Vallabhbhai Patel: The Limitations of Anti-Colonial Nationalism and Electoral Politics
By Rani Dhavan Shankardass
Orient BlackSwan, 968 pages, Rs 2,465  

With the passage of time, major players in India’s freedom struggle have been viewed from different perspectives to evaluate their lasting impact on our nation’s history. Of those who earned the privilege of being true statesmen, this book focuses on one such archetypical Indian leader – Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel – to re-examine aspects of India’s nationalist movement in its fight against colonial rule.

In the fight for independence, marked by feverish efforts towards fostering nationalism and unity, nationalism mutated from a goal to a tool and even a weapon in the hands of leaders from divergent backgrounds and ideologies. In examining the tensions between umbrella-nationalisms and mini-nationalisms, this book suggests why the problem of unity in diversity was and still remains unanswered.

Patel’s idea of nationalism was defined both by his antecedents and the overpowering atmosphere of anti-colonialism then prevailing. Patel single-mindedly, often singlehandedly, and sometimes manipulatively, achieved a much-needed political unity for India. There were oversights: an inability to recognise the limitations of anti-colonial nationalism in fostering the kind of unity that Patel desired from a highly diverse India; or sometimes fostering unity at the expense of diversity. Nevertheless, the consolidated territorial map that emerged as India that is Bharat was by all accounts a monumental achievement.

The author, a historian and activist, is also the director of the Penal Reform and Justice Association (PRAJA), New Delhi.
 
Here is an excerpt from the book:

‘A STRONG STEEL FRAME’
The Inherited Civil Service

How difficult would it be for the ‘nationalists’ to work the state model inherited from the British? Michael H. Lyon suggests that the ‘alien model of state-defined democracy confined the idea of responsibility considerably’, and also clouded a wise indigenous tradition of ‘consensualisation’; and that Patel recognised that ‘the nation/state relationship in India has been singularly organic and reciprocal’, and thus more able to articulate political and cultural aspects into a fully constituted whole. While the latter statement has some truth and was certainly a basis for mobilisation in its adversarial role, by the time Congress assumed state power Patel was fully conversant with the pros and cons of working in the language of the state, an essential ingredient of which was the acknowledgement and acceptance of its institutionalised and legitimate power and authority. In laying emphasis on those features rather than the responsibility aspect of democracy, Patel believed he could mitigate against the state machine being regarded as less ‘alien’, as Lyon perceived it, and more universal. Two challenges still remained: there was a change from rebellion to conformity that required a tempering of the spirit of defiance through discipline. There was also the question of grafting the brand new loyalty demanded by the state on to age-old organic reciprocal loyalties of group and community. The problematic was how the intimidating power of the abstract state would be translated into negotiable real-life idioms. The answer was, through an institutional machinery: the State’s bureaucracy.

Patel’s emerging political style was now tougher than before and he settled for going it alone if necessary, having learnt with some bitterness the lesson of relying on those supposedly close to him, for even Gandhi had let him down. For all their many differences on their visions of India after Britain’s departure, Nehru and Patel were in agreement on some vital aspects of the body politic. It was Gandhi who struck a discordant ‘humanistic’ note and appeared out of sync with the statist goals declared by Nehru and Patel, even if to be delivered and implemented through different methods. Focus on the state machinery as the surest way to regulate political activity to build the Indian nation was a feature that both leaders wished to make clear to the most ardent nationalists and fighters for freedom.

Implicit in this picture perhaps was a silent discourse on the idea of freedom, that many old, ardent nationalists believed had got lost in the new rhetoric. On this Patel and Nehru differed, even if they believed in the state as deliverer of everything valuable. Freedom, aside from that from colonial rule, was not Patel’s primary concern at that time, given that his idea of nationalism was not absolute, nor his idea of freedom ‘the absence of restraint’. Unlike the earlier experiment of holding office (1937), Congress in government in 1946–47 was not a dress rehearsal; it was a near-final show where using power and authority to build the Indian nation by engaging, and sometimes reconstructing, the state machinery was essential, and freedom or no freedom, this power had to be effectively used to counter setbacks arising out of communal clashes, dissensions and divisions. Patel was talking nation building now, not nationalism. Perhaps there was a distinction after all.

The adjustments required in this role-change from satyagrahi to statesman, even if not apparently dramatic, were a tall order even for a pragmatist like Patel. The rhetoric had to change; relationships had to be modified, sometimes even manipulated. Earlier methods that bungled in culturally differentiated clusters into all-inclusive national, anti-colonial and anti-state amalgams premised on social groupings had to give way to new ways of directing and housing altered and changed national aspirations into abstract state institutions, and Patel was tasked with creating and articulating fresh metaphors for these changes.

With control of the state as the declared goal of the whole fight for freedom now, a change in gear was needed that provided enough clarity and sharpness to elicit concrete, as opposed to ideological, support. The negative sentiments about state power voiced earlier had to be modified to effectively handle the nuts and bolts of government. The same structures of state used by the British could be maintained as long as the ethos of the new functionaries running the machine was nationalistic: that would distinguish their modus operandi and prevent the new state from being labelled ‘the new colonial’.

Whether something vital could be lost in this transformation was a moot point. There is some substance in Lyon’s lament that the national awakening that he calls ‘the cultural movement for nationalism’ was now focused on the state, and that the popular rising in which all classes, castes and communities ‘could pour in their initiatives’ faded into clinical institutional politics. It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise if self-government through the existing state structure was eventually the goal of the freedom movement. However the interesting part was that in essence the ‘cultural’ features that Lyon refers to were shaped by a feudalism that was actually alive and well, and if the merit of the abstract state was that it would neutralise these features that were symbols of inbuilt inequality, then the lamentable truth is that feudal characteristics never did leave the methods of governance completely.

For us to demonstrate Patel’s keenness for Congress to work the existing state model and use its authority efficiently and effectively is a far cry from suggesting a personal hankering for power either on his part or that of any of his colleagues in the ‘Cabinet’. Power and authority had acquired new connotations: its acceptance by the people, even if by exercising moral pressure, was the essential ingredient of that change. This was demonstrably apparent during the elections in the winter of 1946–47. With the 3 June Plan in place under Mountbatten’s pressure, and the inevitability of a divided India established beyond doubt due to the Muslim League’s persistent demand for a separate homeland for Muslims as well as a larger allocation in power sharing, Congress needed the AICC (the nearest it came to people’s assent) to endorse formalising the 3 June Plan to enable the Independence Bill to be passed by the British Parliament. Foreseeing difficulties, Nehru and Patel both addressed Congress delegates on the urgent need for Congress to ‘take responsibility’ for the state. The emphasis of the leaders of the two parties differed significantly as they referred to disturbances in the country and to the challenges posed by adversarial experiences in the Interim Government over nine months to demonstrate and justify the necessity of dividing the country to save it.

[The excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers.]

The Statue of Unity image, courtesy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Unity_-Sardar_Sarovar_Dam,_Kevadia-Gujarat_-DSC_0003.jpg