Insights into the Iron Man
Even when illness confined him to bed, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel never let discipline or duty waver.
It was an ordinary working afternoon in 1950. The Home Secretary, HVR Iengar, sat close to Sardar Patel’s bedside, listening to the frail yet firm voice of the Deputy Prime Minister of India. Ill health had slowed Patel’s body, but not his mind. Even from home, he continued to guide the newly independent nation’s administrative machinery.
Just then, Patel’s daughter Maniben walked in.
“Bapu, the Maharaja of Patiala is here to meet you.”
“Now?” Patel looked up. “Did he have an appointment?”
When told that the Maharaja had simply dropped by casually to enquire about his health, Iengar stood up so that Patel could meet his distinguished royal guest.
“Where are you going?” Patel turned to Iengar.
“I’ll wait outside,” said Iengar.
“But it is you I had given an appointment, not the Maharaja,” said Patel. “Please continue.”
As the puzzled Iengar hesitated, Patel instructed calmly, “Ask the Maharaja to wait. Tell him I am in a meeting.”
Moments later, the tall and regal Maharaja Yadavindra Singh entered, his silk robes glinting with jewels. Patel greeted him courteously, then gestured for him to take a seat by the window while he finished his discussion with Iengar.
The scene was striking: the proud ruler of Patiala waiting patiently while a civil servant concluded his briefing. Ten minutes later, Patel turned to the king with his trademark warmth. “Come here, Maharaja Sahib…”
For Iengar, that day became a lasting lesson in leadership. Patel had stood up for the dignity of his position, making it clear that he respected ability over ancestry.
The next morning, Iengar said with emotion: “Sir, yesterday you showed me exceptional courtesy. I don’t know what to say.”
“The Secretary to the Government of India is an important position,” Patel smiled. “It should be given the respect it deserves.”
Even when illness confined him to bed, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel never let discipline or duty waver. But this Sardar of 1950 was quite different from the Vallabhbhai Patel of the 1920s.
Back in 1916, Vallabhbhai Patel was a man of success and status, a respected barrister in Ahmedabad, known for his sharp mind and impeccable appearance. He wore crisp suits, polished shoes, smoked cigars, and spent his evenings playing bridge at the Gujarat Club. For him, life was about ambition, hard work, and financial success.
So when a frail, simply dressed man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived at the Gujarat club one evening to speak, Patel barely concealed his disdain. “Let’s get back to our game,” he said to his friend with whom he was playing bridge, brushing off the excitement around Gandhi’s visit. “I have no time for such people.”
To Patel, the idea of an England-educated lawyer dressed in homespun cloth and talking about “truth” and “love” sounded absurd. “What can such sentimental talk do against the British Empire?” he scoffed.
But something about that evening stayed with him. Over the next few months, Patel began to notice how some of his most intelligent friends were drawn to Gandhi’s message. Men he admired, like Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh, had begun following Gandhi with devotion. Even his friend Mavlankar, once his bridge partner, was attending Gandhi’s speeches regularly.
Curious, Patel decided to listen for himself. What he saw and heard slowly began to chip away at his pride. In an age when every public meeting began by pledging loyalty to the British crown, Gandhi tore up the loyalty resolution on stage. Patel was stunned; here was a man of action. It energized him, inspired him.
Then came 1917. Gandhi led the indigo farmers of Champaran, Bihar, to victory against oppressive colonial laws. The news electrified the country, and Patel. “Gandhi’s ten lines had greater force than a hundred-page memorandum,” he would later say, moved by the power of simple action over elaborate words.
The Swadeshi movement soon followed, calling upon Indians to give up foreign goods. Patel didn’t hesitate. He gathered all his European clothes — shirts, coats, ties, hats, and socks — and threw them into a bonfire. From that day until the end of his life, he wore only simple khadi spun by his daughter, Mani.
Friends were astonished by his transformation. The once sharply dressed, cigar-smoking lawyer now lived like the people he served, eating simple meals, washing his own clothes, and sleeping on the floor. Five years after mocking Gandhi as a “crank,” Vallabhbhai Patel had become one of his closest followers, who later went on to become known as the “Iron Man of India.” What changed him? A willingness to confront his own bias and prejudice, and replace it with humility, empathy, and purpose.
Even when illness confined him to bed, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel never let discipline or duty waver. It was this steadfast sense of propriety, tempered by humility, that defined the man who helped weld a fractured nation into one. On his 150th birth anniversary, it is worth remembering his efforts and also his courtesy, fairness, and dignity.
(This piece is based on two of the 50 stories that appear in Mallika Ravikumar’s Sardar Patel: Man of Iron, Words of Steel, published by Hachette India on the occasion of Patel’s 150th Birth Anniversary.)
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