(This is a reprint from NewsBred)
This is the centenary of
the year when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel first met Mahatma Gandhi and
History bears
testimony how the birth centenary of Sardar Patel on October 31, 1975, was
blocked from public consciousness by the dispensation of Indira Gandhi and the
media/academia cabal. Contrast this with Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru's who was
festooned all over
You have Marxist historian Romila Thapar pointing out Sardar Patel's role in reconstruction of legendary Somnath Temple after Independence, an act of communal and not secular ideals of India by inference, though how Nehru pushed the passage of the Haj Committee Act in 1959 is better not questioned.
Congress
loses no time in terming Sardar Patel as its own, and couldn't care less about
your protest that the "Iron Man" got Bharat Ratna only 44 years after
All this
while Patel's has been nuanced into an anti-Muslim persona. Be it agenda-driven
websites that have mushroomed lately; the known left's stable such as The
Hindu/Frontline or NDTV, and mainstream media, Patel's legacy has suffered in
their hands. The man deserves truth even if respect eludes him from the
indifferent amongst us. Sardar was no less than
The
anti-Muslim narrative must seize our immediate attention. BJP has been tireless
in pointing out Sardar's role in
Was Patel Anti-Muslim?
The one unethical method the intelligentsia adopts is to take a quote out of its context and use it to buttress its agenda. We have Rajmohan Gandhi writing in "Patel A Life" (p. 426) that "He (Patel) was unquestionably roused more by a report of 50 Hindu or Sikh deaths than by another 50 Muslim deaths."
Another by Rajmohan Gandhi: --Patel could not get over his anger against Muslims whom he held responsible for the Partition; they had brought this tragedy not only upon themselves but also on others."
Patel has
been blamed for introducing the permit
system, which didn't allow Muslims to claim their Indian
citizenship even if they had gone to
Quite a few
of Sardar's utterances are cited to hold him guilty of anti-Muslim bias. There
is this speech in
There are
these words of Sardar's in
When
Contrast these words with the actions Patel took vis-a-vis the minority communities. He was instrumental, as chairman of the committee on minorities and fundamental rights, in allowing Muslims and Christians the right to (a) propagate their religion; (b) the right to preserve their language and culture; and (c) the right to run their own educational institutions. (1)
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