Sardar Patel, the Gandhian
There is a particular irony to a self-proclaimed ‘Hindu nationalist’ like Narendra Modi laying claim to the legacy of a Gandhian leader who would never have qualified his Indian nationalism with a religious label. Sardar Patel believed in equal rights for all, irrespective of their religion or caste. And, as I argued in Parliament, he explicitly approved the idea and the text of Article 370 before it was inserted into the Constitution.
It is true that at the time of Partition Sardar Patel was inclined to believe, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, that an entire community had seceded. In my 2003 biography, Nehru: The Invention of India, I have given some examples of Nehru and Sardar Patel clashing on this issue. But there are an equal number of examples where Sardar Patel, if he had to choose between what was the right thing for the Hindus and what was the right thing morally, invariably plumped for the moral Gandhian approach.
An example, so often distorted by the Sangh Parivar apologists, was his opposition to Jawaharlal Nehru’s pact with Liaquat Ali Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, on the question of violence in East Pakistan against the Hindu minority. The Nehru–Liaquat pact was indeed criticised by Sardar Patel, and he disagreed quite ferociously with Jawaharlal Nehru on the matter. But when Pandit Nehru insisted on his position, it was Sardar Patel who gave in, and his reasoning was entirely Gandhian: that violence in West Bengal against Muslims essentially took away Indians’ moral right to condemn violence against Hindus in East Pakistan. That was not a Hindu nationalist position but a classically Gandhian approach as an Indian nationalist.