#dnaEdit: Tale of two icons

The BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are engaged in the battle of images over the legacy of India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, whose 139th birth anniversary was celebrated on Friday along with the 29th death anniversary of Indira Gandhi. Modi played the politically correct game of issuing a statement with regard to Indira saying that he joined the rest of the country in paying respects to her on her ‘punya tithi’ (death anniversary). His statement for Vallabhbhai exuded warmth and hero-worship where he described him as the “architect of modern India”. It is a phrase that is usually used for Jawaharlal Nehru, the imagined rival of Patel. There are delightful ironies in this clash of icons. In terms of politics, Indira was closer to Vallabhbhai than she was to her father. Vallabhbhai was quite unhappy and dissatisfied with Jawaharlal’s stand on Tibet and Kashmir, but he would have lauded his friend’s daughter’s determined stance over Bangladesh in 1971, or even with the India-Soviet Union friendship treaty in 1971. Vallabhbhai was pragmatic and so was Indira. They did not have patience with ideological labels. Indira had a conservative side to her, which was similar to Vallabhbhai’s world view rather than that of her father.  

The BJP has been icon-shopping for quite some years now. One of the early Congress leaders that the right-wing party appropriated was Vallabhbhai. It served two purposes. One, the party found a tall leader who was more than a match to Jawaharlal. The BJP has set itself up against Nehruvian politics from its inception and the man who led the political opposition to Nehru was the founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS), the precursor of the BJP, Syama Prasad Mookerji. But there is less talk of Mookerji and more about Patel. Second, there is also the notion of Vallabhbhai’s  ideological opposition to Nehru’s socialism. It is true that Patel was not moonstruck by the socialism of the intellectuals, especially as represented by Nehru. But he would have recognised the need for a public sector which would make up for the pusillanimity of India’s capitalist class in the 1950s. Patel and Nehru did not agree with each other on many issues, but the correspondence between the two in the years from 1948 to 1950 clearly shows how closely they cooperated with each other. Setting up Vallabhbhai to overshadow Jawaharlal is a frivolous parlour game. Vallabhbhai did not play the game even though the Congress party was with him rather than with Jawaharlal.

Whichever party is in power, it has to be recognised that the national portrait gallery of the greats will be  more or less the same. Vallabhbhai and Indira are there because of their contributions to the country’s politics and development and it has much less to do with their being members of the Congress party. It is true that Indira Gandhi was in office for a longer time than Patel and, therefore, she dealt with many more aspects than Patel did in his three years as home minister. His shorter period in office does not in any way reduce the importance and impact of Patel’s contributions. There is no denying the fact that the sycophants in the Congress reduced the national pantheon to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal  and Indira. There is need for correction but it does not require that the roles played by Jawaharlal and Indira in post-Independence history have to be marginalised or mocked at. It would be immature to play partisan politics when dealing with national leaders.