Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

by B Krishna

  Thereafter, panic spread fast. Fear gripped our minds with increasing intensity. 13 August proved the worst. Murder, arson, loot reached “a new peak”. A desperate people began leaving their houses quickly and unnoticed, escaping detection. Suddenly my locality too looked deserted. Looming large was the rumour of an attack by hooligans. I locked my house and moved to a safer place, a hotel near my office—the Civil & Military Gazette—where I worked as a journalist and was required to report at seven o’clock every morning for the newspaper to come out on time under disturbed conditions. I never thought of leaving Lahore. It was unacceptable to me. For Jinnah’s surprisingly most secular broadcast on 11 August had assured the non-Muslims of peace and equal status as citizens of Pakistan. Conditions, nevertheless, went on worsening. I left Lahore, hopeful of an early return to unlock my house as soon as conditions settled down. That day never came. I was, like others, thrown into permanent exile. Lahore became a distant dream for me. I had lived there for as many as 28 years from my childhood.

  General K. S. Thimayya, India’s nominee on the Boundary Force, had a most traumatic experience. One night his sleep was disturbed by a dreadful dream. He recounts that he saw “Sheikhupura in flames” and he could “hear the cries of the dying”. In his words: “Nothing like this ever happened to me before or since”. He felt restless, and could not go back to sleep. By 3 a.m. he and his party headed west. As he approached Sheikhupura, “the town smelled of smoke . . . we heard machine-gun fire . . . The street was lined with shops which had been owned by the Hindus. Every shop had been smashed open and looted . . . The street itself was strewn with hundreds of bodies . . . Many seemed to have been chopped with axes. Women had their breasts cut off; children murdered as brutally as the adults . . . Police and army men were firing on helpless civilians. Bullets zipped over my head, but I ducked and raced on through without being hit.”22

  Thimayya launched a search for those who had survived. They were found hiding in a school, in a gurdwara, and in a mosque (where a mullah had hidden about a hundred people at great personal risk). They were driven to Lahore to join the long march to India, which Thimayya called “the largest mass movement in history”. Thimayya has written:

  Most refugees walked. An average foot convoy comprised 150,000 people and clogged a road for 20 miles . . . The danger of epidemics terrified us. The question of water and food kept us awake . . . The construction of camps . . . was a never-ending problem. One never knew whether to stretch the insufficient supplies between a hundred, a thousand or a million people . . .

  Most of all, the refugees needed hope; few knew anything but the horror of the past, and all were nearly insane with fear for the future. The seriously ill had to be given treatment. Orphans had to be cared for. And always there was the problem of disposal of the dead . . . They died of exhaustion, exposure, disease, malnutrition, thirst, and, most of all, they were slaughtered by gangs of opposing religious groups.23

  A sea of humanity was on the move; that too, on foot, braving many hardships and dangers. Luckier ones—in their thousands too—came by rail in jam-packed compartments, some sitting on open tops in sun, wind or rain, and some even hanging dangerously from the sides of compartments, holding on to whatever their hands could clutch. It was Patel who had realised more than others the need for “timely assistance to escape from sad and almost desperate plight”. He lost no time in impressing upon the railway minister, John Mathai: “It must be borne in mind that evacuation must claim prior and sole attention during the present emergency.”24

  Patel’s next anxiety was even more daunting: cooling down people’s boiling tempers, and stopping retaliatory killings, so as to pull out, at the earliest, those stranded in West Punjab and beyond. He visited Amritsar on 30 September and made “a big speech to what was perhaps the most representative gathering of Sikh leaders since the transfer of power. Nearly all the Jathedars had been present, and had responded favourably to his call for moderation”.25

  It did not take long for the refugees to overcome the past by settling down in their new homes and professions. Credit for that should be shared equally by the government and the refugees: the former for providing opportunities for training and rehabilitation; the latter for grasping them with extraordinary speed to learn and to resettle themselves. As proud people, the Punjabis believed in self-help: to earn through their sweat, toil, and tears. One could not see a Punjabi beggar in the streets of the capital. The best showpiece of their endeavours is the row of refugee shops on Janpath in New Delhi—neat, clean, with a variety of quality products that attract even foreign visitors to New Delhi. Moon, who knew the Punjabis intimately, has written:

