New Delhi, Oct. 31 (The Telegraph): The day Vallabhbhai Patel was born and Indira Gandhi died marked the BJP’s most powerful shot yet at refashioning pecking orders in official Indian history.
As Patel’s 139th birth anniversary the day symbolised Indian unity, was the message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As the 30th anniversary of the riots triggered by Indira’s assassination, it stood for a “dagger” in the heart of that unity.
Serial tweets from the handles of nearly every central minister and national-level party official celebrated the “run for unity” the Prime Minister had flagged off on Rajpath.
Modi had planned it long ago as a tribute to Patel, whose equations with Indira’s father and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru are still hotly debated. But the underpinnings of Modi’s visual paean were too obviously political.
“The Congress abandoned Patel,” was historian and author Ramachandra Guha’s take on it. “The Congress is about four leaders: Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and at a stretch, Mahatma Gandhi. Everything else is ignored.”
He added: “The RSS was adroit and crafty and went for it. In the last Gujarat election, Sonia Gandhi promised a women’s insurance scheme and said she would name it after Indira Gandhi. Modi had not mentioned Patel until then. If she were smart, she would have said, ‘I will name it after Patel’.”
Past Prime Ministers, including the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, used to visit the Indira memorial at Shakti Sthal to offer their respects on her death anniversary. Modi skipped the ritual.
He, however, tweeted: “I join my fellow countrymen & women in remembering former PM Smt. Indira Gandhi on her Punya Tithi.”
Narendra Modi at the Run For Unity at Rajghat to mark Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s birth anniversary. Picture by Prem Singh
Later, during his speech after the launch of the run, Modi played up Patel’s efforts to unite India against the anti-Sikh pogrom (which he alluded to indirectly) that followed Indira’s assassination.
“Centuries ago, history remembered Chanakya as one who had merged several kingdoms and principalities into one because he was imbued with just one dream: to make us one integrated nation,” Modi said in Hindi.
“The only illustrious leader who carried forward Chanakya’s noble legacy was… Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. But what an unfortunate turn events took! The person who was dedicated to realising his dream of a united India was subjected to criticism, had to put up with opposition.”
Modi went on to say that Patel, despite “roadblocks on his political journey”, never flinched from his path.
“But in this very country, on that great leader’s birth anniversary 30 years ago, something frightening took place that struck at the heart of India’s unity. Our own people were flung into the pits of death,” the Prime Minister continued.
“And that occurrence was not just a wound inflicted on the hearts of people belonging to a particular community, it was a dagger into the heart of a grand social order established thousands of years ago.”
Modi carried on: “It was a misfortune of history that this tragedy occurred on this great leader’s birth anniversary. But it awakened us to the need to keep this country one; it increased our responsibilities.”
His party picked up the cue. Information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar’s Hindi tweet read: “Modiji’s speech on one India, powerful India, clean India, prosperous India is a message to the world.”
Home minister Rajnath Singh told a police passing-out parade in Hyderabad: “If one person is to receive credit for shaping the geography of India as we see it today, it should be Vallabhbhai Patel.”
Modi claimed that it was “inconceivable” to think of Mahatma Gandhi without visualising Patel.
“Sometimes, when we see Ramakrishna Paramhans, it seems that without Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramhans would be incomplete. The same way, when we see Mahatma Gandhi, we feel that without Sardar sahab, Gandhiji would be incomplete,” he said.
“Theirs was an inseparable pair. The Dandi March, which gave a new turn to India’s struggle for Independence --- the idea of that Dandi March was translated into action successfully when a worker named Sardar Patel assumed the role….”
To historian Sucheta Mahajan, the BJP’s “selective appropriation” and glorification of Congress leaders like Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Rajendra Prasad reflects a plan to “reconstruct the historical record of pre- and post-Independence India”.
Mahajan, a specialist in modern and contemporary history at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Historical Studies, said this was the first time the BJP was “seriously playing around with modern history”.
She added that neither Nehru nor Indira fitted the BJP’s scheme.
“It’s obvious that Nehru is counterpoised with Patel because to them Patel fits in with their traditional set-up. Nehru was secular, liberal and committed to civil liberties, values that are not part of the BJP’s innate culture,” Mahajan said.
“Nehru and Patel were different. But I must emphasise that although some differences may have cropped up between them, they more or less did everything together.”
To Mahajan, the surprise was that Patel and Indira were so similar in temperament. “Patel was the Iron Man; Indira was a very strong nationalist leader,” she noted.
Vajpayee had publicly extolled Indira as “Durga” in 1971 for taking on not just Pakistan but also America in the war that dismembered Pakistan. Even today, most BJP leaders privately rate Indira as a first among equals in India’s political pantheon.
But the Emergency remains a black spot in Indian history to BJP members, who wear their forebears’ battle against it as a badge of honour that makes up for their lack of freedom movement glory.
