Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

by B Krishna

  Patel’s speeches always cast a spell—irresistible and overpowering. To the peasants, he sounded like an oracle who spoke their idiom with the “peculiar flavour of the soil”, and his words haunted their minds long afterwards. There was great appeal in the “burning fire in the speaker’s eyes and the masculine vigour of his tone”.12 Patel had told them, “I want to inoculate you with fearlessness. I want to galvanise you with new life. I miss in your eyes the flash of indignation against wrong.”13 Mahadev Desai, Gandhi’s principal secretary, and others felt that they had never before “heard such brilliance in his language, or seen such indignation in his eyes . . . The villagers were moved by the extraordinary eloquence of his speeches and by his astonishingly simple yet effective popular similes and analogies.”14

  Patel’s speeches were torrents of biting sarcasm against the government. He even chastened the peasants for their weakness with well-meaning ridicule. In one of them, he said:

  The Government has, like a wild elephant, run amuck. It thinks it can trample anything and everything under its feet . . . priding itself on having trampled in the past even lions and tigers to death, and scorning the little gnat defying him. I am teaching the little gnat today to let the elephant go on in his mad career, and then get into his trunk at the opportune moment. The gnat need not fear the elephant. The elephant can never trample it to death, but the gnat can certainly prove formidable to the elephant.15

  Officials were alarmed by the revolutionary tone of his speeches. The Times of India declared in bold headlines: “Bolshevik Regime in Bardoli; Mr. Vallabhbhai Patel in the Role of Lenin.” The newspaper’s correspondent wrote: “Iron discipline prevails in Bardoli. Mr. Patel has instituted there a Bolshevik regime in which he plays the role of Lenin. His hold on the population is absolute. The women of Bardoli have been taught amazingly seditious songs with which they incite their men to hate the Government, to obey only the wishes of their Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Patel, and to be ready to die, if need be, in defence of their rights.”16 In the British House of Commons, Lord Winterton admitted that in the Bardoli no-tax campaign Patel had achieved “a measure of success”.

  As the satyagraha progressed, Patel’s tongue became sharper and more biting. He ridiculed the officials and thereby kept up the morale of the people. Addressing women at a public meeting, he tickled them with rustic humour by making fun of English women: “Oh! It seems to me that by remaining in the house all day and night, your buffaloes are fast becoming white like white women!”17 Since buffaloes were so dear to the women, Patel went further, when “attached” buffaloes started bellowing from inside the nearby police station, by shouting: “Listen to the bellows of these buffaloes. Reporters! Write it down and report that in the police station at Valod, the buffaloes make speeches! . . . Listen to these buffaloes. They tell you that justice has disappeared from this kingdom.”18

  Mahadev Desai wrote in Young India: “As the up-train takes you to Valsad, it is a discussion about Bardoli going on amongst the passengers that wakes you up in the early hours of the morning . . . I had occasion to travel by a day train too. The Bardoli publicity leaflets were in the hands of many passengers. Some of them were reading Vallabhbhai’s speeches aloud, and discussing the situation. As I passed through the streets of Navsari with my haversack on my back, a Parsi came running after me to ask if I had the Bardoli leaflets in my haversack!”19

  Maulana Shaukat Ali (of Khilafat fame) and Maulvi Mahomed Baloch, who visited Bardoli, were “delighted at the wonderful atmosphere of solidarity and unity in Bardoli”.20 Two non-Congress councillors from Mumbai, Joshi and Pataskar, visited Bardoli as critics, but were compelled to admit: “We had come to scorn, but have stayed on to praise.”21 Nine members of the Bombay Legislative Council sent in their resignations to the governor, and demanded an independent inquiry.

