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Journalism of Courage
Addressing a rally at Khambhat in Anand district of Gujarat Tuesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah Tuesday repeated an allegation that the BJP has made earlier. Accusing the Congress of having ignored Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, he said even the last rites of the country’s first deputy prime minister were performed in an “unceremonious” way.
“I am surprised that the Congress now praises Sardar Patel. Since my childhood, I have never heard any Congress leader talking about Patel. Instead, they left no stone unturned to insult Patel, right from performing his last rites in an unceremonious manner to ensuring that no monument was built in his memory,” Shah said, adding that it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had paid real tribute to Patel by constructing the Statue of Unity.
The BJP’s oft-repeated contention is that PM Jawaharlal Nehru had long-running differences with Patel over various issues, and owing to this, did not even attend Patel’s funeral.
As per sardarpatel.nvli.in, a portal created as part of the National Virtual Library of India project, under the National Mission of Libraries, Ministry of Culture, this is not true.
The portal says: “In November 1950, Patel fell severely ill from an intestinal disorder and high blood pressure. He was flown to Bombay for further treatment where his daughter Maniben nursed him with great devotion. But he suffered a stroke and (in) the early hours of 15th December, 1950, the Iron Man of India closed his eyes for the last time. The President of India, Rajendra Prasad, the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and many other leaders flew into Bombay for Patel’s funeral where a six mile long procession awaited to pay homage to one of India’s tallest leaders. The last rites were performed by Dahyabhai, Patel’s son, in the crematorium in Queens Road in Bombay.”
The portal adds that paying his tributes to Patel, Nehru said: “History… will call him the builder and consolidator of the new India.” Another tribute by Nehru quoted on the portal says: “Our nation has seen many a catastrophe. But nothing more distressing and gloomy as the death of Sardar, who stood behind all of us like a rock of strength, patience and courage.”
A report in The Hindustan Times on the funeral described how for 10 hours as Patel’s body lay in state, Bombay’s multitudes filed past it to pay their respects, “planes were arriving every few minutes from different parts of the country carrying a cross-section of the country’s leadership and condolence messages from far and near poured in”. “Then the last journey started at 5-20 p.m. along a four-mile route, with Maniben (Patel’s daughter) and Dahyabhai (son) sitting on either side of the cortege and with the Sardar’s nearest colleagues immediately following in a jeep. Men of the Defence Services, so dear to him, brought up the rear of the procession.”
“All along the route men and women, cramming the footpaths, balconies and windows, chanted Gandhiji’s favourite prayer hymn Raghupati-Raghava-Rajaram. Flowers were showered on the cortege as it moved slowly along the narrow Vithalbhai Patel Road. It was 7-20 p.m. when the procession reached the crematorium. The leaders took turns to carry on their shoulders their great comrade’s body on the last lap of the journey.”
As per an Indian Express report, the State mourned the death of Patel for a week and all public entertainment events were put to a halt. Nehru announced Patel’s demise to Parliament, saying: “We shall remember him as a friend and a colleague and a comrade above all, and I who have sat here on this bench side by side with him for these several years will feel rather forlorn and a certain emptiness will steal upon me when I look at this empty bench.” He also told the House: “My colleague Mr Rajagopalachari, and I are going almost immediately to pay our last tribute and homage to him in Bombay. I understand that the President has also decided to go to Bombay immediately, and the Speaker, Sir, went early this morning.” Whether others too would have wanted to go, Nehru added, “he (Patel), magnificent worker that he was, would not have liked us to leave our work and just go in large numbers to Bombay at this moment…”.
In his speech, Nehru also lauded Patel as “one of the principal lieutenants of the Father of the Nation and a great leader in India’s struggle”.
The portal created as part of the National Virtual Library of India project also says that despite his failing health, Patel “readily took charge of three ministries – Home, States and Information. In addition to this, he was also Deputy Prime Minister of India. During this period, whenever Nehru travelled abroad, Patel also shouldered the responsibility of being Acting Prime Minister… In addition to these responsibilities as a Minister, Patel was also a member of the Constituent Assembly that was preparing a draft Constitution for the nascent nation. In this connection, he was the Chairman of the Minorities sub-committee of the Assembly and he was concerned with abolishing the many differences that existed between the various people of India seeking that they all unite as a single community of Indians.”
As per the portal, the death of Mahatma Gandhi had come as a deep shock to Patel, causing a sharp deterioration in his health. Two months after Gandhi died, Patel suffered a heart attack in March 1948. “Upon regaining consciousness soon thereafter, Patel said ‘I was on my way to Bapu. Why did you stop me?’, underlying his deep attachment to Gandhi.”
Incidentally, in 2013, when Narendra Modi launched his first prime ministerial bid, the then Gujarat chief minister was quoted as telling an Ahmedabad paper, that Nehru had not gone for Patel’s funeral in Mumbai. After Congress leaders such as Digvijaya Singh contested this with video showing Nehru at the funeral, Modi had denied saying it, tweeting that the publication had also clarified that it had “wrongly” attributed the statement to him.
Later though, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad again claimed that not only did Nehru skip Patel’s funeral, but also Rajendra Prasad’s. “The issue here is of the relationship between Nehru and Sardar Patel. It was only in 1991 that Sardar Patel was given a Bharat Ratna by the Narasimha Rao government. Why was he overlooked by the governments of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi over the years?” Prasad said.
