AS expected, Narendra Modi has raked up the ever latent
issue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s candidature for Prime Ministership at
independence again. The debate – essentially engendered by India ’s right –
emphasizes the Patel-Nehru cleavage and Mahatma Gandhi’s role in choosing Nehru
as his successor. The argument is that Patel was the best Prime Minister India
never had.
In this context some interesting material came my way
recently while reading archived communication – exchange of letters – between
Sardar Patel and Mahatma Gandhi between 1932 and Mahatma’s death in 1948. It
comes out rather clearly that Sardar had bungled up his health and that though
not the sole factor, it might have been a contributing cause in Gandhi’s
decision to opt for Nehru over Patel.
In 1934 Sardar was actually released from jail on grounds of
ill health…there was something to do with his nose. In fact 1930 onwards, a
pattern emerges where “improve your health” is a constant nag from Bapu to
Sardar. In a letter from Segaon on August 15, 1938, Gandhi chides sardar thus:
“…you may be the Sardar to others, but you do not seem to be any better than
your own slave. The true sardar is he who has control over his own self.” In
1945, from Sevagram, Bapu wrote that railway journeys causing strain were no
longer meant for Sardar. Even from Bombay to Poona he was advised to
fly. By 1946 Sardar Patel’s health was poor enough to warrant him to be excused
from election work. In a letter of July 2, 1946 Patel writes in his own words: My
health is deteriorating and there seems to be no way out.
Nevertheless, the fact that Nehru outlived Patel by a good
14 years reduces the debate over what India’s destiny would have been had Patel
taken over as PM rather than Nehru to academic interest only. However, while
on this topic, an interesting digression would be to focus on the health of one
more important personality of that period. Mohammed Ali Jinnah too was
suffering from serious ailments, but it seems it was a closely guarded secret. There
is no contemporary record to establish when exactly his harmless tuberculosis
turned into life taking lung cancer and became public.
The question then is had Indian freedom leadership led by
Gandhi known of Jinnah’s health and impending end, would they have behaved
differently over partition? For example, could they have delayed their
acceptance of Mountbatten plan by some months? Opens up tantalizing
possibilities to be explored for academic purposes, and I shall come back to
this topic in near future.