  If the massacres of 1947 showed the Punjabis at their worst, the enforced migration brought out some of the best of their qualities. The fortitude with which they bore the sudden uprooting from their homes and the vigour with which they set about establishing themselves in new ones were such as few other peoples could have equalled. They showed all the cheerful vitality of birds which, when robbed of their nest, will start immediately to build a fresh one. The conditions were harsh, but not too harsh to suppress or even check the surge of life in these sturdy, virile people.26

  It was the enactment of a great human drama, in the success of which the locals played a notable role: laudable for their spirit of tolerance and accommodation. It was no less than a miracle, which can be described best by borrowing an analogy from nature. The refugee-influx into India was like a stone flung into a large tank, creating ripples that started disappearing one after another in quick succession and in no time got dissolved into the whole expanse of water. In the same way ended the refugees’ separateness. They became one with the rest—indivisible as Indians, whether in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, or Assam.

  One painful thought ever troubled their minds: their women and daughters whom they left behind under forced conditions. What fate had the living ones suffered? The women were the worst sufferers. Abduction figures were only estimates: nearly 50,000 from a few districts of West Punjab. Their plight was pitiable, heart-breaking. They were defenceless victims of brute force: abducted, raped and sold in a sex-starved market—in some cases changing hands from person to person. Yet, some saved their honour in a burning fire, some jumped into wells, and some welcomed being hacked to death by the sword of their equally brave menfolk. Their number may not be large but their sacrifices were acts of heroism, unparalleled in the annals of history.

  Mridula Sarabhai, daughter of Ahmedabad’s leading industrialist, Ambalal Sarabhai, worked in West Punjab, along with other equally brave women, on abducted women rescue work. It was “a heart-rending experience to hear them talk to each other . . . as woman to woman, baffled, humiliated, stunned, and full of doubts for the future”.27 With a heavy heart and lost hope, a forlorn abducted woman lamented: “What is left in me now—religion or chastity?”28

  Many Indians have continued to express the thought long after independence: if only Patel had lived a little longer! Some, however, pertinently ask: Could Patel have averted India’s partition? Possibly so, they believe, if Patel had held the reins of the Congress at the Simla Conference in 1945, been vice-president in the interim government in 1946, and become India’s first prime minister in 1947. Patel had told General Roy Bucher, commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, that “if he had sensed what tragedies would result from Partition, he would never have agreed to it”.29

  Jayaprakash Narayan stated: “If Sardar Patel, and not Pandit Nehru, had been the first Prime Minister of India, maybe, Partition of the country could have been averted.”30 Judging by Patel’s past, JP’s comment was not an underestimate. Patel was confident of derailing Jinnah’s bandwagon, and preventing it from reaching its destination—Pakistan. At Karachi, in January 1946, Patel had nearly done that! The 1945 provincial election results were for him “most encouraging”. Jinnah had failed to secure an absolute majority in the Sind legislature. In a house of 60, the League had won 27 seats against the Congres
s’ 22. The remaining 11 provided Patel easy manoeuvrability to gain the upper hand to form a non-League ministry. He had nearly succeeded. At such a crucial moment, Azad, as president, threw a spanner in the works by coming to Jinnah’s rescue—like Wavell at the Simla Conference—by cancelling Patel’s political alignments, unmindful of the consequences, which paved the way for Pakistan’s creation.

  Allah Bux, a leading politician from Sind, was to ink a deal with Jinnah. From Mumbai, Patel had pulled strings, and “much to the astonishment of everyone, Allah Bux backed out of the agreement”. To a “shocked” Jinnah, he was “in the hands of the Congress party”. For Jinnah, records Stanley Wolpert, “it was a most bitter pill to swallow. He had laboured long and hard for an independent province of Sind . . . the Sardar . . . had snatched this plum from Jinnah’s lips just as he was about to savour its sweetness”.31 For Patel, the situation in Punjab was no different. Premier Khizar Hyat Khan Tiwana, being anti-Jinnah, could have easily turned the situation in his favour. But, because of Azad, Patel decided not to go to Punjab.

