506. Sardar Vallabhai Patel

Rajendra Prasad once said that if we have a free India today it is because of what Sardar Patel gave us. To bring 565 princely states into the fold of India, especially when they had an option, was no mean task. The one state that was not under his jurisdiction - Kashmir - still hangs fire. Many a time he expressed the view that he could solve the problems of Kashmir in no time, if it was given into his hands. He was known as the iron man of India. Sri Aurobindo said of him that he was the only one in the Congress who had strength. He had to have an operation while in England for guinea worm. He had it without anaesthesia. In his village, the barber was the doctor. He had an abscess in his armpit. The treatment was to break it with a red hot iron. The barber hesitated with the iron in his hand. Patel took it from him and did it himself.

In any great accomplishment such as Indian freedom, a strong man has a role to play. He honours no other code than the code to achieve the goal. Strong men accomplish by strength which has only the code of strength.  At the time of partition, the Princes relied on Paramountcy, which at bottom, had the law of a subject nation. In reality, some Princes were no more than stooges and others had no legal or moral right to rule. Patel bulldozed them into submission. The legal course Kashmir took legitimised the illegal action of barbarians. Law has no role to play when tribal men invade. Patel was excluded from Kashmir or Kashmir was taken away from his department and now it remains outside India. If you take every landmark in Patel's life and present that situation to another strong, good man in any village in abstract and ask when he would do in that situation, the response will exactly tally with what Patel had done. Patel was a strong man by any description by an standard. In every village in India there is one such man, maybe more.

The practical commonsense of Patel is the practical commonsense of a strong Indian farmer. The strength can arise from the risks undertaken in farming. It will be the strength of a farmer. Here, we see in Indian villages the usual strength of the farmers is suffused by SPIRITUAL generosity that is benevolence. Such a strength of benevolence or generosity can issue only from the roots of SPIRIT. The productive capacity of the Indian population has the same spiritual foundation. That is why it can be great and infinitely abundant when unleashed. Indian wisdom has its origin in Brahman. Indian service has its spiritual origin in self-effacement. The Indian population can congratulate themselves on this discovery when they discover a Patel in every village.