Mohan Guruswamy
Here is a later and fuller post of mine.
Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad Opinions
Thursday 21 February 2019
Today the president of the BJP Bharatiya Janata Party, Shri Amit Shah asserted : “Kashmir remained a problem only because of Jawaharlal Nehru. Sardar Patel tackled Hyderabad and it is now respectfully part of India, but Jawaharlal Nehru tackled Kashmir and it continues to be a problem... Kashmir is simmering because of Jawaharlal Nehru. Had Patel been the prime minister at the time, Kashmir would not have remained a problem...”
Does the president of the BJP Bharatiya Janata Party, Shri Amit Shah, even know that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was in favour of Partition, and further, was OK with ALL of Kashmir going to Pakistan ?
As early as November 1946, Sardar Patel had accepted the idea of Partition, whereas Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad reluctantly accepted the idea of Partition only in June 1947, when the communal riots were overwhelming.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's arguments were that India could not apply the same rationale for both Kashmir and Hyderabad. That in Kashmir, the Hindu Maharaja's decision alone mattered, irrespective of the wishes of the Muslim majority population. And in Hyderabad, the Hindu majority population opinion alone mattered, overriding that of the Muslim Nizam of Hyderabad.
Even in 1947, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had warned that it would bleed India badly for decades to hold on to Kashmir. That Kashmir would be a severe drain on the financial and military resources of India. "Jawahar, tum ro-ogay", warned the Sardar.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel felt that India would be better off without Kashmir, and should concentrate its scarce resources on economic development, rather than on subsidizing Kashmir.
But the invasion of Pakistani raiders inspired by Jinnah changed the scenario totally. Patel then threw all his energies into supporting the defence of Kashmir by India.
Kashmir in 1947 was a highly complex volatile fast changing situation. The actual ground realities may never be really known. Maharaja Hari Singh was changing his prime minister and advisors every few weeks. In fact, many of the Hindu advisors (Ram Chandra Kak, and some Dogras) of Maharaja Hari Singh tilted towards Pakistan, strange as it may sound today.
In fact, after a lot of intrigue and manipulation, Sardar Patel succeeded in placing his trusted man, Meher Chand Mahajan, as the prime minister of Kashmir, just a week before the Pakistani tribesmen invaded. Only after a month after the Pakistani invasion did Nehru get Sheikh Abdullah appointed as the chief emergency officer.
It would be illuminating to conduct a comprehensive cost benefit analysis about the cost of holding on to Kashmir since 1947. To see whether India would be economically better off without having to subsidise Kashmir, as Sardar Patel had contended.
But no country will willingly give up strategic territory of great military importance.
In this matter, I think that Jawaharlal Nehru was correct. Irrespective of the financial drain on the rest of India, giving up Kashmir would mean that the plains would be highly vulnerable to aggression by Pakistan and China. If India's international borders were the plains, there would be no defence against attacks from Pakistan and China.
It was junior British army officers who captured Gilgit and Baltistan for Pakistan.
Further, a large amount of India's rivers originate in Tibet, and flow through Kashmir. Ceding Kashmir to Pakistan would put India's water supply at great risk.
In fact, it is little known today that immediately after the Pakistani invasion of Kashmir, Jawaharlal Nehru had ordered the Indian army to attack Pakistani Punjab across Jhelum, but was stymied by Lord Louis Mountbatten and Phillip Noel Baker. Nehru had a furious showdown with the British commander in chief of the Indian army.
In fact, Jawaharlal Nehru had also inquired of the Indian army if it was possible for India to stake claims over Tibet, and was advised by the Indian army that it was not militarily possible to control Tibet.
Since 2012, with their visceral hatred of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Hindutva Sangha Parivar have been asserting that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel should have been made prime minister instead of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947.
But there were several good reasons why Nehru was chosen over Patel.
1. Since the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi had chosen Nehru to be the leader of free India. Gandhi told Patel several times that he should consider Nehru as his leader. I have posted several times about what Mahatma Gandhi had written to Sardar Patel that he should consider Jawaharlal Nehru as his leader even though Nehru was 14 years younger than Patel.
2. Nehru had excellent relations with other world leaders, while Patel was little known outside India, and did not have a personal rapport with other world leaders. A young nation needed all the friends it could get, and Nehru had the international stature that he could pick up the telephone and call any world leader.
3. In 1947, Nehru was 58 to Patel's 72. Nehru was in excellent health whereas Patel was in poor health and died in 1950. Congress had a history of choosing younger healthier leaders in all party elections. (If you look at all elections of the Congress party since 1885, most of the winners were the younger and fitter candidate. Most of the presidents of the Congress party were in their forties, and many were in their thirties, such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, etc.) If Patel had been chosen in 1947, the country would have to go through another succession struggle in 1950, when Patel passed away.
4. Patel had an authoritarian streak. When Congress party members today refer to Party High Command, it was set up by Patel. Patel had sacked Khare, premier of Central Provinces. Nehru talked and reasoned with people who disagreed with him, while Patel bulldozed them. Khare's sacking was a flag of what Patel could do to people who did not toe his line. In those days Party High Command meant Sardar Patel just as today it means Sonia Gandhi.
5. Nehru was more acceptable to the British, especially since defence and financial arrangements with the British continued even after 1947. Even though Sardar Patel was a Middle Temple Barrister, he did not have the wide contacts that Nehru did in the class conscious British Establishment due to his Harrow and Cambridge education.
6. There were suspicions and perceptions that Patel would favour Hindus over minorities, whereas Nehru was totally secular. Even though Patel was objective and just, there was a perception that when it came to the crunch, he would favour Hindus over other communities.
7. As I stated earlier, (and contrary to what prime minister Narendra Modi stated in parliament last year and Amit Shah stated today), Patel had accepted Partition from the very beginning, whereas Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru fought against Jinnah's idea of Partition. Patel felt from the outset that Partition was better than having an unwieldy confederation of states. Patel felt that having a 75% independent and unified India without Pakistan was a better solution. Gandhi and Nehru opposed Partition and only agreed to it very reluctantly after the riots of March 1947. But to his credit, Patel insisted that Punjab and Bengal be partitioned, whereas Jinnah was claiming all of Punjab and all of Bengal. Patel thus saved East Punjab and West Bengal for India.
8. And significantly, as I described in detail above, Patel was not averse to Kashmir going to Pakistan. Patel had accepted Jinnah's demand that Kashmir should go to Pakistan, and Patel felt that if Kashmir acceded to India, it would create more problems for India in the long run. The Sangh Parivar today glosses over this fact that Sardar Patel was willing to give up Kashmir to Pakistan. In contrast, Nehru was insistent that Kashmir should come to India, probably because of his Kashmiri descent.
To sum up, Patel's forte was administration, and he was the right choice for home minister and deputy prime minister, especially in charge of security.
But Patel had little experience of international affairs which Nehru did, having travelled widely and personally interacted with world leaders.
The previous time I wrote about why Jawaharlal Nehru became prime minister instead of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, I received tonnes of hate speech from trolls, and my Facebook account was suspended for several weeks, because Hindutva Sangha Parivar trolls alleged that I praised a suppressor of Hindus, ie Jawaharlal Nehru.
By Ravi Visvesvaraya Sharada Prasad
Thursday 21 February 2019
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