Patel and Nehru: Common purpose; contrasting pathways

‘Sardar has his feet on the ground, while Nehru has his in the clouds!’ These words, attributed to Viceroy Mountbatten, provide a framework to understand India’s tallest leaders at the dawn of her independence. They also serve as a window into their relationship, particularly in light of the episode involving the accession of princely states and their integration into India.

In February 1947, when British Prime Minister Clement Atlee declared that Britain would withdraw from India by June 1948, only about half of the Indian subcontinent was ruled directly by the British (British India). The other half – roughly 45 per cent – was ruled by rajas and nawabs (Princely India), who had accepted the British monarch as their paramount power by signing a treaty with the British crown via an arrangement known as ‘paramountcy’. This division was cemented after the Uprising of 1857, when Britain abandoned the policy of annexation followed by the East India Company, and began entering into treaty relations in respect of the yet-to-be conquered territories. In 1947, nearly 28 per cent of the subcontinent’s population lived in these princely states.

In the decades before, the Congress party had, at the behest of Gandhi, followed a policy of non-intervention in the princely states, a stand supported by Vallabhbhai Patel. They were already battling the British and jostling with the Muslim League in British India, and did not think it expedient to open up yet another front of confrontation with the princes. And so, for many years, the Congress did not directly step into the princely states. However, they supported the activities of the praja mandals, also known collectively as the All India States Peoples Conference (AISPC), that agitated for people’s rights in the princely states.

Atlee’s announcement about Britian’s withdrawal from India also meant that the treaties between the princes and the British crown would become redundant. Despite protests by many of the princes, Britain was going to unilaterally pull out of those treaties, bringing the arrangement of paramountcy to an end. The princes, now released from their treaty obligations, were free to do as they pleased to determine their future. They could, if they wished, join India; or join Pakistan; or remain free.

This was an alarming proposition for the Congress. That the nation was going to be divided, and large parts were to be ceded to Pakistan, was enough of a blow. The prospect of further fragmentation was frightening, leaving the leaders with no choice but to abandon the policy of non-intervention and engage directly with the rulers. If the princely states stayed out, India would not have been the consolidated nation that we see on the map today. Instead, it would have been a fractured land with territorial gaps, foreign nations, and pockets of Pakistan inside it!

Fearing this balkanisation of a nation yet to be born, Nehru flared up at a meeting of senior leaders on 13 June 1947, accusing Conrad Corfield, the Viceroy’s Political Adviser, of misfeasance. Corfield, he said, had been conspiring with the princes to turn their kingdoms into independent nations, and had been orchestrating the lighting of great bonfires to burn records of clandestine matters and scandalous affairs of the maharajas and nawabs, so as to prevent them from falling into the hands of the future Indian Government. Nehru was seething, as was Patel. But even as Nehru simmered and screamed, senatorial Patel sat in stoic silence.

Following Nehru’s outburst, a States Department was created to manage the huge challenge of the princely states. However, as the diary of Sardar’s daughter Maniben reveals, from early 1947, Patel had already begun wooing the rulers and their diwans through a string of meetings.

As soon as the States Department was put in place, a framework and a formula to bring in the princely states was proposed by VP Menon, able Secretary to the States Department, who some called ‘the velvet glove on Sardar’s iron fist’. The rulers, he suggested, should be asked to hand in their rights to the Government of India only in respect of three key subjects – defence, external affairs, and communications. For all other matters, the independence and the sovereignty of the princely kingdoms would not be touched.

Sardar wasted no time in reaching out to the nearly 600 princes with this proposition, forgetting past hostilities, and encouraging them to do the same. Using a combination of the four-pronged approach of persuasion prescribed in the Arthashastra, Kautilya’s classical treatise on economics and politics, Sardar employed all the methods of sama, dana, danda and bheda to achieve his goal of national integration.

In his public statement of 5 July 1947 to the princes, he said that it was an accident that some lived in the princely states while others lived in British India, although everyone shared the same culture and were ‘knit together by the same bonds of blood’. He cleared misunderstandings that the rulers harboured about the formula for accession, and reminded them about the momentous stage of history where the spotlight was on them. ‘Let future generations not curse us,’ he appealed to them, asking them to ‘bear in mind’ that the ‘alternative to co-operation’ was ‘anarchy and chaos’.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the AISPC in Indore in May 1947, Nehru expressed his anguish at the situation, stating that the princely states which did not join India would be considered as ‘hostile’ states by the Government of India, and that they would have to bear the consequences of being treated as such. This statement created quite a stir and sowed seeds of mistrust among the princes, whose ‘short-sighted’ approach Nehru termed was akin to a ‘shopkeeper mentality’.

On the ground, every state had its own challenges. While Jammu and Kashmir had a Muslim majority with Hindu ruler, Rampur had a Hindu majority with a Muslim ruler. The diwan of Junagadh was Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a Muslim Leaguer known to be close to Jinnah, while the Constitutional Adviser to the nawab of Bhopal was Zafarullah Khan, who was to become Pakistan’s first foreign minister; both Bhutto and Khan tried to influence their kings to accede to Pakistan. Hyderabad was ruled by one of the richest men in the world; one whose ambitions were being fanned by a fanatic. Meanwhile, in the drought-hit desert kingdom of Jodhpur, located between India and Pakistan, an inexperienced young ruler had been nearly swayed by Jinnah’s offer to join Pakistan. The task of bringing together nearly 600 states, spread across the subcontinent – some larger than nations in Europe, some too small to even be seen on a map – was a challenge that had known no parallels anywhere in the world.

Having witnessed Nehru’s moody meltdowns – first in May 1947 in Shimla, then in Delhi during the meeting of 13th June 1947 – the Viceroy made the following note in his weekly report to London: I am glad to say that Nehru has not been put in charge of the new States Department, which would have wrecked everything. Patel, who is essentially a realist and very sensible, is going to take it over... Even better news is that VP Menon is to be the Secretary. By this means, I think we shall avoid a really bad break with the states with all the endless repercussions that this would have entailed.

The view that Sardar was the best man for this impossible task was also endorsed by Gandhi, who is believed to have said to Patel: ‘The problem of the princely states is so difficult, that you alone can solve it.’

Mountbatten’s view that opens this piece captures the essence of the attitude of the two leaders. While they both saw monarchy as feudal and medieval, and had nothing but disdain for royal titles and princely privileges, idealistic Nehru took up the cudgels, while pragmatic Sardar drew up a battleplan.

Sardar’s daughter Mani once asked him why he did not write a biography or pen his memoirs, as other figures like Gandhi and Nehru had been doing. Sardar is believed to have laughed off the suggestion with a remark: ‘Why not create history,’ he said to his daughter, ‘rather than waste time writing it!’

He spent his time in this world creating history, so writers like myself could spend ours writing it.

Mallika Ravikumar’s book 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India, published by Hachette India, is a work of creative non-fiction that narrates a state-wise account of the gripping saga of accession for young adults and above. The book has been shortlisted for the Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize, 2024. She is mallika.ravikumar on Instagram.