Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

by B Krishna

  Mountbatten said of Patel’s success, “The adherence of Travancore, after all CP’s declaration of independence, has had a profound effect on all the other States and is sure to shake the Nizam.”19

  Jodhpur Jinnah’s failure to entice the Maharaja

  In Jodhpur’s accession to India, rather than allowing it to fall into the lap of Pakistan, lay a unique victory for Patel. At the same time it was an ignominious defeat for Jinnah: an end to his diabolical plans to weaken India in Rajasthan on the Indo-Pak border. In H. V. Hodson’s view: “The case of Jodhpur illustrates the lengths to which Jinnah was prepared to go in order to wean States from India.”1 After winning his Pakistan, Jinnah had cast his eyes on some of the strategic Indian states in order to secure their association, if not accession, with Pakistan.

  Events in Jodhpur took a dramatic turn with the sudden demise of Maharaja Umed Singh in June 1947 and the succession to the throne of his son, Hanwant Singh, who was young, rash, headstrong, and given to irresponsible emotional outbursts. The father had cast his lot with India, and was among the first few princes whose representatives took their seats in the Constituent Assembly on 28 April 1947. The son was to prove different.

  On the occasion of the rajtilak (crowning ceremony) on 21 June, the new Maharaja announced that Jodhpur would continue to be associated with the Constituent Assembly of India, and would work wholeheartedly for the formation of a Union of India. But the presence of the Nawab of Bhopal in Jodhpur forebode ill. As an emissary of Jinnah, he was to arrange a few meetings for him with the young Maharaja in New Delhi—at Jinnah’s residence, at which Bhopal, along with his legal adviser, Mohammed Zafrullah, was to be present to assist Jinnah in weaning the Maharaja from India.

  Jinnah planned to build a Karachi-Jodhpur-Bhopal axis, which, according to Patel, would be “a dagger thrust into the very heart of India”. This way Jinnah wanted to avenge the truncated Pakistan forced on him by Patel—a Pakistan minus East Punjab, West Bengal, and Assam, all Hindu majority areas. All of these had been assured to him both under the Cabinet Mission plan and Attlee’s policy statement on transfer of power to India and Pakistan. But to Jinnah’s utter frustration, Patel upset his applecart.

  C. S. Venkatachar, prime minister of Jodhpur, came to know of Bhopal’s secret mission in Jodhpur from whispers floating around the palace. He sent H. V. R. Iengar, the home secretary to the government of India, a hand-written note giving news of the “utmost gravity for the very stability of India. The Ruler has been approached by Jinnah and has been persuaded to stay out of the Indian Dominion”.2 Iengar took the note to Patel and apprised him of the “gravity of the situation.” Had Jinnah succeeded, this would have led to Bhopal, Indore, and a few other Central Indian states forming an independent federation under Bhopal’s leadership with ultimate accession to Pakistan. Bhopal expected Baroda to join his group on Jinnah’s promise that he would be allowed to exercise control over his port of Bedi Bandar on the Saurashtra coast. Jinnah was hopeful of roping in the Jamsaheb of Nawanagar as well.

  Jodhpur was hesitant to see Jinnah alone. He took with him the Maharajkumar of Jaisalmer, besides his ADC, Col.

  Thakur Kesari Singh. Jinnah told Jodhpur: “As long as the Central Government in India is weak, we are both strong . . . Your Highness, I sign on the dotted line, and you fill in the conditions.”3 Jinnah tempted the Maharaja with five good offers: a sea-outlet through the use of Karachi as a free port; free import of arms; continuance of manufacture of firearms in his state; jurisdiction over the Jodhpur-Hyderabad (Sind) railway; and a large supply of grain for famine relief. This was Jinnah’s “basket of apples”, which Bhopal had already tempted Jodhpur with. The Maharaja seemed to be happy with the offer. Not to be alone in accepting it, he invited the Maharana of Udaipur to join the Bhopal plan. Udaipur’s reply was: “My choice was made by my ancestors. If they had faltered, they would have left us a kingdom as large as Hyderabad. They did not. Neither shall I. I am with India.”4 Bikaner also refused Jodhpur’s offer to join Jinnah.