  The other two Muslim leaders in Sind who mattered were

  G. M. Syed and Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah. Both were closer to Patel than to Jinnah. In defiance of Jinnah, Syed had demanded “self-determination to establish a Sindhi Pakistan without interference from the League High Command”.32 Hidayatullah too was out of Jinnah’s reach. He had proceeded on tour when Jinnah arrived at his residence to stay with him as his guest. Earlier, in 1936, he had defied Jinnah by forming a Hindu-Muslim coalition. In 1946, he held out a promise to Patel that if made premier, he would not only accept Congress nomination, but would help bury Pakistan in Karachi. This would have killed Jinnah’s chances of having an all-exclusive Muslim Pakistan. Hindu-Muslim unity was anathema to him. In his capacity as Congress president, Azad preferred a coalition with the League, following his preliminary talks with the Sind League president, M. H. Gazdar, while travelling by plane to Karachi, without Jinnah’s prior consent.

  That was Patel’s last manoeuvre. His failure was not at the hands of Jinnah, but Azad, his party president. Patel was, as Mountbatten called him, “a stern realist”; one, according to Vinoba Bhave, who “knew no retreat”. As a bold pragmatist, he changed his course of action to save India in two ways: first, by not letting Jinnah run away with the whole of Punjab and Bengal, together with Assam; second, by not allowing the British to create too many ulcers in India through independent confederations of princely states. His achievement lay in preventing the total balkanisation of India. He wrote to Frank Moraes, a leading Indian journalist, on 22 May 1947: “We are fighting with our backs to the wall against a mighty power armed to the teeth.” And to G. S. Bozman (ICS) he wrote on 11 July 1947: “I fully appreciate your reasons for disliking the decision to divide India. Frankly speaking, we all hate it, but at the same time we see no way out of it. We nurse the hope that one day Pakistan will come back to us.”

  Sarojini Naidu told Sir Stafford Cripps, “When it came to getting things done, Patel was the really effective leader of the Congress.”33 Wavell could not have formed the interim government without Patel’s support, which he had sought on his own. Mountbatten too depended on Patel in the expeditious division of assets and liabilities between India and Pakistan. This was most crucial. Without it, transfer of power could not have taken place on the due date—15 August. Mountbatten thought of Patel as “the one man I had regarded as a real statesman with both feet firmly on the ground, and a man of honour whose word was his bond”.34 Even Wavell admitted: “Patel is the recognised ‘tough’ of the Congress Working Committee, and by far the most forcible character among them. I have a good deal more respect for him than for most of the Congress leaders.”35 Patel’s “toughness” alone could have given the malevolent Jinnah and the scheming British tough times, and thereby, possibly, not let the Congress suffer a humiliating defeat in its failure to avert the partition of India.

  In the normal, democractic process, Patel ought to have become India’s first prime minister but for Gandhi’s uncalled for intervention in proposing Nehru’s exclusive name for presidentship of the Congress at the working committee meeting in November 1946. This was in spite of the fact that 12 out of 15 pradesh Congress committees had supported Patel. None had favoured Nehru. Gandhi’s intervention tilted the scales in Nehru’s favour. Congress general secretary J. B. Kripalani later regretted:

  I sent a paper round proposing the name of Jawaharlal . . . It was certain that if Jawaharlal’s name had not been proposed, the Sardar would have been elected as the President [by virtue of that India’s first prime minister] . . . I have since wondered if, as the General Secretary, I should have been instrumental in proposing Jawaharlal’s name in deference to Gandhi’s wishes . . . But who can forecast the future? On such seemingly trivial accidents depends the fate of men and even of nations.36

  Whoever became president of the Congress was to be India’s first prime minister. Patel was, naturally, much hurt. In the final hour of the freedom struggle, ending up in the transfer of power in 1947, Patel missed scaling the summit. Yet, as a disciplined Congressman, he accepted Gandhi’s decision stoically, and gave his country his best in the creation of a strong, united India, and took legitimate pride in saying: “Had anyone dreamt a year or two ago that a third of India would be integrated in this fashion? This is the first time in history after centuries that India can call itself an integrated whole in the real sense of the term.”37 M. N. Roy’s tribute to Patel was most deserving: “When the future is bleak, one naturally turns to the past, and Sardar Patel can be proud of his past.”38

  What was Patel’s past? As Gandhi often admitted, he was a pillar of strength to him in his satyagrahas, and a party leader who built party solidarity that even Subhash Chandra Bose could not shake. His creation of a single all-India civil service ensured the country’s unity by binding together 28 states; and his integration of over 560 princely states created One India. He was Chanakya and Bismarck at the same time; soft or stern, whichever the situation demanded and whatever served the country’s interests best. He scored over the latter in his bloodless revolution. He was far from cunning; ever truthful, gentle, and accommodating.

