Oct 31st was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s 140th birth anniversary and also the day Indira Gandhi died. Till two years back, I don’t recall a single year when Sardar Patel’s birthday was celebrated at a national level … all I remember is Indira Gandhi’s death anniversary and the tearful “shraddanjali” and prayers that were offered by her family members and the “CON”team. Maybe this is also my mistake. I never tuned in to hear our PM’s address to the nation on Aug 15th till May 2014 happened. There was really nothing new and well, even the speech was “read” out mechanically. Whether I agree with everything NaMo says or doesn’t say, there is so much drama in the news world whenever he speaks and you have to hand it to the man – he is probably the greatest orator in recent times, extempore, prepared or even reading off a script, his delivery is unparalleled. Even the HMVs will concede that point !
Coming back to Sardar Patel .. an Indian National Congress luminary who missed being the first Prime Minister of India because of his devotion to the Mahatma. Now, Nehru wasn’t bad as the first PM, and I tend to ignore all the personal indiscretions here, but he failed in one big area – building the leadership muscle of the INC then. Once his daughter became the PM, the fate of INC was sealed and consequently India’s because we replaced feudal leaders with “democratic” leaders coming from a single family. Neither the family nor the now “CON”team is to be blamed.. all of us citizens are to be blamed for re-electing them time and again. We got the government that we voted for. I feel the national spine broken by the British colonizers, remained broken for decades :(.
The loss was not just of democracy but history as well and today’s so-called “intolerance” from the “CON”team is because there is an attempt to bring back some of the other heroes who contributed to building India besides the “family” superheroes. We all should believe there is a God somewhere because who else would have ensured the “crown prince” of the “family” turns out to be a dodo ?? No genetic manipulation could have delivered that piece of luck for Mother India.
What most of us don’t realise is there would have been no “India” for us to fight over if not for Sardar Patel and his unique ability to bring together just 540 to 560 disparate warring princely states !! Ideally Bismarck should be called the “Patel of Germany”, but because Bismarck came before Patel, Patel is called the Bismarck of India .. Do read the following answer on Quora to the question whether Patel is overrated – Is Sardar Patel overrated ?
Interesting info – in 15 months Sardar Patel managed to bring together 540 – 560 disparate princely states into the Indian union… in comparison, it took 23 years to unify 9 Italian speaking provinces of the same color, race and religion and Bismarck took 9 years to unify just 35 German provinces.
And guess what … this man was declared a “Bharat Ratna” posthumously in 1991, overrated indeed and again proves my point Irrational awards – return them all.
Thank You Sardar Patel for bringing us all together and sorry that we now fight and bicker and try to break up again. Need you today more than ever to unite us again. 🙁
Over 500 princely States woven painstakingly to create India… and when someone asked him, as to why he wasn’t able to turn around J&K towards Indian side, Sardar simply answered, “That one responsibility was taken by Jawahar; I could not have interfered in that…”
Right !! A great man.
Bindu-ji,
I tend to agree with you. Patel was indeed a great man. The so-called liberal leftist intellectuals have created this chimera that “if you praise Nehru you are a patriot, if you praise Patel you are a Hindu fanatic”. Even making allowance for his personal indiscretions (which are unimportant, and probably Patel had his share) his governing ability and political judgement was poor. But thanks to the “dynasty” and congress sycophants Nehru has been continuously overrated. A pity!
Correction:Oops, that was a badly worded sentence: I meant to say Nehru’s governing ability and political judgement were poor. I hope now it is clear.
Crystal clear Kaushik ji :):).