  Anxious not to let him slip out of his net, Jinnah “signed a blank sheet of paper and gave it to Maharaja Hanwant Singh along with his own fountain pen, saying, ‘You can fill in all your conditions’ ”. The Maharaja asked Jaisalmer whether he too would sign. Jaisalmer laid down the condition that if there was any trouble between the Hindus and the Muslims, he would not side with the Muslims against the Hindus. This was “a bombshell that took Maharaja Hanwant Singh completely by surprise”.5 Zafrullah tried to make light of the whole affair and pressed Jodhpur to sign the instrument. The Maharaja could not make up his mind. Taking advantage of his vacillation, his ADC, Col. Thakur Kesari Singh, whispered into his ear: “Your Highness, before you sign, you must ask your mother.” The Maharaja greatly respected his mother. She was “a woman of great character, power and influence”.6 The Maharaja suggested to Jinnah that he would go back to Jodhpur and return the next day.

  Since Britain had not yet transferred power to India, Patel exercised no direct authority to deal with the princes officially. His approach to Bhopal could only be through Mountbatten as the Crown representative. Mountbatten took up the matter with Bhopal, telling him that Patel had received information that “His Highness had made contact with the young Maharaja of Jodhpur and induced him to come with him to Jinnah. He also added that at this meeting Jinnah had offered extremely favourable terms on condition that he did not sign the Instrument of Accession, and that he had even gone so far as to turn round and say to the Maharaja of Jodhpur: ‘Here’s my fountain pen. Write your terms and I will sign it’.” Bhopal gave an evasive version of the story. But Mountbatten warned Bhopal: “I pointed out to His Highness that no amount of friendship would enable me to protect either himself or his State or the new Ruler of the State, if the future Government of India thought that he was acting in a manner hostile to that Government by trying to induce an all-Hindu State to join Pakistan.”7

  The Maharaja returned to New Delhi three days later for his final meeting with Jinnah. He did not appear to be his earlier self—apparently subdued by his mother’s talk, as also by what his guru, a swami, had reportedly told him: “How could a Hindu State like Jodhpur agree to accede to Pakistan which will be a Muslim State?” Yet, V. P. Menon feared that unless the Maharaja was handled “quickly, the chances were that he might accede to Pakistan”.8 Mountbatten was persuaded to handle the Maharaja.

  Menon drove the Maharaja to the viceroy’s house. Mountbatten explained to the Maharaja that from a purely legal standpoint, there could be no objection to Jodhpur’s acceding to Pakistan, but he should not overlook the fact that his was a predominantly Hindu state: if acceded to Pakistan, “his action would surely be in conflict with the principle underlying the partition of India on the basis of Muslim and non-Muslim majority areas; and serious communal trouble inside the State would be the inevitable consequence of such affiliation”.9

  The Maharaja remained non-committal. He tried to put off Mountbatten by asking for “impossible concessions”. Mountbatten admitted his failure: “I could not get the Maharaja to agree then and there, although I had obviously shaken him, and I then conceived the idea of getting V. P. Menon to take him to see Sardar Patel before returning to Jodhpur.”10 At their meeting, Patel was “extremely polite, exceedingly courteous, but firm in tone”. The conversation between the two was very brief. But the awe-inspiring looks of Patel, and his sternness, made the Maharaja shaky. He faltered in tone. Patel told him, “Your Highness is free to stay out, if you like. But if there is trouble in your State as a result of your decision, you will not get the slightest support from the Government of India.”11

  According to Iengar, “there was a clear warning that there would be trouble in the State”, and Patel “left the Ruler in no doubt that the move initiated by Jinnah was dangerous not only to India, but to the Ruler himself ”.12 Patel closed the conversation with a mild admonition by saying that the Maharaja’s father, who was his friend, had left him to his care as a
ward; and if he did not behave as he should, Patel would have to act as a guardian to discipline him. The Maharaja felt rattled. He got up from his seat and told Patel in a mollified voice, “Well, Sir, I have decided to go back to Lord Mountbatten and sign the Instrument of Accession right now.”13

  In the settlement of the Jodhpur affair, a great calamity was averted. Patel’s greatest gain was in winning over the abiding loyalty of the Maharaja. He gave Patel the reverence he would have shown to his late father. His devotion led him to serve Patel as an “errand boy” who happily flew in his aircraft from prince to prince and from state to state carrying Patel’s messages. The Maharaja proved to be the most lovable of the princes, whose courage and patriotism flowered under Patel’s paternal affection.

