- Rameshwar Dutta & Sourav Bhattacharya/ 2.11.2018
On October 31st, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unveiled the monumental ‘Statue of Unity’, the bronze clad bust of Vallabhbhai Patel, the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India. The event coincided with the 143rd birth anniversary of Patel.
The monument, stands on river island Sandhu Bet, 3.2 kms away from and facing Narmada Dam, later named as Sardar Sarovar Dam, Near Rajpipla, 100 kms Southeast of City of Vadodara in Gujarat. With its surroundings, the project covers around 20000 sq. ft. space with 12 sq. kms of artificial lake around it.
Completed over a period of 33 months, the foundation stone for the project was laid on 138th birth Anniversary of Patel by Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Almost double the height of Statue of Liberty in New York and taller than 153 mts Spring Temple, Buddha in China, with total elevation of 240 mts, that includes its platform of 25 mts, the sculpture of Patel, is claimed to be tallest in the whole world.
Feverish inclinations of Modi Govt to surpass China, if not on any other front then at least in vulgarity and extravagance, has found its way to the ‘Statue of Unity’.
Speaking at the unveiling of the statue, Modi described the 'Statue of Unity' as a ‘symbol of the country's engineering and technical capabilities’.
Contrary to all boasting by Narendra Modi, only the crude frame of Statue is raised in India, with 75000 cubic meters of concrete, 5700 tons of steel and 18500 tons of reinforced steel rods. This could probably be done by any country on the earth. Ironically, the most important part of the figure, the bronze shell, comprising of 2250 tons of Bronze sheets, is imported from China.
If the statue depicts anything, it is the incapability of the Indian bourgeoisie to produce even a statue at home. It belies all sectarian-nationalist claims of self-dependence while underscoring the increasing interdependence of countries upon each other, in our era.
To garner popular support and hoodwink the people, the then Gujarat Government under Narendra Modi, declared that the statue would be raised by crowd pooling of iron from all over India. After sometime, project costs were estimated at Rs.2063 Crore. Later, on October 27, 2014, a contract of Rs.2989 crores was awarded in favour of Larsen and Toubro Ltd, a construction company in India. Not even single gram of 5000 tons of Steel that was collected in crowd pooling, was used in the Statue. The same was handed over to the contractor L&T, who claims to have used it in the ancillary projects. The project is shrouded in mystery of PPP- the Public-Private Partnership, while the Government itself has contributed more than 3 billion to the project.
Since its declaration in 2010, the project had been under severe criticism for its taxing impositions upon the public exchequer. In a country, that remains at one of the tops in poverty, illiteracy and absence of basic public health and education facilities, such wasteful expenditure is demonstrative of the callousness and priorities of the Government. This insanity of the Indian rulers, however, finds its gross mismatch with already scanty resources in the public domain.
The favour, Vallabhbhai Patel reaps among the ranks of Indian bourgeoisie even today, is not without reason. It has its explanation in the life and deeds of Patel which young students of Marxism must dig out more intensely.
Patel is widely publicised by Indian bourgeoisie as ‘iron man’ of India, for nothing but his ruthlessness in executing the policies oriented towards imposition of the idea of ‘India’- the idea of a monolithic and authoritarian state. This idea, in turn, is fundamentally based upon acceptance of disjunction of the Indian sub-continent on reactionary-communal basis, alongside forcible suppression of the democratic aspirations- both national and class- of its people. The idea of 'One India', that Patel advocated and that finds overwhelming support among the far-right today, in no way represents political unity and freedom, but disunity, Hindu-Muslim communal strife and predatory repression upon nationalities and national aspirations from Kashmir to North-East. Geo-political rivalry among the states of India and Pakistan, that had been source of uninterrupted hostilities and violence since 47, is the contribution of this flawed policy.
Deeply infested with vice of communal prejudices against religious minorities, Patel was a muslim hater and an ardent supporter of the idea of a hindu-supremacist state. This psychosis led him to order the police slaughter of Muslims after arms were found inside Jumma masjid in Delhi. He disagreed with Nehru's appeals to muslims to remain in India saying that Muslims must come clean first of their past that according to him was associated with the demand of Pakistan. Entries in the diary of his late daughter Maniben, speak a lot on this aspect.
Patel, a lifetime servant of Indian big-bourgeoisie, was cynically hostile to the working class, poor and toilers. It was he who ordered the most brutal suppression of Telangana peasant uprising, where the army sent by Patel, shot down more than fifty thousand men, women and children at impunity and committed all sorts of savagery against poor peasants.
Patel did not even attempt to hide his aversion to the working class and socialism, that essentially constituted an important part of his idea of ‘India’. Proclaiming in no ambiguous words, his empathy towards communists, Patel said, “If we have to build up the nation, communists must have no place in it”.
Patel was ardent advocate for methods of employing brute armed force to resolve political issues, the methods that he used not only in princely states of Junagarh and Hyderabad, but in practice to silence all opposition to his reactionary policies.
Patel is credited by his supporters for subduing more than 550 large and small princely states to accede to the the Union of India. In fact, these accessions obtained through threats of direct violence through armed intervention and had gone hand in hand with decimation of genuine national aspirations of the billions, for establishment of their national states, from Kashmir to Tamilnadu. What was purportedly done to assimilate the princely states in bourgeois India, at the very bottom, its underlying design was to prevent the mass upheavals of workers and peasants against these states and thwart further radicalisation of the political scenario towards a socialist revolution.
