First published on NewsYaps
Last week saw the resurrection of a rather old controversy:
who owns the legacy of Vallabhbhai Patel? Invited by the Prime Minster to
inaugurate a museum on Patel, Modi, with characteristic rudeness, used the
platform to attack Nehru, bemoaning the fact that Patel wasn’t chosen as the
first Prime Minster of a Free India. Singh, though, came back with a spirited
reply, pointing out the fact that Patel, just like himself, was a Congressman
and believed in secularism.
This is the latest outbreak of a long simmering controversy,
the biggest expression of which (literally) is the Statueof Unity that Modi plans to build. A statue of Patel, the monument
will be the tallest statue in the world and will cost a whopping Rs 2,500 crore.
To put this in perspective, this is almost equal to the Rs 2,700 crore the entire state of Gujarat spent
on education last year. Of course, in spite of this monumental wastage, unlike
Mayawati’s rather more modest statues (2,987th tallest in the world)
there has been no brouhaha over it amongst the urban middle class. Welcome to
post-caste India, ladies and gentleman, where some statues are more #1 than
others.
Of course, much of this is a manufactured controversy. While
Singh was factually correct when he pointed out that Patel was a Congressman,
his implication that his legacy only belonged to the current-day Congress was not.
The fact of the matter is the both the Congress and BJP are
miles away from the pre-independence Congress built by Gandhi and Singh’s party
has no monopoly over claiming this legacy. Firstly, the Congress has ignored
almost every politician who isn’t a Nehru-Gandhi. Ironically, even Nehru stands
forgotten by the current party, with Rajiv towering over his naana
if we measure stature by counting things that each have named after them. Patel’s
forgotten legacy was ripe for the picking.
Secondly, given Patel’s largely Right-wing bent, it is
hardly unnatural that the BJP/RSS would look to his legacy as a source of
inspiration. Given how the hard Right (the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha) were
mostly absent during the freedom struggle, Patel is a best fit.
In this whole rush by some sections of the Congress and the
media to delegitimise the current Right’s claim on Patel, what is often
forgotten is that the pre-independence Congress party was largely a Right-of centre
part. It was pro-capitalist (being controlled by the middle and upper classes)
and religion was a huge and, indeed, integral part of its functioning. It was
also, almost exclusively, a Hindu party (in membership, not necessarily in
ideology), its programmes being almost completely devoid of Muslim
participation, a natural consequence of which was that in 1946, it failed to
win even a single Muslim seat across the sub-continent (in the central assembly,
which later on went to become the Constituent Assembly).
Of course, the Congress did have a Left-wing but it was
feeble and largely ineffective. Socialist like JP and Kripalani were so powerless
within the party that they eventually left the Congress to form socialist
parties of their own.
Post-1947, though, Nehru, using his enormous utility as a
vote-catcher, tried to effect a significant turnaround. Economically, contrary
to the generally held view, Nehru was fairly open to foreign capital; indeed,
he was desperate for it. Relations with Britain remained strong—the USSR
alliance is more a creation of Indira than her father. It was with respect to
religion in politics though, that Nehru was able to launch a determined and, in
retrospect, remarkable rear guard action. In speech after speech, Nehru
insisted that India was not going to become a "Hindu Pakistan" and
that religion had no space in the business of governance in India.
In this, Patel, the tallest leader of the Right-wing (which
was, remember, still the strongest bloc within the party) was less than
impressed. Till his death Patel clashed constantly with Nehru and often had his
way, installing Rajendra Prasad as the first President (whose abiding
contribution to our history will remain his opposition and delaying of the Hindu
code bills which modernised Hindu personal law) and PD Tandon as the Congress
President, defeating Nehru’s candidate Kripalani. Patel was also the person
responsible for initiating the Somnath Temple project and if it wasn’t for his
death and Nehru’s opposition, Independent India might have started its innings
as a modern nation by spending its time and resources building places of
worship. But, of course, what endears Patel most to the BJP might be his hard-line
stance on Muslims, post-Partition. The Sardar made it very clear that he did
not trust Muslims after their role in supporting the League. In a letter to
Nehru, Patel bluntly wrote:
“Muslim citizens in India have a responsibility to
remove the doubts and misgivings entertained by a large section of the
population about their loyalty [to India]”
In another remarkably Orwellian incident (that occurred,
ironically, the same year that 1984 was published), Patel’s
Home Ministry wrote a letter to the secretaries of all other departments instructing
them to produce a list of all Muslim employees whose “loyalty to the Dominion
of India is suspected”. Once identified for committing this Thoughtcrime, the
members of this list would be excluded from “holding key positions or handling
confidential or secret work.”
Given these facets of Patel, it's very understandable that
the RSS/BJP would look to cast him as their political predecessor.
That said, for all his warts, Patel was still very removed
in degree, if not in orientation, from the current ideology of the RSS/BJP. This gulf becomes the sharpest when one
recalls that Patel actually did what no Indian government could do after him: he
banned the RSS. He called the RSS a “clear threat to the existence of the
Government and the State” and blamed them for vitiating the atmosphere which
led to his mentor’s murder. “The followers of the Sangh have celebrated
Gandhiji's assassination by distributing sweets, " Patel complained
bitterly in a letter to SP Mukherjee.
Even more remarkable was Patel’s position on the Babri
Masjid controversy that had just broken out in 1948. In a letter to PD Tandon (and
a key mover in getting the then functional masjid converted into a temple),
Patel warned Tandon that “there can be no question of resolving such disputes
by force. In that case, the force of law and order will have to maintain peace
at all costs.” He also made it clear that the solution would have to be a joint
one and “such matters can only be resolved peacefully if we take the willing
consent of the Muslim community with us." A rather far cry from the BJP
chant of “Babar ki Aulad, Wapas Jao” and “Ek Dhakka aur Do” as it illegally tore
the mosque down.
And, of course, in what would be called “minority
appeasement” today, Patel in a speech in the Constituent Assembly said, “it is
for us who happen to be in a majority to think about what the minorities feel
and imagine how we would feel if we were treated in the manner in which they
are treated." How very sickular.
Right and Left are relative terms, and their meaning depends
much on time and context. In Pakistan, the PPP, a party which banned
Ahmedis from calling themselves Muslim (I would use the term ‘Orwellian’ but
what’s the use), is considered Leftist.
In the Indian context, it's instructive to see how much the definition
of the Right has changed. Patel—a man who banned the RSS, called for consensus
on the Babri Masjid issue and spoke about the plight of minorities in post-Partition
India—was once the leader of the Right wing in India. Today, the leader of the
Right-wing in India is an RSS swayamsevak, belonging to a party which literally
demolished the Babri Masjid and thinks that minorities, far from being oppressed,
are “baby-making factories” which are being mollycoddled by the state.
Possibly, the real lesson from this attempt by Modi to draw
a descent from Patel is to contrast the two and see how drastically and
fanatically to the Right, India has shifted in the 60-odd years since
Independence.
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