S.Nijalingappa on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel discussing with Maharaja of Bhavnagar Kirshna Kumar Sinhji (right) about merger of Bhavnagar, in Bombay on January 18, 1948.

Excerpts from forward written by S.Nijalingappa (Freedom fighter , Gandhian , Former CM of Karnataka) from the book "The Collected Works Of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel by P N Chopra." 

THE one name that stands out most prominently when one thinks of the unity and integrity of India is Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. I am not sure if anybody among the leaders of the Indian National Congress would have handled it so well, so effectively and so efficiently. His strength, his imagination, his determination, his sagacity and more than his patriotism and his appreciation of the necessity that India should be one united, integrated whole in order that as one nation it may grow in stature from strength to strength from poverty to affluence, in one word a strong nation, which would stand in the front rank of nations and lead them. He knew that unless the Princes numbering 562 merged their states into the Indian Union, one Indian Nation would be impossible. The manner and method he adopted for this noble purpose was an abject lesson unrivaled in world's political history. He cajoled, he flattered, he threatened. Most of them were made to realize that if they did not fall in line, their own subjects would rise against them as Indians. They would not only lose their popularity, they would also lose their identity. Some of the Princes were misled to think that as British paramountcy had ended, they were free and reverted to their original sovereignty. The feeling of the majority of the Princes was so much against it that many of them, specially those of Travancore, Mysore and Bhopal waited till the last bastion, viz. Nizam's Hyderabad have had to face a police-cum-military action which was brief and complete. This achievement of making one integrated and united India was almost entirely of Sardar's.

One great quality of Sardar is often missed. That is his human approach to problems and human kindness and sympathy. I can quote many instances. The one most pronounced is the way in which he saw to it that after the Princes agreed on his advice or otherwise to merge their States into our Union, standard of life to which they were accustomed from birth was continued at the same level. That this good arrangement was changed after his death to their disadvantage is another matter.

One shudders at the thought what would have happened if these states had not been merged in. Not only India would have been politically not one but torn up into fragments with each bit having different governments, different laws, indeed different in everything, making it impossible for its sustained growth and development socially, politically, economically, culturally, an India weak in every way. This is where Sardar's greatness lies.