Was Patel insulted by Nehru?

 Please apologise for spoiling your mood with this tragic story, but this needs to be told.

3 decades have passed since the demise of Maniben, daughter of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, I, in brief give you what happened to her after Sardar’s death.

Even though Sardar Patel had substantial earnings as a very Successful Lawyer, he gave up everything after plunging into the Freedom movement.

Maniben upheld her father’s legacy, the pride and dignity inherited from him, to her last breath. Neither she sought any favours from the Congress leaders, nor did they help her, at the critical junctures of her life even when she was struggling to make ends meet after the passing away of her father.

When Sardar Patel passed way, she picked up a book and a bag that belonged to him and went to meet Jawaharlal Nehru in Delhi. She handed them to Nehru, telling him that her father had instructed her that when she died she should give these items to Nehru and no one else. The bag contained Rs 35 Lakh that belonged to the Congress Party and the book was the party’s book of accounts. Nehru took them and thanked her. Maniben waited expectantly, hoping he would say something more, but he did not, so she got up and left.

To the author from whose book I’m quoting, she explains, ‘I thought Nehru might ask me how I would manage now, or at least ask if there was anything he could do to help me. But he never asked.’

She was extremely disheartened and in a way the incident revealed the strain in the Nehru-Sardar Patel relationship. It was quite distressing to see that neither Nehru nor any of the other national leaders of the Congress ever bothered to find out what happened to Maniben after her father died.”

“After all the sacrifices that Sardar Patel made for the nation, it was very sad that the nation did nothing for his daughter. In her later years, when her eyesight weakened, she would walk unaided down the streets of Ahmedabad, often stumble and fall until some passerby helped her up. When she was dying, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Chimanbhai Patel, came to her bedside with a photographer. He stood behind her bed and instructed him to take a picture. The photograph was published in all the newspapers the next day. With a little effort, they could so easily have made her last years comfortable.”

The above mentioned tragic story of Maniben is taken from Milk Man Of India, Dr Verghese Kurien’s, autobiography ‘I Too Had A Dream’, and the incident involving Nehru-Maniben was conveyed to the author directly from Maniben herself.

Why Nehru Did This To Her?

Maniben kept a diary, she generally accompanied Patel everywhere and was present with the Sardar at most of his meetings. She was therefore privy to what transpired in these meetings and also to Sardar’s views and innermost thoughts on various historic and sensitive issues which he often could not otherwise express even to his closest friends and colleagues.

The diary runs from 8 June 1936 till Sardar’s death on 15 December 1950, and is particularly detailed after Patel’s release from jail in 1945.

Maniben’s diary serves to highlight the deep regard Patel held Gandhi in and also his serious differences with Nehru on a host of issues, including Hyderabad, Kashmir, foreign policy, especially with regard to Tibet, Hindu-Muslim problems, particularly the problem of refugees who were being driven out from East Pakistan, the Nehru-Liaquat Pact notwithstanding, and on corruption, socialism, centralised planning, Nehru’s autocratic style of functioning, etc. Indeed, Patel’s differences with Nehru were both ideological and deep-rooted. In addition, aware of Patel’s hold over the Congress party organization, Nehru considered Sardar as a rival who could dethrone him. Maniben’s diary, however, reveals that Patel had no such ambition, particularly after he had given his word to Gandhi.

Sardar Patel emerges from the diary as a man of action and unbending will, singularly focussed on service to the nation, capable of putting the bigger cause above his own, forthright and blunt, and a man of honour who repeatedly set aside his own ambitions upon the request of his mentor, MKGandhi.

VANDEMATARAM