Had Patel Been Prime Minister

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Following Partition, the Congress was all-in-all but their imagination failed them. They could not visualise that in free India, the Hindu hour had come and Patel was the leader of the hour. He made no secret of his view that the Muslims who were disloyal to India had no place in it and that they should cross over to the country to which they were expressing loyalty. Patel said, “as a friend of Muslims, I speak that it is your duty now to sail in the same boat and sink or swim together. You cannot ride two horses.... Those who want to go to Pakistan can go there and live in peace.'

The Sardar's views were as clear as crystal. All that was needed was a public demand for him to become Prime Minister. Instead of mobilising support and working towards achieving this, the Hindu leaders were busy condemning Gandhi's assassination, thus frittering away the opportunity of capitalising on public sentiment.

Had Sardar Patel been the PM, the first and foremost change would have been in Kashmir. The Sardar would have solved it in the same manner as he had got on top of Hyderabad which appeared intractable until September 1948. One clear probability would have been to give refuge to some of those driven out of West India. If 60 to 70 lakh refugees had been settled in Kashmir, the emerging demography should have helped to assuage what later became a problem.

An even greater advantage would have been vis-à-vis China as the Sardar was alive to the potential threat from the yellow giant. He had written to Nehru on 7 November 1950, 'The Chinese government has tried to delude us by professions of peaceful intention. The tragedy of it is that the Tibetans put faith in us, they chose to be guided by us, and we have been unable to get them out of the meshes of Chinese malevolence.

India repeatedly swears by democracy but we forget how undemocratically we selected our first Prime Minister. Of the 16 Pradesh Congress Committees across the country, 15 opted for Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel while one chose Acharya J B Kripalani. This book asks the pertinent question, what if Sardar Patel had been India's first Prime Minister? Would India's political and development trajectories be different It also discusses Patel's thoughts on Partition and the East Bengal problem that finally led to the formation of Bangladesh. His views on independent Princely states, on China and Communists and his views on planning and economic outlook are also explored. The ifs and buts of history are of course debatable. But was this a decision that changed the destiny of a nation and its people?

Prafull Goradia, a former parliamentarian, enjoys writing and has authored several books. They include Dear Editor (1997), Saffron Book (2001) and Hindu Masjids (2002), a painstakingly researched work on how Hindu mandirs have been converted into masjids, predominantly in the pre-Lodi period. Krishna Rajya, which can be called India's second book on political science after Kautilya's Arthashastra, which sheds light on an hitherto unexplored aspect of India's political life and Saffron Awakening (2017) are some of his major works.

**Contents and Sample Pages**