Unlike Nehru, Patel was sympathetic to RSS, but he still went after it

November 3, 2015, NewsCrunch

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s critics see him as a closet RSS man.

Nehru was secular in the Western sense of the word, and out and out against RSS.

Patel thought that RSS had served Hindu society well and gave access to its leaders.  He even agreed with it that there were sections of Muslims who were not loyal to India.

But that did not blind him to the true nature of RSS and saw it as an extremely communal force which could breakup the country.

“The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of the government and the state,” he wrote in a letter.

And India, he loved, and warned that he could fight his own son to protect it.

The Hindu has a report which brings out the ambivalent position Patel had towards RSS. It is based on his letters compiled in The Collected Works of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, edited by P.N. Chopra and Prabha Chopra.

Patel told Nehru that Gandhi was assassinated by Hindu Mahasabha, though RSS was guilty of celebrating his death. But he blamed RSS for spreading communal poison, of targeting Muslims, which as he maintained, eventually took Gandhi’s life.

When RSS was banned, its leaders were perhaps taken aback with the ferocity with which Patel went after them. He jailed RSS leaders, put sympathisers under surveillance not sparing even those as young as 15 years, says another report in the Sunday Standard.

He dismissed government servants who associated with the banned organsiation.

However, the ban on RSS lasted only a few months and Patel was receptive to the intermediaries, who came pleading RSS’ cause.

So, how does one come to terms with Patel’s stand on RSS? Patel felt that RSS could be reformed, made to have a written constitution and function openly. But he passed away before be could nudge the organisation in that direction.