  What was Vallabhbhai? That has been answered, briefly, at the start of the book. Now, at its end, this may be elaborated in the words of J. R. D. Tata:

  Vallabhbhai Patel was the one with whom I felt most in tune, and for whom I developed the greatest personal admiration and respect. While I was awed by his formidable political and administrative talents, the source of which was difficult to understand in a man of his background, one could not but be enormously impressed by the clarity of his mind and the simple good sense and logic with which he addressed and solved seemingly intractable problems.

  While I usually came back from meeting Gandhiji elated and inspired but always a bit sceptical, and from talks with Jawaharlal fired with emotional zeal but often confused and unconvinced, meetings with Vallabhbhai were a joy from which I returned with renewed confidence in the future of our country. I have often thought that if fate had decreed that he, instead of Jawaharlal, would be the younger of the two, India would have followed a very different path and would be in better economic shape than it is today.39

  *Linlithgow’s support for Pakistan came four months after the Lahore Resolution on Pakistan on 23 March 1940.

  10

  WAS KASHMIR SOLD TO GULAB SINGH?

  Exploding the Myth

  Sheikh Abdullah never lost an opportunity to repeat a myth that the British had sold Kashmir to Maharaja Gulab Singh, the Dogra ruler from Jammu. His malevolence lay in telling the Kashmiri Muslims that they had suffered from the slavery of the Dogras from Jammu, and that Maharaja Hari Singh was an alien, not a son of the soil, and had no right to rule over them. The Sheikh, therefore, demanded of the Maharaja to leave the state bag and baggage. This was revival of his “Quit Kashmir” demand of 1946. He finally succeeded in the expulsion of the Maharaja from the state, inclu
ding Jammu, with Nehru’s blind support.

  The manner and extent of such support has never been explained. It was unconstitutional on at least three grounds: First, the Indian Independence Act of the British parliament, under which Britain had transferred power to India and Pakistan, had also given the Indian princes the right to accede to India or Pakistan, or to choose to remain independent so as to join the “Third Dominion” the British wanted to create.

  Second: India’s presence in the valley was only after the Maharaja had acceded to India. It would not have been possible in the absence of it. Abdullah refused to admit that. Third: the Maharaja was entitled to be treated on par with other princes.

  In 1846, with the signing of the Treaties of Lahore and Amritsar, British conquest of northern India was complete. Consolidation of the gains had yet to be undertaken. This seemed more difficult than the military victory—in Kashmir particularly, being isolated from rest of the country. The territory was far-flung, rugged, and not easily accessible. There were high mountains and deep valleys to traverse, a diverse and alien people, and a hostile climate. The British needed the support of a strong, realiable local chieftain to keep under control such strategic areas as Ladakh, adjoining China in the north-east, and Balistan and Gilgit, bordering Russia, in the north-west. Kashmir presented a problem far more difficult and complex than any other state of the empire in India.

  The British choice for a chieftain fell on one of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s ablest generals, Gulab Singh, a Dogra from Jammu, to whom Ranjit Singh had granted a number of estates, including Jammu, for conquering many hostile regions, among them Ladakh and Kashmir. Ranjit Singh had elevated him to the status of a raja. The British found their interests “bound up together” with him.1 Gulab Singh, on his part, had “nicely calculated the precise moment for abandoning the cause to which he owed all his fortune”.2 By way of a reward, the British “promoted that soldier of fortune to the throne in exchange for 75 lakhs of rupees”3— a nazarana which Abdullah too paid, as per old practice, to Maharaja Hari Singh, on his release from prison in 1947.