalachari , the reluctant Sardar did not found his own party outside of Congress ( Swatantra Party ) around his enforce differing ideas. As long as Gandhi was still alive, Gandhi / Nehru / Patel, later Rajagopalachari / Nehru / Patel, remained balanced in the triumvirate ("three-man rule"). After Gandhi's death, they increasingly shifted in favor of Nehru, who was 14 years his junior, especially after Patel's first heart attack in March 1948.

Sickness and death

After a second heart attack in November Patel died on December 15, 1950. He left behind a son, Dahyabhai ("Dahya") (1906-1967), and a daughter, Maniben ("Mani") (1904-1988). Maniben remained unmarried, became her widowed father's personal assistant and looked after him in old age. While his sense of family (up to and including neglect) was weak, he had close lifelong contacts with his fellow party members and friends from the business community of Ahmedabad and Bombay , and others. a. the Birla and Sarabhai families. Personally undemanding, he left his heirs with no significant fortune.

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With all his assertiveness, Patel always remained personally friendly, appeared humble and polite and knew how to include the other person in the decisions. His pronounced knowledge of human nature did not stop at party barriers and was often - as in the case of Menons, instinctively distrusted by Gandhi and Nehru because of his membership in the British Indian Civil Service - the key to his success.

Patel's importance for the unity of India shows parallels to that of Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) for the formation of the German state. Both brought together a “patchwork quilt” from princely states and were greatly admired by the population. Many statues were erected for one (→ Bismarck memorial ), for the other they are still erected today (→ statue of unity ). Unlike the German Chancellor, Patel never went about it cynically, despite his “iron will” and his “nerves of steel” (Brass). As a close confidante and colleague of Gandhi, he had made his ethical attitude his own. Compared to the "iron chancellor" he lacked interest in foreign policy and an overall concept of politics. His main focus was on creating an independent, economically and politically strong India.

statue

Statue of Unity, late October 2018

In honor of Patel, India dedicated a statue to him , which was inaugurated on October 31, 2018 in Rajpipla by Narendra Modi . The so-called Statue of Unity is the tallest statue in the world at 182 meters.

Quotes

• “While the princes negotiating committee was busy with the treaty, the Hindustan Times managed to get a copy and publish it. When I saw Sardar [Patel] that morning, he said, 'Menon, now that the Hindustan Times has a copy, couldn't I see a copy?' Since I was reporting to him twice a day on the day's affairs, I was quite confused. He smiled and said it was just a joke. The Sardar [Patel] had retained the sense of humor, which is highly valued in a man of his position and responsibility. "Menon, Integration p. 111
• "A polite, kind man deep in his heart"; Lord Mountbatten
• "His pronounced sense of smug humor was his hallmark throughout his life"; Paul R. Brass
• "The iron man of India"

Works

• Pran Nath Chopra (Ed.): The Collected Works of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. 15 volumes. Konark, Delhi 1990-1999.
• Durga Das (Ed.): Sardar Patel's Correspondence 1945–50. 10 volumes. Navajivan, Ahmedabad 1971-1974.

literature

• Paul R. Brass: Patel, Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai. In: Dict. of Nat. Biography. (DNB) Volume 43 (2004), pp. 1-4.
• Rajmohan Gandhi: Patel. A life. 2nd Edition. Navajivan, Ahmedabad 1992.
• Ravindra Kumar: Life and Work of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Atlantic, New Delhi 1991.
• B. [hupinder] K. [umar] Ahluwalia. Shashi Ahluwalia: Sardar Patel - Rebel and Ruler. Akbe, New Delhi 1981.
• Parshotam Mehra: A Dictionary of Modern Indian History 1707-1947. OUP, Delhi / Bombay / Calcutta u. a. 1985.
• D. [attatraya] V. [ishwanath] Tahmankar: Sardar Patel. Allen & Unwin, London 1970.
• Kewal L. Punjabi: The Indomitable Sardar. 4th edition. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay 1977.
• VP Menon: The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. Longmans, London / New York / Toronto 1956.
• VP Menon: The Transfer of Power in India. Orient Longmans, Bombay / Calcutta / Delhi 1957.

Web links

Commons : Vallabhbhai Patel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The exact date of birth is unknown, officially it is October 31, 1875. Patel was actually born between October 1875 and May 1876; Brass: Patel, Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai. 2004, p. 1.
2. ↑ The Patidars made up the majority of the population of Nadiad.
3. ↑ Besides Patel, many other protagonists of the Indian-Pakistani independence movement were members of the London legal profession, so that it can be said with a certain justification that "India [was] liberated by British lawyers". (Th. Kohl): Gandhi (1869–1948) took his barristers degree in 1891, Nehru (1889–1964) in 1912 (both in the Inner Temple ), Jinnah in 1896 in the Lincoln's Inn ; ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: barcouncil.org.uk )
4. ↑ On India in the interwar period, see Dietmar Rothermund: The political will formation in India 1900–1960. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1965; Dietmar Rothermund: Gandhi and Nehru. Two faces of India. Urban, Stuttgart 2010.
5. ^ Ross, DNB p. 2.
6. ↑ The biography of the writer Leonard Sidney Woolf , who went through all the stations of a civil and magistrate official in the former crown colony of Ceylon, offers a good insight into how the ICS works . Growing. An Autobiography of the Years 1904 to 1911. San Diego / New York / London 1975 (EA 1961).
7. ↑ Dietmar Rothermund: Delhi, August 15, 1947. The end of colonial rule. 20 days in the 20th century. dtv, Munich 1996, p. 17 ff.
8. ↑ advocatekhoj.com
9. ↑ Patel has since been considered the "Patron Saint" ("Patron Saint") of Indian officials.
10. ^ Brass: Patel, Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai. 2004, p. 3.
11. ^ Rajagopalachari was the last governor general of India.
12. ^ Brass in DNB, p. 1.
13. ↑ India inaugurates the largest statue in the world