  Kathiawar Jinnah suffers a rebuff

  Simultaneously with developments in Jodhpur, Jinnah had cast his eyes on Kathiawar, whose strategic importance lay in its seaboard overlooking the Arabian Sea. Further, the position of the Jamsaheb of Nawanagar in Kathiawar was more important than that of the Maharaja of Jodhpur in Rajasthan. He enjoyed great respect and influence among the princes of Kathiawar. On him largely depended the unification of the Kathiawar states.

  A situation similar to that in Jodhpur was developing in Jamnagar around May-June 1947. On 1 July, B. L. Mitter, diwan of Baroda, wrote to Nehru: “The Jamsaheb is reported to be negotiating with Jinnah regarding his port of Bedi Bandar. If this port and Veraval, the Junagadh port, come into the orbit of Karachi, Bombay will be seriously affected.”1 Much earlier, on 22 November 1946, Mitter had informed Patel: “The Princes Chamber is playing Jinnah’s game . . . The Jamsaheb has bought his immunity by selling his soul to the Political Department. His confederation plan is sponsored by the department.”2 Mitter wrote to Patel on 26 March 1947 that the chief of Wadia (in Kathiawar) had told him, “The Jamsaheb was strengthening his armed forces . . . was aspiring to be the overlord of Kathiawar.”3

  A gathering of Kathiawar rulers, with the Jamsaheb as leader, had met in a secret conference at Mount Abu under the presidentship of the resident. The view propagated was that “if Travancore can declare its independence, the Kathiawar States, being maritime States, can do likewise . . . they can rule without any interference from Delhi and develop their ports and they need not depend upon India for anything”.

  The conference decided to form a Union of Kathiawar, comprising the seven states of Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Gondal, Porbandar, Morvi, Dhrangadhra, and Junagadh. In the event of its accession to Pakistan, Junagadh “would enter into an offensive and defensive treaty” with the union. Mitter also told Patel, “The Resident is helping and the Jamsaheb has promised to put up a crore of rupees in furtherance of the scheme . . . The Resident and the Political Agent are out to Balkanise India.” There was something sinister in granting Junagadh the right to “either declare separate independence or to join Pakistan”.4 The move unmistakably implied severance of links with India.

  Patel watched the developments with deep concern but with equanimity, waiting for an opportunity to act. Such an opportunity arrived on 11 May. The Jamsaheb was passing through Delhi on his way to Central India to meet some of the princes there. Patel lost no time. He acted boldly and decisively, even when he then exercised no authority, as transfer of power was two months away. He lent his car to Col. Himatsinhji, the Jamsaheb’s brother, and sent him to the airport to bring the Jamsaheb to his residence. Accompanied by Her Highness, the Jamsaheb lunched with Patel. The meeting proved momentous. It changed the course of events. Patel’s influence on the Jamsaheb worked and he was won over. A happy Mitter wrote to Patel on 14 May: “You have converted the Jamsaheb. Now you will have to fashion the Kathiawar and Gujarat units for the Union.”5

  Patel was cautious in expressing his opinion to a co-worker from Kathiawar: “The Jamsaheb had come here yesterday [11 May] . . . He is still hopeful of his confederation scheme succeeding, and he has gone to Kotah for that purpose . . . From his talk I understood that all the Kathiawar States, except for Junagadh and Bhavnagar, have joined the [proposed] confederation. I have, of course, expressed no opinion about the merits of this scheme.”6 Patel had, however, made the Jamsaheb appreciate the dangers India faced from Pakistan all along the border from Rajasthan to Kathiawar. Events in Jodhpur and Junagadh seemed to have convinced the Jamsaheb of Patel’s logic in checkmating Jinnah’s designs. A hopeful indicator of the Jamsaheb’s mind, as also of the Maharaja of Dhrangadhra, was what they told V. P. Menon: “With Shah Nawaz [Bhutto] in the saddle, there was a possibility of Junagadh going over to Pakistan.”7

  Since Gandhi came from Porbandar, he was “intensely interested” in the unification of the Kathiawar states. Its achievement was the fulfillment of Gandhi’s dream. For Patel, there was an additional consideration: it would contribute in a big way to the political consolidation of the country. The unification was highly necessary like the unification of the Rajput states. It was complex too, as it involved 222 states of great diversity and covering an area of over 22,000 square miles. As many as 46 states had an area of 2 or less than 2 square miles; the smallest had an area of 0.29 square miles, a population of 206 souls and an income of Rs. 500 a year. Many of the states had scattered pockets of territory outside their own boundaries. Such a chaotic state of affairs rendered law and order poor and even unmanageable, hampered trade, and encouraged extensive smuggling. In fact, “all the worst effects of political fragmentation were to be seen in Kathiawar”.