  As days passed, the satyagraha picked up greater strength. At the same time there were brilliant flashes of Patel’s fighting mood. He assured the peasants: “Let there be no mistake. Your land will come back to you knocking at your door . . . The world knows that among the purchasers are chaprasis and policemen and a few butchers who were specially persuaded to come from Surat.”22 Speaking on Bardoli Day, celebrated throughout India on 12 June, Patel said, “So long as a square foot of land, belonging to a peasant or to a participant in this fight, remains forfeited, this fight will continue. For the sake of such land, thousands of peasants are ready to die. This is not a charity performance for the Government to hand over land to some kerosene merchant from Broach! He who buys such land drinks the life-blood of the peasants.23

  Patel was willing to negotiate for an honourable compromise. At the all-India level, Vithalbhai Patel, president of the Central Legislative Assembly, presented the Bardoli case to the viceroy. At the provincial level, K. M. Munshi wrote to the governor about the unconstitutional position of the government, warning him of serious consequences, resulting “either in the elimination of the existing peasants in Bardoli or in bloodshed, and, in either case, will result in deep and lasting embitterment”.24 Other leaders who lent support to the movement included Purushottamdas Thakurdas, Pandit Hridaynath Kunzru, Motilal Nehru, and Tej Bahadur Sapru.

  At the district conferences held at Surat, Broach, Nadiad, and Ahmedabad, thousands of peasants pledged their support to the Bardoli satyagraha. In a grim warning to the government, Patel said, “If the Government means to devour land, I warn it that the conflagration will spread over the whole of Gujarat, and it will realise not a farthing in Gujarat next year . . . The Government may think it has far greater strength than Ravana had, but let the mighty Government remember that it has to deal not with one Sita but 87,000 satyagrahis.”25

  On 13 July the viceroy conferred with the governor at Simla. Thereafter, the governor made a statement: “It is His Excellency’s obvious duty to uphold the supremacy of the law. But it is also his duty, as representative of the King Emperor, to see that hardship and suffering are not inflicted on so large a number of persons.”26 Following this, the commissioner sent a message to Patel that the governor was arriving at Surat and would like to meet him. Patel met the governor for a total of six hours. No settlement could be reached. The governor insisted on payment of the enhanced assessment, or, alternatively, payment by a third party on behalf of the Bardoli peasants of a deposit equivalent to the enhanced assessment. Patel could not accept such a suggestion, while the governor rejected his terms.

  The British-owned Pioneer and Statesman thought that the government’s conditions were unreasonable. The former wrote: “The main point that must be made, and made without delay, is that no impartial observer of the Bardoli dispute, possessed of the plain facts of the case, can resist the conclusion that the peasants have got the right on their side, and that their claim for an examination of the enhanced assessment by an impartial tribunal is just, reasonable and fair.”27 Annie Besant’s paper, New India, wrote: “If Birkenhead [the secretary of state] remains obstinate, then an agitation should be set up in Parliament to make him change his mind.”

  Council members from Surat were carrying on negotiations with the government at Pune. Patel’s presence there was considered necessary, as they felt that the government was anxious to reach a settlement, but it wanted to preserve its prestige. In this respect, Chunilal Mehta, a senior member of the Governor’s Council, played a notable role. In their draft letter, the MLCs told the revenue member: “We are glad to be able to say that we are in a position to inform the Government that the conditions laid down by His Excellency the Governor in his opening speech to the Council, dated 23 July, will be fulfilled.” Patel was opposed to this. Mehta, however, assured him: “That is not your concern. If the members are agreeable to addressing the letter, you need not worry as to how, when and by whom the conditions will be fulfilled. You will pay the old assessment after the inquiry is announced.”28 Patel was not to be a party to the offer. Nor was he compromising in any manner. Yet, he agreed to let Mehta play his game on the
presumption, to quote Mahadev Desai, that “he knew the mind of the Government better than anyone of us and his patriotism had at this great moment got the better of his officialdom”. According to Mahadev Desai, who was one of the negotiators, “If the Government was content with clutching at the shadow of prestige, Vallabhbhai could not be content without the substance. All he wanted was a full, independent, judicial inquiry and restoration of the status quo. The Government was perfectly agreeable, provided here too it could have its prestige intact.”29

  In the end, an inquiry committee was appointed, comprising Reginald Maxwell (later home member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council) and Robert Broomfield (later a High Court judge). It recommended an increase in the settlement rates of 5.7% as against 22% sanctioned by the government. Following this, the government announced restoration of lands confiscated and sold, release of all prisoners, and reinstatement of patels and talatis who had resigned.

