SELF-REFLECTION

THE MAN WHO SAVED INDIA: SARDAR VALLABHBHAI PATEL

SUBMITTED TO:

ASSISTANT PROF. MURALI KARNAM

SUBMITTED BY:

DEEPANKSHA

ROLL. NO.: 2022-5LLB-96

YEAR I SEMESTER I

NALSAR UNIVERSITY OF LAW

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Group projects are considered to be easy because of the misconception that they are merely a
division of labour. What goes behind the collation of a project by six heavily opinionated,
law students is only something we realized when we started to work in a group. The task, at
first, looked manageable. Some of us thought we would not need to coordinate as much
because the job was to read two chapters each and analyze them. I started to work with the
assumption that we already knew so much about Sardar Patel’s life. I have been reading
about him since sixth grade as a part of my school curriculum or extra-curricular reading.
Unifier of India, First Deputy Prime Minister, and the Iron Man of India, we came to work
together with the idea that we already knew enough and would not find surprising new
information. This bubble of false ideas burst the first time we met as a group.

Over the course of the project, I discovered how differently we all look at the same things and
most importantly, how our prejudices impact our understanding of the subject matter. All of
us read two chapters each but the difficulty was that we read those parts in isolation from the
rest of the book. While discussing the parts we read with the others, we realized that the book
itself covers a lot of ground and it was hard to connect the dots. After realizing that we will
need a deeper understanding of the book in order to come up with something holistically
analytical, we started recognizing themes we wanted to focus on through more discussions. I
personally thought it would be a great idea to engage with hypotheticals and realize Patel’s
contributions by wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t existed or if he had been
the Prime Minister. This triggered another round of debate where we found numerous points
of disagreement.

Our debates ranged from topics as simple as ‘Young Blood vs Experience’ to other more
controversial issues like ‘Patel’s unification of the country: positive or negative?’. One of the
debates that I personally enjoyed was whether Patel should have been the Prime Minister.
The book mentioned one very interesting idea with regard to this. The author said that Patel
would be happy occupying the second place but Nehru would not. So, Gandhi remained in
favor of Nehru as the Prime Minister. To this, one of my team members said that Nehru was
like a stubborn child who was perpetually placated by Gandhi and given whatever he wanted.
We also saw a number of comparisons between present-day personalities, the most
interesting one being that of Nehru to Elon Musk. The debates were informal, yet highly
productive. We talked about how Patel’s old age was used as a justification for him not
becoming the Prime Minister. At the age of 70, he was given the task of unifying India but
was not considered an appropriate choice for the post of PM. Gandhi remained close to both

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Nehru and Patel and in many ways, was a fatherly figure to both of them but even though,
Patel had more on-ground experience and knew how to do the grunt work, Nehru was chosen
over him. Some of us thought this was all because of dynastic politics while others thought it
was pragmatic politics. This was compared to the situation of Churchill. A person who might
be good at leading a war but might not be good at leading the country at peace. Other factors
such as his involvement with the RSS were also brought up during our debates. The question
of giving up privilege by both leaders was also a prominent one. While Patel gave up his
luxuries, he still retained some of them like food and travel even after the insistence of
Gandhi. Nehru, on the other hand, retained all his privileges. We debated the question of
whether a man with such power and privilege was equipped to deal with the masses that
mainly constituted people living in abject poverty.

During our discussions, I got to know that some of my teammates thought that Operation
Polo in Hyderabad was a morally wrong decision by Patel. But the presence of Razakars in
Hyderabad and the subsequent crimes against humanity were not discussed by them. Even
after introducing this argument of brutality by the Nizam of Hyderabad and subsequent
debate, we could not reach a consensus on whether it was the right move or not. Similarly,
the unification of Kashmir into the Indian Union and the 1947-48 war in Kashmir was also an
issue of contention.

At the end of the day, we all come from spaces with our own political biases. Even though we
have not fully discovered what we align with, we still operate with inherent assumptions. But
this process of listening to each other talk about what we gained from the book was definitely
eye-opening since all of us had different bits of information that were pieced together to try
and understand history and its politics better.

One major problem that I faced was finding the thin line of distinction between history and
story, and facts and fiction. Even after over 75 years, the narrative of the freedom struggle
still keeps changing. When we turned to the internet to settle a debate, we found that the
narrative was still constantly evolving. The author also presented information that we did not
know about before. For example, when Gandhi first approached Patel, he was playing
snooker and disregarded him. But after Champaran, Patel himself showed interest in Gandhi
and his movement. I personally did not know the extent of his devotion to Gandhi but this
book, by telling the story from the very beginning, was a realization that even though Patel
remained an independent entity, he was more of a follower of Gandhi than I thought. His

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contribution to the freedom struggle is undeniably immense, especially the way he stoked the
fire in Bardoli and the subsequent uprise of the Satyagraha there. As Patel said, he was not a
leader nor a soldier, he was a simple man with dreams for the nation.

Working in a group might not have been any of our first choices but it definitely was an
experience that could not have come with an individual project. I also thought that this was
better than writing a research paper when we don’t truly know how to research. This process
made me think, question my preconceived notions and assumptions and most importantly, it
made me wonder about the million other scenarios that could have occurred in a situation
where Patel did not exist. To conclude, this was an experience we thought we did not want
but definitely needed because it is always good to have multiple perspectives, you never
know when you might end up questioning your own prejudices.