Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

by B Krishna

  Even from his retirement in London, Mountbatten’s influence on Nehru worked: a cease-fire, which was kept a closely guarded secret, was ordered. Even the army commanders engaged in the Kashmir operations were kept in the dark. That was not so with the Pakistan army commanders, who, having been briefed, moved up their troops to occupy some of the more strategic heights vacated during extreme cold.

  Haji Peer was one such commanding peak of great strategic value, linking Poonch and Pakistan. India could have asked for its return under the cease-fire agreement. But India failed to do so. An answer to that may be sought in General S. P. P. Thorat’s complaint: “Our forces might have succeeded in evicting the invaders, if the Prime Minister had not held them in check, and later ordered the cease-fire . . . Obviously, great pressure must have been brought to bear on him by the Governor-General . . . Panditji was a great personal and family friend of Lord Mountbatten.”18

  In the 1965 Indo-Pak war, India captured Haji Peer. Influenced by Nehruvian vacillation, Lal Bahadur Shastri, India’s prime minister, could not resist Soviet pressure for a compromise—status quo under the Tashkent Agreement in January 1966. Haji Peer remained with Pakistan.

  Equally inexplicable was Nehru’s blind faith in Sheikh Abdullah. His biographer, S. Gopal, alleges that he was Nehru’s “old friend and colleague and blood-brother”.19 According to his other biographer, Stanley Wolpert, Nehru believed “the fate of Kashmir was tied to the fate of the Nehru family— their intertwined destiny”. He quotes Nehru as having said, “Kashmir is of the most vital significance to India . . . We have to see this through to the end.”20 Nehru somehow believed that only Abdullah—and none else—could help him achieve that. He was Nehru’s anchor of hope in the Muslim-dominated valley.

  In the bargain, Nehru mortgaged to Abdullah not only the freedom of the Dogra Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Ladakh, but even that of the ethnically different Muslims of the state—the border Muslims, the Bakarwals, the Gujjars, and the Paharis. Besides, Jammu and Ladakh had half the state’s population and over 89% of the area. Worse still, Nehru bluntly told the Kashmiri Pandits at the annual session of the National Conference at Sopore in 1945, “If non-Muslims want to live in Kashmir, they should join the National Conference [of Abdullah], or bid good-bye to the country [Kashmir] . . . If the Pandits do not join it, no safeguards and weightages will protect them.”21 The Pandits’ wholehearted cooperation with the valley Muslims could not give them any protection. In 1991, they were driven out of the valley.

  In May 1946, Nehru’s blind support to Abdullah in his Quit Kashmir movement—in imitation of Gandhi’s Quit India movement of 1942—boosted Abdullah’s ego sky-high. After his visit to Srinagar, Acharya Kripalani declared that the Quit Kashmir movement was “abusive and mischievous . . . The Maharaja was a son of the State . . . absurd to ask him to quit . . . there could be no comparison between the ‘Quit Kashmir’ agitation and the ‘Quit India’ movement”.22

  During the Quit Kashmir agitation, Abdullah had been arrested. Nehru got him released through Patel’s mediation with the Maharaja. On coming out of prison, he called upon the Maharaja, and offered him a nazarana as a token of his loyalty. He wrote to him: “In spite of what has happened in the past, I assure Your Highness that myself and my party have never harboured any sentiment of disloyalty towards Your Highness’s person, throne or dynasty . . . I assure Your Highness the fullest and loyal support of myself and my organisation.”23 After his assumption of power, he cast to the winds the faithfulness he had promised, and demanded of the Maharaja “to quit the Valley bag and baggage and leave the Kashmiris alone to decide their future by themselves”.

  The task seemed not so easy. He had to have two major roadblocks removed from his path—Patel and the Maharaja— and thereafter to gain independence under Article 370 of the Constitution.

  In December 1947, Nehru took away Kashmir from Patel’s charge and placed it under the charge of Gopalaswami Ayyangar. Such an affront hurt Patel deeply. He wrote to Nehru: “Your letter of today [23 December 1947] has been received just now at 7 p.m. and I am writing immediately to tell you that it has caused me considerable pain . . . your letter makes it clear to me that I must not, or at least cannot, continue as a member of Government, and, hence, I am hereby tendering my resignation.”24 The letter seemed to have remained undelivered at Gandhi’s intervention on Mountbatten’s persuasion that without Patel the Government could not be run.

