Sardar

The hoopla surrounding the raising of the so to be worlds tallest statue in Gujarat honoring the original Iron Man of India is not only quixotic but downright bizzare with two of of India's main political parties in a messy scarp as to who owns him. To be fair the Congress movement ( not party ) which was at the fore front of India's freedom struggle had Vallabhbhai Patel as its foremost leader next only to the Mahatma alongside Nehru. Patel was India's home minister and integrated a nation that many in the West thought would fall apart, as the natives were too naive to govern themselves. One such advocate of this idea was Winston Churchill the former war time Prime Minister of Britain who tried his utmost to deny India her freedom from a repressive and suffocating English rule. Well, Sir Winston was disappointed on both counts - India got her freedom and held together as a nation, thanks to the man that we are discussing, Patel. Patel took charge of the task to forge a united India from the British colonial provinces allocated to India and more than five hundred self-governing princely states, released from British colonial rule by the Indian Independence Act 1947. Using staunch diplomacy, backed with the option and use of military force, Patel's quiet leadership persuaded almost every princely state to join India.A remarkable feat by any stretch of imagination. Patel died soon after independence and Gandhi but not before he had persuaded a reluctant Junagadh and Hyderabad to integrate with India. Hyderabad needed some small persuasion from the Indian Army which rolled into the state and occupied it in all of four days despite the bravado of the Nizam's army which was hoping that the Saudi's and the Iranian's would bomb the Indian Army to smithereens.The Saudi's and Iranian's if they had harbored such thoughts, wisely refrained and Hyderabad was taken with remarkable ease on completion of Operation Polo, as the armed forces action was labelled.This was a precursor to India driving the Portugese out of Goa. The operation galvanized a nation - occupied for a thousand years, it gave a young India something to cheer about, a huge psychological boost. The man responsible for this was Patel with his decisive leadership. As the years rolled on and we had a dynasty replacing the Brit's in New Delhi, Sardar Patel was jettisoned to the side lanes of history and was a passing reference in our history books. Now as a statue which is to be the tallest one in the world is being raised in the heartland of the BJP, Gujarat, by a man who the Congress party fears and loves to hate, Patel is up for grabs.The Congress's charge is that a non secular Narendra Modi is raising the statue. Well, Sardar Patel was a true blue secular who was not deterred from rebuilding the Somnath Temple, much to the chagrin of the then Prime Minister of India J.L.Nehru. The Somnath Temple was a temple repeatedly sacked and eventually destroyed by Islamic zealots from Afghanistan and then later Indian Islamic rulers. Sardar Patel initiated the process of reconstruction and today's Somnath temple is a legacy of the Indian's stubborn resistance towards religious intolerance and the will to hang in there against all odd's. Patel was an icon, a towering figure who needs the respect of a grateful nation and that his statue is being raised in the land from which he hailed is a tribute that he deserves. Two negatives can make a positive and I'm glad that the BJP and Congress have managed just that! Results do matter, never mind the reason.