During my visit to a book fair last month I bought 3-4 books and one of them is titled 'The Indomitable Sardar by KL Panjabi. Honestly speaking, I don’t know much about Sardar Patel, except for the little I read in class textbooks as a school kid. My understanding about him is that he was Deputy PM with Nehru, participated in the freedom struggle, under the leadership of Mahatma, before Independence, and it’s also known to me that he As Home Minister, was responsible for the accession of princely states into Indian Union.
This 294-page book of Rs50/ published By Bharatiya Vidyabhavan, is very interesting and it gives a lot of information about Patel. Mr. Panjabi, the author, was an ICS officer, retired as CS, of Bombay State, who came into contact with Patel, from 1928, and used to meet him frequently, in later years, I believe. This book is a political biography, of Sardar Patel, as the author felt, that in Patel’s case, it has received scant attention from biographers, while the author also says that in certain circles, Patel was described as “persona-non-grata “ and was even painted as reactionary and communalist as a part of conspiracy.
As per the author, in Moulana Azad’s autobiography, "India Wins Freedom” Mr. Patel was shown in poor light, which needs to be cleared by presenting hard facts which had slipped from the Azad’s selective memory.
The chapters 21 “Minister for states” and chapter 22nd, “closing years” are very interesting to read, which deal with Integration of 554 Indian States into the Union Of India, will forever be monument to Sardar’s statesmanship, administrative skill, and ardent zeal to unify the country as it never had been unified in the history. I was very much delighted to read Accession of Hyderabad, the police Action, Razakar movement, and the movement of Communists atrocities, in and around Hyderabad.
Prior to reading this book, I was under the impression that Sardar and Nehru were never on the same page, and that Sardar was sidelined ( formed due to some newspaper articles). But it’s not so, Sardar had wholeheartedly accepted Nehru’s leadership as he was aware of his own shortcomings. There were differences between them on matters like referring Pakistan’s aggression in Kashmir valley to UNO etc. But both respected each other’s views and used to make adjustments, in the larger interest of the Nation
If one reads the book, one will understand, that Sardar was true, hard-core Congressman throughout, a staunch follower of Mahatma, and completely against the RSS ideology of hard-core Hindutva.
Read it to know Sardar Patel's passionate devotion to the country, his robust sense of realism, Iron will, which none could bend are the factors which thinking men mourn saying that had Sardar been alive our country wouldn’t have seen the type of hard days.