  Abdullah’s next target was the Maharaja, who, he demanded, should leave the state for good. The demand seemed totally unconstitutional in its denial of justice to the Maharaja, whom the British, under the Indian Independence Act of the British Parliament, had given the right to accede to India or Pakistan, or to choose to remain independent. It did injustice to the Dogras of Jammu as well, who wanted the Maharaja to stay on. Nehru refused to accept two basic truths: that the Maharaja’s position was the same as that of other Indian princes, and that the Maharaja was as much a son of the soil as was Abdullah. Yet, at Nehru’s request, Patel persuaded the Maharaja to leave the state.

  After gaining his “freedom” from Patel, as also from the Maharaja, Abdullah moved towards his bigger objective—to secure “freedom” for his state through its separate Constitution, beginning with Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. In November 1948, Nehru was to leave for Europe, and was under great pressure of time. At such a hectic time, Abdullah arrived in New Delhi and pressurised Nehru for immediate action. Nehru left for Europe, entrusting the drafting of the Article to K. M. Munshi, a constitutional expert, and Gopalaswami Ayyangar, an administrator. According to Munshi, “Abdullah was unhappy with the Article [370] as we drafted” and Munshi feared that “though he was scheduled to support the Article in the Constituent Assembly, he might absent himself from the proceedings”.25

  Article 370 created an uproar at a Congress Parliamentary Party meeting. Ayyangar was helpless to restore order. He called for Patel’s support. Patel had the draft unanimously accepted the very next day. During the discussion on the draft in the Constituent Assembly, Abdullah’s pride was hurt and he staged a walk-out in protest. Patel, who was officiating for Nehru, was much displeased. Abdullah decided to leave for Srinagar the same night. He had hardly settled down in the train when Mahavir Tyagi entered the compartment to deliver Patel’s stern message: “Sheikh Sahib, the Sardar says you could leave the House, but you cannot leave Delhi.”26 More out of fear than respect, Abdullah got down from the train. That made some believe that Kashmir would have been different had the state remained under Patel’s charge, like Hyderabad. Abdullah feared Patel, not Nehru.

  Could Patel have settled the Kashmir problem for good? He once told H. V. Kamath that “if Jawaharlal and Gopalaswami [Ayyangar] had not made Kashmir their close preserve, separating it from my portfolio of Home and States”, he would have “tackled the problem as purposefully as he had already done in Hyderabad”.27 He seemed more confident in telling M. R. Masani that “but for Nehru, he could settle the Kashmir issue in no time by arranging that the Kashmir Valley go to Pakistan and East Pakistan to India. Both countries would benefit from such an arrangement”.28

  Field Marshal Auchinleck held a similar view. He had stated: “Pakistan should let East Pakistan go. They will always be a millstone round their necks and a great danger, or more. Jinnah made a big mistake when he fought for their inclusion . . . Punjabis and Pathans will never mix with Bengalis. They are like oil and water. They differ so in every way except religion, and I always think a Bengali is a Bengali first and a Muslim second! I think myself that they should agree to separate.”29

  Once, Dr. Rajendra Prasad told Jayaprakash Narayan, “The Sardar used to evade an answer with the remark that he had left the problem for Jawaharlal to tackle. But once he did say that when we had given away Punjab, Sind and the NWFP, of what value could the small valley of Kashmir have for us? Will the people there ever agree to live happily with us?”30

  M. N. Roy speculated over Patel’
s attitude towards Kashmir: “I am inclined to believe that it was as realistic as his attitude towards Pakistan. Nevertheless, once the dice were cast by the gambler’s megalomania, the Sardar had no choice but to play the game. But one could be sure that he loathed the stupidity clothed in the glamour of popular heroes.”31

  Patel’s Proposals to Save Tibet

  The Himalayas are a god-given gift to India—the abode of the rishis, and the origin of her rivers. The Himalayas are not only India’s crown of glory, but they have also served her for centuries as a protecting shield extending right across her northern borders—from the Nanga Parbat (26,629 feet) in Kashmir to the Namcha Barwa (25,000 feet) in eastern India. But in 1962, the Himalaya’s impregnability was breached by the Chinese. None could have imagined that they would invade India from across her northern borders. Nehru suffered the rudest shock, because of his implicit faith in Chinese friendship. In deep anguish, he said, “How I worked for friendship between India and China, fought for Chinese legitimate interests in the world . . . and aggression was my reward.”1

