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The story of Sardar Patel’s life
is easily told. The traditional date of his birth is October 31,
1875. But really speaking, nobody knows the exact day on which
he was born. The traditional date is what he gave for his
matriculation examination and he never changed it - rather
typical of the consistancy which characterised his mental
make-up.
He had three
great ambitions. First of all, he wanted to consolidate India.
In the five thousand years of its history, India was never
united: it had always been a group of different states.
Vallabhbhai wanted to bring into existence a united, homogeneous
India when it became a republic in 1950.
His second
ambition was to ensure the survival of a united country through
the instrument of a strong civil service. He conceived of the
Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in place of the Indian Civil
Service (ICS), and it was he who also conceived of the Indian
Police Service (IPS). Both these services are very much active
today.
His third
ambition was to make India economically strong, prosperous and
progressive. This ambition remains to be fulfilled.
Among the women
who effectively participated in India’s freedom movement,
Maniben Patel, Sardar Patel’s daughter, was one of the
foremost. She devoted her entire life to the service of the
country. She remained unmarried and took care of Gandhi’s
health during the prime of her life. Later, for a number of
years she took care of her own father. It is widely believed
that but for her devoted care, Sardar Patel would not have
continued to live as long as he did, nor achieve what he did in
India’s service.
Maniben saw to
it that people did not tire the Sardar by unduly prolonging
their stay. When she felt that discussion on a particular issue
wasover, she would caution the visitors that their time was up
and that they should leave. If she found that Sardar Patel was
at fault in unnecessarily prolonging a discussion, she would
hold her watch in front of her father and the Sardar would tell
his visitors that he had been shown the watch and warned. She
thus prevented him from tiring himself. The nation should be
grateful to her for this great service.
Fortunately,
Maniben Patel had maintained a diary in which she had recorded
what happened during the years she was with her father and took
care of his health. She was absolutely honest, keenly observed
what happened when people came and met the Sardar, and how the
Sardar dealt with the many problems that faced the nation.
Maniben’s
diary is of inestimable value to scholars, statesmen and laymen
alike. It throws light on the innermost thoughts of Sardar Patel
which he could not otherwise express even to his closest
friends. Maniben was invariably present with the Sardar at all
his meetings excepting, of course, the strictly official ones
and would later record whatever transpired in those meetings,
particularly Sardar’s views on highly important issues facing
the country, the Congress party and the government.
It would appear
that Maniben meticulously maintained a diary from 8 June, 1936,
till Sardar expired on December 15, 1950. Maniben would note
down Sardar’s speeches in Parliament and keep his
correspondence handy, besides date-wise notes of visitors and
talks conducted with them. Before going to bed, she would make
her notes in her diary. She would wake up before the "Pir"
Sardar did and get ready to serve him in her multiple roles as
Sardar’s daughter, secretary, washerwoman and nurse, all in
one. Naturally, no entries were written when the Sardar or
Maniben Patel were in prison which was frequent -- during
individual satyagraha in 1939 and later on during the Quit India
movement in 1942, which kept them both behind bars till 1945.
Maniben has
described how she took up the work of secretarial assistance to
Sardar Patel at the end of the Bardoli satyagraha in 1928. She
writes: "It was suggested that somebody should give him
secretarial help…If someone is to be kept, why not I? From
1929 until his death, I preserved his correspondence whenever
possible. Once when K.Gopalaswami, political commentator of the
Times of India, visited him in his flat on Marine Drive, Bombay,
the Sardar called for a letter he had received from C.
Rajagopalachari, forgetting that he had torn it up and thrown it
in the wastepaper basket. Fortunately, I had collected the
pieces. It took me some time to paste them together before
passing it on to him. This happened before that Interim
Government was formed…
"The
Sardar travelled second-class by train before he became a
minister. I would spread his bedding at night and retire to a
third-class compartment. But from 1934 when there was much
correspondence to attend to even on train journeys and people
came to see him at the various stations, I kept company with him
in his second-class compartment. I used to make copies of
important letters he wrote by hand, but he would question this,
asking why I was taking such trouble and wasting time. I also
kept newspaper clippings of important events with which he was
associated.
After 1945, the
secretarial functions of the Congress Parliamentary Board were
undertaken mainly by Shantilal Shah. The Sardar was undergoing
treatment for intestinal trouble at the Nature Cure Clinic,
Poona, when he sent for Shantilal Shah from Bombay. Shah, a
Congress Socialist, hesitated at first because he did not know
what was in store for him. But B.G. Kher, the Premier of Bombay,
advised him to take up the work. The Sardar told Shah he wanted
him to act as his secretary at the Parliamentary Board Office
located at the headquarters of the Bombay Pradesh Congress
Committee."
Maniben adds:
"I used to sleep by the telephone to take calls that came
at odd hours of the night so that father’s sleep was not
disturbed. I took down messages and passed them on to him the
next morning. One such call came at midnight from Biswanath Das,
them Premier of Orissa. He had decided to resign over the choice
of a provincial official to act as Governor. The Sardar backed
him and the Viceroy yielded."
Even after the
Sardar had taken over as Deputy Prime Minister and Home
Minister, Maniben continued to deal with his Gujarati
correspondence, while V. Shankar, Sardar’s Private Secretary,
attended to English correspondence.
This immensely
significant source of information, originally written in
Gujarati in Maniben’s own hand, was never published even in
Gujarati, let alone translated into English. This is for the
first time that it is being published.
The diary
entries of the earlier years are somewhat perfunctory but in the
later years, and particularly after the release of Sardar Patel
from jail in 1945, they are far move detailed and deal with
important and sensitive matters of great import. Sardar
expressed his opinions about events and individuals freely and
frankly, which were faithfully recorded by his daughter who was
like his shadow and accompanied him everywhere.
Her opinion and
estimate of many of the leaders and the people Sardar Patel met,
which she recorded while her father was still alive, are not
only interesting but revealing of the personality of those who
met him and of the many problems which they discussed with
Sardar and sought his opinion.
Sardar Patel
emerges from the diary as a man of action and unbending will,
singularly focussed on service to the nation, capable of putting
the bigger cause above his own, forthright and blunt, and a man
of honour who repeatedly set aside his own ambitions at the
request of his mentor. The book also contains a simple, touching
estimation of her father by Maniben, as also a comprehensive
biographical sketch of Maniben Patel herself.
Maniben Patel’s diary both
fills in and fleshes out some of India’s most epochal years,
and those of one of its tallest leaders. As such its importance
and value for both the scholar and the inquiring citizen can
hardly be exaggerated.
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