In his mind, Vallabhbhai accused the British of unchivalrous conduct. “When two Rajputs decide to battle, and one of them refuses to strike, the other would refrain from attacking. But here our opponent was not a Rajput, and he attacked by arresting Gandhiji.” Vallabhbhai imagined, too, that the Raj’s prisons would be unable to hold Gandhi for long. Not knowing that the title was destined for himself, he described the Mahatma as India’s “Sardar”, and added:

Many sacrifices have been offered up by India to the British Lion, but never before had it been its good fortune to receive so sacred a prey. It will not, however, be very easy for it to digest such a prey…The great spiritual strength of our Mahatma will transform the raging lion into a mild lamb?

But the fruitless blame and the rootless fancy were passing thoughts. Patel emerged from the shock and loneliness following Gandhi’s arrest with a resolve to take charge of Gujarat. His decision, and the realism and self-confidence that marked it, are evident in an article he wrote in Navajivan. Though Vallabhbhai writes in the third person, it is plain that he sees himself as “the mason” who, while “fully conscious” of his “shortcomings”, will implement the incomplete plans of the incarcerated Mahatma:

Now that Gandhiji has gone, what ought his colleagues and disciples to do? There is no one among them of such outstanding character and ability as could adequately step into his shoes… His followers are indeed weak and have many shortcomings. His colleagues have neither his sweetness of manner nor that complete self control…Fortunately, they are fully conscious of their numerous defects.

But a mason does not claim to have the ability of the planning architect. Yet he experiences no difficulty in completing a structure in accordance with the plan of the architect.

The first task he gave himself was to raise a million rupees for Gujarat Vidyapith, which lacked a building of its own. He said he would collect the sum by October 2: “Precisely, on October 2, the figure of a million was reached.” He next set in motion a campaign against imported cloth. All over Gujarat, in towns and in the villages, shops that sold foreign cloth were picketed by streams of volunteers, men and women, and merchants in Ahmedabad, Surat, Nadiad, and Broach (Bharuch) pledged that they would not purchase fresh stocks of imported cloth. Some of these promises were confined to a period of twelve, nine, or even six months, but the practical Vallabhbhai, rebuking those who sneered at the merchants’ “short-term pledges”, earned the traders’ goodwill:

The epithets we have been using when referring to [the merchants – “scoundrels, dishonest fellows, thieves” – could more appropriately be applied to us rather than to them… All we had to do was to set fire to our foreign clothes worth a hundred or two hundred rupees. We had at the most to withdraw from government schools one or two of our boys. We were asked to contribute some money for the national schools.

But did we do any of these things? For the merchants, on the other hand, it is a question of giving up their sole or main source of livelihood…If in the intervening period we all change over to Indian cloth, why would they want to import any more foreign cloth?

He made a deliberate effort to win the untouchables. In November 1922, the Kathiawad Political Conference asked, in Patel’s presence, for the abolition of untouchability, but more significant than the formal demand was a gesture Vallabhbhai made during the session. Untouchables were present at the meeting, seated in a block specially set aside for them. Patel saw that a volunteer had herded them into their block and enjoined them not to touch the other visitors, and that the untouchables “were complying with these instructions without hesitation”. His response was to get up, step across to the untouchables’ block, and sit there. He was followed into the untouchables’ enclosure by the Patidar landowner Darbar Gopaldas, chief of the Chhagam village of Vaso and legatee of two villages in Ahmedabad district and of the small State of Dhasa in Kathiawad. Divested of his estate because of his role in the 1920–21 struggle, Darbar Gopaldas was the President of the Kheda district Congress committee. His wife, Bhaktilakshmi, or Bhaktiba, whose father had been the Dewan of the Kathiawad State of Limbdi, accompanied Gopaldas into the untouchables’ block. When Vallabhbhai was called upon to address the gathering, he stood up and spoke from the untouchables’ enclosure, making it “the centre of the conference”.

He did not refer to the rude volunteer or to the ruder practice of segregation; that would only have detracted from the stinging eloquence of his cross-over. With this conference, Vallabhbhai ceases being merely the leader of the Patidars and becomes the leader of all of Gujarat. He had no doubt been the GPCC chief from January 1921, and he had agreed with the Mahatma, despite an undercurrent of opposition from many Patidars, that no national school or college could exclude any untouchable. Yet Patel’s November 1922 “cross-over” had a special, unmistakable, and inaugural ring, and the fact that the Mahatma was far away in a prison in Poona gave to his spontaneous gesture the quality of a call, not an echo. He had publicly taken a personal stand, and one of Kheda’s most distinguished Patidar couples had joined him.

Vallabhbhai also took a clear stand on two other controversial issues. He declared that civil disobedience could not be given up. True, the Mahatma had not only called it off, he had warned Congressmen against courting arrest prematurely, but Patel hoped to be able to revive it. Gujarat was ready, he claimed in July 1922, to use the satyagraha weapon. And he set his face against an attempt to change Congress’s policy on the boycott of the Raj’s councils.

Change was being advocated by powerful voices. Motilal Nehru, released in June 1922, and Congress President Chittaranjan Das, who came out of prison in August, said that the councils could be used against the Raj, a view to which Vithalbhai gave enthusiastic support. These gifted debaters wanted to thunder in the councils. The spinning wheel and an attack on untouchability did not excite them. “Wreck the councils from within” became their slogan. When Vithalbhai argued that entering councils was like “smuggling into the enemy fort with a view to conquering it”, Vallabhbhai replied that “Patelsaheb” needed to know that “the fortress of the enemy is not located in the legislatures.” Governors and the Viceroy, Vallabhbhai pointed out, could rule by ordinances whatever the councils said or did.

Excerpted with permission from Patel: A Life, Rajmohan Gandhi, Aleph Book Company.

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