  Thus ended the Bardoli satyagraha, “pursued by a peaceful peasantry with truth and patient suffering . . . against an enemy who could any day have crushed them to atoms. But the Bardoli peasants demonstrated to the world that Truth and nonviolence cannot be crushed”.

  Mahadev Desai described the Bardoli settlement as

  the third of the Sardar’s successful campaigns—the third milestone that he had the honour of laying on the road to swaraj . . . The Bardoli triumph was unique in that it compelled not only the nation’s but the whole Empire’s attention, and the justice and moderation of the people’s demand won practically the entire nation’s sympathy. It was unique in that it was fought by, perhaps, one of the meekest of the talukas in India, in that it affected the Revenue Department, whose dispositions, it was up to now believed, not even the gods may question; and in that it compelled a mighty Government, pledged to crush the movement, to yield within a fortnight of the pledge. It was unique in that the leader of the campaign shed all ideas of personal prestige, and also in that the Governor of the province . . . did all that he personally could to bring about peace.30

  Patel was flooded with tributes. Gandhi was the first to say, “Without Vallabhbhai’s firmness as well as gentleness, the settlement would have been impossible.” Motilal Nehru called the satyagraha “a splendid triumph”, and described Patel as a “matchless general” and the peasants as “the Balaklava battalion of Bardoli”.

  Srinivasa Sastri wrote to Gandhi from Johannesburg: “Vallabhbhai Patel has risen to the highest rank. I bow to him in reverence.” Lala Lajpat Rai wrote in his newspaper the People: “The settlement of the Bardoli dispute . . . is a notable triumph of the popular cause . . . it is a moral victory for truth and justice.”

  Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya wrote to Patel: “The first signal triumph of satyagraha was in Champaran. The second and equally great has been in Bardoli.” Maulana Shaukat Ali and Shuhib Qureshi wired congratulations to “our brave brothers, their Sardar and co-workers”. Subhash Chandra Bose forejudged the Bardoli satyagraha as “the precursor of the larger fight that [Gandhi] was to wage in 1930”31—the Dandi March.

  According to British historian, Judith Brown, for Gandhi, Bardoli meant “re-evaluation of his public role”, dissolving “many of his doubts, born of the debacle and violence of the early 1920s, about the viability of satyagraha in India . . . It revived his faith in the power of non-violence and in the potential for a mass struggle”.32

  John the Baptist in Dandi March

  The Dandi March or the salt satyagraha of 1930 was of such astounding success that Gandhi and Patel climbed to new heights of glory in India’s freedom struggle—never achieved before or since. Gandhi regained his recognition as apostle of truth and ahimsa; Patel, on his part, played the historic role of John the Baptist. St. John was the forerunner and baptiser of Jesus. Patel’s role was similar in the Dandi March. Gandhi was Christ-like: a frail body dominated by hallowed looks, and an oracular voice that inspired an apostle’s reverence as well as the hope of resurrection for his people. Patel was John-like: strong-bodied, and a forerunner of Gandhi in the Dandi March, who “baptised” people on the road the master was to follow to Dandi, a small village on Gujarat’s west coast near Surat, where Gandhi broke the law prohibiting the manufacture of salt from sea water. It was a simple act which instantly became a symbol of national defiance; even aroused worldwide attention for its revolutionary implications. Like America’s historic Boston Tea Party, the Dandi March was a march towards India’s independence.

  Dandi was Patel’s choice. So were the leaders of the March. They were his most trusted lieutenants since his earlier satyagrahas. Patel went ahead of the March as John the Baptist had done in the case of Christ. Gandhi admitted in his speech at Napa that Vallabhbhai had come ahead of him to smoothen his own path.1 Congress historian Pattabhi Sitaramayya wrote: “While yet Gandhi was making preparations . . . Vallabhbhai went before his master to prime up the villagers of the coming ordeals . . . When Vallabhbhai was moving in advance as Gandhi’s forerunner, Government saw in him John the Baptist who was a forerunner of Jesus nineteen hundred years ago.”2

  Patel was arrested at Ras, sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and lodged in Sabarmati jail at Ahmedabad.

