New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani has once again chimed in his views on the relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhai Patel. In his recent blog the BJP patriarch has quoted several articles that suggest that the duo disagreed with each other on multiple issues.
Earlier in his blog, Advani had written that prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru called Sardar Patel a "total communalist" when the latter suggested that army be sent to take over a defiant Hyderabad after Independence.
Advani had referred to extracts of a book - "The Story of an Era Told without Ill Will" by MKK Nair which deals with the "sharp exchange" between Nehru and Patel in a Cabinet meeting before "police action" against Hyderabad.
The Congress had slammed the BJP leader for taking up the wrong facts.
Here is the full text of Advani's blog:
Deepavali issue published last week is a Special one on India's Hundred Years of Cinema. The issue has prominently carried a longish interview with me. The journal's Editor, Prafulla Ketkar, accompanied by his correspondent, Pramod Kumar, had recorded this interview a fortnight back. I notice that both the Telegraph as well as the Amrit Bazar Patrika have carried news items about my interview.
Two years back when I published a compilation of blogposts I had written in the preceding two years I requested MJ Akbar, one of India's most outstanding journalists to write the Foreword. And he had responded to my request with an excellent write-up. The concluding paragraph of this four-page write-up read:
"This collection will not clarify every query about the career of Lal Krishna Advani, but it will certainly answer one. He has held two portfolios in a Union Government, once as minister of information and broadcasting under Morarji Desai, and twice as home minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. His mind was embedded in the home ministry, but his heart belonged to information and broadcasting."
Actually, it was as I&B Minister that I had met Akbar for the first time, and that too in Pakistan. In my memoirs titled My Country, My Life, I have recalled my first trip back to my birthplace, Karachi, where I spent the first twenty years of my life, thus:
"I was on my way back from Paris, where I had gone to attend a UNESCO Conference. It was a short trip, just two days, because the Parliament Session was about to commence. Oddly, it was cricket that took me to Karachi. For the first time, Doordarshan was covering an Indo-Pak test match and I was invited in my capacity as India's I&B minister. I was naturally overjoyed. I wanted only two things from the visit: an opportunity to visit my house, and my school. It was really a delightful surprise to find Father Modestine, who was the principal of St. Patrick's High School when I used to study there, and who had long since retired, personally present at the schoolgate to receive me. Incidentally, it was in Karachi in 1978 that I first met MJ Akbar, an erudite Editor and author, whose friendship I have cherished since then. He was working for Sunday magazine those days and I recall that he covered my 'homecoming' in his report on the cricket match."
MJ Akbar has obviously been following these days my blogs relating to Sardar Patel. It is he who pointed out to me that the name of the British General heading the Indian Army in 1947 had been misspelt. I added a footnote to the blog and had it corrected. In the context of Nehru's differences with Sardar Patel, he has commended to me an excellent book by Balraj Krishna, titled India's Bismarck, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The book is sponsored by Sardar Patel Trust, Karamsad. Karamsad is the birth place of Sardar Patel.
In today's blog I propose to quote just one excerpt from this book which not only confirmed that Sardar Patel walked out of the Cabinet Committee meeting when harsh words were used against him, but also indicates that shortly thereafter, VP Menon also left the meeting.
The book, India's Bismarck, records:
"In a democratic set-up, cabinet sanction was essential for Police Action. Patel faced a formidable task in overcoming Nehru's reluctance. At one of the meetings of the defence committee, of which Nehru was the chairman, there was so much bitterness that Sardar Patel walked out. "Seeing his seat vacant," VP Menon told a Rotary meeting in Bombay, "I too walked out five minutes later." This seemed to have shaken Nehru out of his complacent mood, and mellowed his opposition. Later, at a meeting attended by the governor general (Rajagopalachari), the prime minister, the home minister (Patel), and secretary to the states ministry (Menon), "It was decided to order troops into Hyderabad".
Patel had yet to face the Hamlet in Nehru. The British commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, General Roy Bucher, persuaded Nehru that "even at that late stage the campaign should be called off as militarily risky, and hazardous on grounds of internal security in the whole country". About midnight on September 12 , after he had spoken to Nehru, Bucher attempted "a rare feat" in pulling Patel "out of bed at that hour" and advised him to at least postpone action for fear of air attacks on Bombay and Ahmedabad. Patel reminded Bucher "how London had suffered during the Great War, and coolly assured him that Ahmedabad and Bombay both could stand up to an attack if it came".
Gen. Bucher, KM Munshi writes, "Was hesitant throughout. He overestimated the capacity of the Hyderabad army, underestimated that of his own troops, and knew not the ability of the Sardar ...to deal with the problems of internal law and order. Like most Englishmen, he was unable to realise that no price was too high to be paid for eliminating the Razakar menace which threatened the very existence of India". In HVR Iengar's view, "The verdict of history will be that the Sardar was right" and a verdict with which Nehru wholeheartedly agreed later.
Indian troops marched into Hyderabad on September 13. The campaign was named "Operation Polo". It lasted barely 108 hours!
In his monumental book, Integration of the Indian States, VP Menon, after describing Operation Polo at some length, concludes:
"On 17 September, Laik Ali (Prime Minister of the Nizam) and his cabinet tendered their resignations. The Nizam sent for KM Munshi (who had been under house arrest ever since the Police Action began) and informed him that he had given orders for his army to surrender; that he would be forming a new government; that Indian troops were free to go to Secunderabad and Bolarum, and that the Razakars would be banned. Munshi communicated this to the Government of India. Major-General Chaudhuri took charge as Military Governor on September 18. The members of the Laik Ali ministry were placed under house arrest. Rizvi was arrested on September 19 .
There was not a single communal incident in the whole length and breadth of India throughout the time of the operation. There was universal jubilation at the swift and successful ending of the Hyderabad episode and messages of congratulation poured in to the Government of India from all parts of the country."
TAILPIECE
I recall the pain of a day, way back around 1958, when our party lost in a Delhi corporation election. To help forget our sorrow, Atalji and I went and saw a movie at a theatre close to our party office, in Paharganj. That theatre was Imperial and the film we saw was the Raj Kapoor-Mala Sinha starre Phir Subha Hogi, based on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The lyrics of the film were excellently written by Sahir Ludhianvi, and the words of one uplifting song went thus:
Wo subah kabhi to ayegi...
Jab dukh ke baadal pighlenge, jab sukh ka saagar chhalkega
Jab ambar jhoomke naachega, Jab dharti naghme gaayegi
Wo subah kabhi to ayegi
Thirty years later, in 1998, when Vajpayeeji became our Prime Minister, I recalled our poll defeat and affirmed, "Wo subah aayi hai, aur humhi usey laaye hain".
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