  Patel inaugurated the United State of Kathiawar on 15 February 1948. Paying tributes to the Jamsaheb and other rulers, he said, “But for their vision, wisdom and patriotism, the happy result you are seeing today would not have fructified. It was Mahatma Gandhi’s dream that Kathiawar should be united, and it gladdens my heart that the dream of such unification has come true.”8 In his reply, the Jamsaheb significantly observed: “It is not as if we were tired monarchs who were fanned to rest. It is not as if we have been bullied into submission. We have by our own free volition pooled our sovereignties and covenanted to create this new State so that the United State of Kathiawar and the unity of India may be more fully achieved.”

  Nehru described the event as “a great step forward . . . one of the most notable in contemporary Indian history”. He called it “a far-sighted act of statesmanship”.9 Nehru was more specific when he wrote to the provincial chief ministers on 20 February:

  Six months ago, it would have been considered an idle dream to think of an administrative merger of the hundreds of Kathiawar States, let alone such a merger accompanied by full responsible government. The peninsula was ridden by factions and jealousies; and it was a crazy patchwork of States of varying degrees of sovereignty with only one thing common, namely, autocratic rule. On 15 February, the whole of the peninsula became one unit under one responsible Government. This is an achievement for which Sardar Patel has deservedly won high tribute.10

  Mountbatten wrote to Patel: “It appears that you have again scored a brilliant success in your handling of the Kathiawar States problem.”11

  Bhopal Jinnah’s emissary surrenders to Patel

  The Nawab of Bhopal, Hamidullah Khan, was a Muslim ruler whom the British had deliberately invested with greater influence than his position deserved. His territory was small, and his subjects were predominantly Hindus. He proved the most troublesome prince. As Jinnah’s emissary in India, he conspired to secure accession or association of Indian princes to Pakistan. He caused more headaches to Patel than Corfield, secretary of the Political Department. The latter worked silently from behind the scenes, while Bhopal openly played his game, exploiting his position as chancellor of the Chamber of Princes.

  Patel complained to Gandhi on 11 August: “For the last fifteen days I have been occupied with the Princes. It is so taxing. There seems to be no end to the Nawab of Bhopal’s intrigues. He is working day and night to cause a split among the Princes and to keep them out of the Indian Union.”1 Bhopal was sly and aggressive, surreptitiously but
swiftly moving from one prince to another, tempting them to join hands with him in torpedoing Patel’s dream of India’s unification.

  Bhopal had two objectives to achieve: first, to establish the princes as a potential “Third Force” and thus build a third dominion; and, two, to achieve the task Jinnah had entrusted him with: to persuade the Hamlets among the princes to form independent confederations outside the Indian Union. As Jinnah’s emissary and one of his “closest advisers”, Bhopal was “not averse to playing an important role in the higher politics of Pakistan”2—and to succeed Jinnah after his death. The crafty shepherd in Bhopal was confident of satisfying both Corfield and Jinnah by driving the fear-stricken, bewildered lambs among the princes into the pens each was building to rope them in.

  Bhopal’s importance was due to his being a dynamic, articulate, and crafty ruler, who had forged himself to the forefront of the princely order as a Muslim ruler who could be a most trusted ally of the British. Ascending to the throne in May 1926, he had been in prominence since the Round Table Conference in 1931. With British support, he became chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, first from 1931 to 1932, and again from 1943 till his resignation under force of circumstances in 1947.

  K. M. Panikkar, who was secretary to the chamber during 1931-32, writes: “One year’s stay in Bhopal had taught me that Hamidullah was a Muslim partisan and an enemy of the Hindus. I was certain that he manoeuvred to gain the Chancellorship at this time [1943] to strengthen the voice of the Muslims and to weaken the Hindu claims with the instrumentality of the Hindu Princes”3, who, looking upon the political department as “their patron saint, became tools of Bhopal”.4 In 1947, Panikkar, as prime minister of Bikaner, tilted scales against Bhopal by his Maharaja’s decision to participate in the Indian Constituent Assembly.