  Could that have been avoided? Patel had answered that as early as in 1950, when China threatened India’s territorial integrity in her Himalayan states. Thousands of copies of a map were distributed in Sikkim and other Himalayan regions. The map showed Tibet and China as “the palm of a human hand, and Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and NEFA as its five fingers”.2 Patel had foreseen China’s designs as far back as June 1949 when he wrote to Nehru: “We have to strengthen our position in Sikkim as well as in Tibet. The farther we keep away the Communist forces, the better. Tibet has long been detached from China. I anticipate that, as soon as the Communists have established themselves in the rest of China, they will try to destroy its [Tibet’s] autonomous existence.” His advice to Nehru was: “You have to consider carefully your policy towards Tibet in such circumstances and prepare from now for that eventuality.”3

  In November 1950, a month prior to his demise, Patel attended a cabinet meeting called to discuss Tibet. Nehru’s mood was petulant. He snubbed N. V. Gadgil with the remark: “Don’t you realise that the Himalayas are there?” Whereupon K. M. Munshi ventured to say, that “in the seventh century, Tibetans had crossed the Himalayas and invaded Kanauj”. Nehru dismissed this as nonsense. Immediately after the meeting, Patel left for Ahmedabad, but he continued “anxiously thinking” over the problem.

  On his return to New Delhi, he wrote a letter to Nehru on 7 November, which, according to Munshi, showed Patel’s “uncanny vision” in discerning “as far back as 1950 the portents across our north-eastern border and the dangerous implications of our foreign policy in that direction . . . Every word of what he wrote has been proved true by the developments of the past seventeen years”.4 Patel had written to Nehru:

  The Chinese Government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intentions. My own feeling is that at a crucial period they managed to instil into our Ambassador a false sense of confidence in their so-called desire to settle the Tibetan problem by peaceful means . . . The final action of the Chinese, in my judgment, is little short of perfidy. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us . . . we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese diplomacy or Chinese malevolence . . . it appears that we shall not be able to rescue the Dalai Lama.

  Patel tried to convince Nehru that “the Chinese do not regard us as their friends” and “their last telegram to us is an act of gross discourtesy not only in the summary way it disposes of our protest against the entry of Chinese forces into Tibet, but also in the wild insinuation that our attitude is determined by foreign influences. It looks as though it is not a friend speaking in that language but a potential enemy”.

  Patel further warned Nehru:

  Very soon they [the Chinese] will disown all the stipulations which Tibet has entered into with us in the past. That throws into the melting pot all frontier and commercial settlements with Tibet on which we have been functioning and acting during the last half a century. China is no longer divided. It is united and strong. All along the Himalayas in the north and north-east, we have on our side of the frontier, a population ethnologically and culturally not different from Tibetans or Mongoloids. The undefined state of the frontier, and the existence on our side of a population with its affinities to Tibetans or Chinese, have all the elements of potential trouble between China and ourselves . . . Chinese ambitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side, but also include important parts of Assam . . . The danger from the north and north-east, therefore, becomes both communist and imperialist.

  Patel suggested a number of positive steps, which included: improvement of road, rail, air, and wireless communications with Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Darjeeling, and the tribal areas in Assam; building of defensive lines; policing and intelligence of frontier posts to stop infiltration of spies, fifth columnists and Communists; and fully manning the outposts, and ensuring loyalty of people inhabiting the regions concerned.