  In his speech at Navagaon, Gandhi admitted that the government had arrested Patel because “it feared that if he were free, he and not the Government would rule over the district”.3 Sitaramayya wrote: “With his arrest and conviction, the whole of Gujarat rose to a man against the Government. 75,000 people gathered on the sands of the Sabarmati to resolve: ‘We the citizens of Ahmedabad determine hereby that we shall go the same path where Vallabhbhai has gone’.”4

  A protest day was observed by the Millowners Association, whose members passed a resolution condemning Patel’s arrest, and closed down their mills for the day. Businessmen pulled down the shutters of their shops in Ahmedabad and in many other towns of Gujarat. The municipality lodged its protest by keeping offices closed. So did schools in the city. Ras, where Patel had been arrested, surpassed all. Village officers submitted their resignations; landlords surrendered their special rights; a country liquor licensee pledged never to sell alcoholic drinks; and over 500 men and women got themselves registered as satyagrahis. Many villages in the Borsad and Bardoli talukas followed Ras with equal fervour.

  In Delhi, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya moved a resolution in the Central Legislative Assembly, condemning government action in arresting Patel without trial. Jinnah spoke on the resolution:

  According to the Home Member, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had delivered many speeches before he was arrested . . . Were those speeches against law? The point at issue is whether the Sardar committed any breach of law. On that point no information has been given to us. If he had made speeches earlier in which he had committed breaches of law, and was about to deliver one further speech of the same kind, then the right course for the district authorities was to have taken action against Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for those earlier offences. It was improper for them to serve upon him an order which cuts at the root of the principle of freedom of speech . . . The Government of India is setting a precedent with very serious implications.5

  Gandhi began his 241-mile march from Ahmedabad to Dandi on 12 March. He led a batch of 71 satyagrahis. The district superintendent of police confirmed: “Mr. Gandhi appeared calm and collected. He is gathering more strength as he proceeds. His lieutenants like Darbar Gopaldas and Ravishankar Vyas (Maharaj) are getting bolder and arouse the feelings of the people of this taluka by using Vallabhbhai’s arrest as their trump-card.”6

  Patel’s arrest became the main focus of Gandhi’s speeches. At Wasna, Gandhi said, “I may die at any moment, but the future generations will see that my prophecy was correct. Vallabhbhai was not a fit person for arrest. He should have been rewarded by the Government. What wrong did Vallabhbhai do in Bardoli? He befriended the people, which was the duty of the Government. He managed the administration of Ahmedabad; and the Collector and the Commissioner were astounded by his
success. I could succeed in Kheda district on account of Vallabhbhai, and it is on account of him that I am here today.”7

  And thus, Gandhi continued his march along the path paved by Patel, amidst overwhelmingly excited crowds. William Shirer, an American correspondent, who witnessed the March, wrote in the Chicago Tribune:

  The procession soon became a triumphal march. The villages through which the marchers passed were festooned in their honour. Between the villages, peasants sprinkled water on the roads to keep the dust down and threw leaves and flower petals on them to make the going on foot easier. In nearly every settlement hundreds abandoned their work and joined the procession until the original band of less than one hundred swelled to several thousand by the time the sea was reached . . . Some of Gandhi’s followers began to compare the March to the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem, and there was much reading of the New Testament along the way. To add to the comparison, someone in the party picked up a donkey to follow in the wake of Gandhi.8

  Moving ahead of Gandhi, Patel had delivered a number of speeches. At Broach, he said, “Within the next eight or ten or fifteen days, civil disobedience will have begun. There will take place non-violent breaches of law. Such offences will be committed by individuals who are devotees of non-violence, who have no anger, nor any jealousy, and about whose purity and goodness there can be no two opinions.”9