  Patel further suggested redisposition of forces with a view to guarding important routes or areas which are likely to be the subject of dispute, and an appraisal of the strength of our forces. With regard to Chinese entry into the UNO, he felt that “in view of the rebuff which China has given us and the method which she has followed in dealing with Tibet, I am doubtful whether we can advocate her claims any longer”. Patel’s warning was: “Any faltering or lack of decisiveness in formulating our objectives, or in pursuing our policy to attain those objectives, is bound to weaken us and increase the threats which are so evident.”5

  Earlier, in 1901, India’s confrontation over Tibet had been with Russia; now it was with China. Curzon, the viceroy, had firmly clarified the British position which approximated Patel’s thinking, though Curzon’s language was of an imperialist and empire-builder. Like Curzon, Patel did not desire occupation of Tibetan territory; and his view was that of Curzon’s, who had stated: “Of course we do not want their country. It would be madness for us to cross the Himalayas and occupy it. But it is important that no one else should seize it; and that it should be turned into a sort of buffer State between the Russian and Indian Empires. If Russia were to come down to the big mountains, she would at once begin intriguing with Nepal . . . Tibet itself, not Nepal, must be the buffer that we endeavour to create.”6

  Unpreparedness and vacillation on Nehru’s part, lasting more than a decade, could not rescue the Dalai Lama, nor could he avoid humiliation in his ignominious defeat in the Indo-Chinese war in 1962.

  Nepal: Patel’s Lasting Solution

  The deteriorating situation in Nepal since 1950 threw Nepal into a deepening crisis in 2005. There was murder of democracy with the king’s assumption of absolute monarchy, heightening dangers for Nepal, as well as for India, from the Maoist guerrillas—and even from China. According to reports, during 2005, the monarch received from China, 18 truck-loads of arms and ammunition, adding anxiety and complications to India’s stake in Nepal.

  In 1950, trouble in Nepal had forced the infant king to seek asylum in the Indian embassy in Kathmandu. He was shifted to New Delhi for security reasons. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Indian cabinet met to discuss whether India should give recognition to the infant ruler. According to

  K. P. S. Menon, foreign secretary, Nehru felt that “the King’s espousal of the popular cause should be taken at its face value and that he should be enabled to go back to Nepal as King”. Patel differed. He thought of the future, and observed that “Nepal is a frontier State, that stability is the paramount consideration there, and that the Ranas are in a better position to ensure stability than anyone else.” Nehru’s view prevailed but “Patel stood primarily for stability and Nehru for freedom”.1

  From Patel’s point of view, such freedom under a hereditary and autocratic rule was an anachronism; even contradictory to Nehru’s socialist thinking. Patel hoped to establish people’s supremacy in Nepal through the Ranas, not through the king. Being an incarnatio
n of Lord Vishnu, nobody could assail him, least of all remove him. Patel’s support for the Ranas seemed to have been influenced by his democratic spirit that had led him to replace the princely order in India by people’s raj. Similar rule in Nepal would have brought the people of India and Nepal closer to each other, impelled by cultural and religious affinities. In such a climate of commonality of relations, built on mutual interests, regards and goodwill, Nepal might not have suffered the later-day isolation, and become a hotbed of world power intrigue. The two people of the same stock, faith, and language would have lived in a climate of trust and brotherhood.

  In 1956, the king attempted to loosen Nepal’s traditional ties with India by negotiating a treaty of peace and friendship with China; also inviting the Russians and the Americans to Kathmandu. Nehru was so irked over the Nepal-China affair that he informed the Chinese government that “a treaty of friendship with Nepal would, from India’s view-point, be inopportune . . . They are perfectly free to go their own way, and we shall go our own”.2 It was a surrender without confrontation or a diplomatic manoeuvre.

  During 2004, Nepal’s politics had reached its nadir. With his direct rule having failed, the king found it difficult to find a prime minister to run his government. The streets of Kathmandu witnessed the spectacle of protesters shouting anti-king slogans. The picture in the countryside looked still grimmer. With Nepal in a state of turmoil, could India legally interfere to stop Nepal drifting into total chaos? Not so easily, if judged by India’s earlier bad experience in Sri Lanka. Yet, since the two people are the same, one could hope that sooner or later the Nepalese themselves would rise to seek India’s help to put their house in order.

  Looking back, in 1950, Nepal posed no problem for India. India could lord over Nepal’s destiny and help shape her future—as a people’s democracy. But not so in 2005, after the king’s installation of absolute monarchy in a coup on 1 February. Over the years, India had allowed herself to be reduced to the status of a helpless spectator, with practically no option left, except to support the king. India faced multiple dangers. The countryside in Nepal was not ruled by the government but was under the domination of the Maoist guerrillas. Since 1996, they had killed some 11,000 people. They controlled 68 out of 75 districts. Out of 1,135 police stations, only 100 were functioning.