When Indian bourgeoisie talks of peaceful and non-violent path of Gandhi in carving of India, it conveniently forgets this violent spree that its representatives like Patel had unleashed to suppress all opposition to this project.
Patel got hardly three years in office, after independence and before his death. In these three years, he worked tirelessly for reinforcing the capitalist regime through methods of violence and bloodshed. He was ardent supporter of rule through state bureaucracy and despised any independent movement of the working class. Patel favoured retention of the colonial state machine, laws, standing army and above all the bureaucracy.
He supported Gandhi when Gandhi unilaterally withdrew Satyagrah after Chauri-Chaura incident. It was under his leadership that Congress ratified the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in its 1931 Session in Karachi, sans the demand of clemency for Bhagat Singh as a pre-condition to it. Later Patel openly sided with the idea of partition of the Indian sub-continent on communal grounds, into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan.
Patel used his influence upon the peasant movements in Kheda, Borsad, and Bardoli in Gujarat, for reinforcing his position inside Indian National Congress and to promote rightwing elements during the Assembly elections in 1934 and 1937.
Patel opposed the resolutions in favour of 'Socialism' adopted at the 1936 Congress session, moved by Nehru, on the ground that the same would be diversion from the main goal of achieving independence. In 1938 Patel opposed the then-Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose accusing him of moving away from Gandhi's principles of non-violence. He led the senior Congress leaders to protest against Bose that resulted in Bose's resignation. The fact was that both Gandhi and Patel had imposed their own authoritarianism upon the party to remove Bose against the will of majority. On their part, both Nehru and Patel, however, far from being genuine supporters for the cause of socialism, were bourgeois demagogues, who intended to use this demagogy to fortify their position among the radical youth and workers and to bind them behind bourgeois-led Congress.
Sir Girija Shanker Bajpai, Secretary General of Ministry of External Affairs, lauded Patel for his conservative character: “……Sardar Patel was no believer in abrupt or violent change; progress by evolution was really his motto. And so, although in August 1947 power changed hands, and with it the spirit of the administration, the machinery of Government was preserved.”
A disciple of Gandhi, Patel died on December 15, 1950, in the Birla House, the plush mansion of one of the biggest capitalists of India, at New Delhi. Earlier, his mentor Gandhi was also assassinated at Birla House. Both Gandhi and his Patel, feigned their sympathies for the poor and downtrodden while having close association with big capitalists like Birla, Tata, Sarabhai and so on.
However, in contrast to the demagogues like Nehru, Patel was more blunt in his support for capitalists and capitalism.
Even the pseudo-socialists like Jai Prakash Narain and Ashok Mehta criticized Patel for his siding with capitalists against the poor.
During cold war period, Patel exhorted the government to support the Western Imperialists against Soviet Union.
Despite of his being inside Congress, Patel stood far nearer to the Hindu right-wing elements than even the Congress left-wing. Patel’s antipathy to socialists and communists and sympathies for hindu rightwing organizations, were open secrets. After assassination of Gandhi, Patel’s hand in the assassination was suspected by a section of the Congress, which Patel attempted to cover up by demagogy against the assassin and the RSS.
Patel's Statue, depicts no glory of the past, which we must be proud of, but sheer shame. It reflects and reminds us of the oppressive and bloody character of the Indian ruling elite from 1947 till today.
Rightwing Hindu Supremacist leader, Narendra Modi, maneuvers to use Patel’s diehard legacy for his own purpose of discrediting the moderate Nehru lineage of Congress. Congress leadership, however, claims Patel’s association with Congress to their credit discounting his apparent rightwing leanings.
Instead of using the occasion to make scathing criticism of Patel and his reactionary politics, Stalinists have limited their critique to the Modi government and its priorities. They simply shared the concern of Congress that Modi should not usurp the legacy of Patel that belongs to Congress.
A nationalist with very limited vision, Patel had attempted to shape the polity of India on lines of bourgeois-conservatism. Had he lived longer, he himself would have proved worse than Modi. Patel and Modi are only the two sides of the same coin. If Patel did not join the bandwagon of RSS and instead remained with Congress, it is not for the reason that Patel did not share the ideas of RSS, but for the simple reason that the rightwing lobby inside the Congress was no less reactionary than the one outside of it under RSS or Hindu Mahasabha.
The monument, stands on river island Sandhu Bet, 3.2 kms away from and facing Narmada Dam, later named as Sardar Sarovar Dam, Near Rajpipla, 100 kms Southeast of City of Vadodara in Gujarat. With its surroundings, the project covers around 20000 sq. ft. space with 12 sq. kms of artificial lake around it.
Completed over a period of 33 months, the foundation stone for the project was laid on 138th birth Anniversary of Patel by Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Almost double the height of Statue of Liberty in New York and taller than 153 mts Spring Temple, Buddha in China, with total elevation of 240 mts, that includes its platform of 25 mts, the sculpture of Patel, is claimed to be tallest in the whole world.
Feverish inclinations of Modi Govt to surpass China, if not on any other front then at least in vulgarity and extravagance, has found its way to the ‘Statue of Unity’.
Speaking at the unveiling of the statue, Modi described the 'Statue of Unity' as a ‘symbol of the country's engineering and technical capabilities’.
Contrary to all boasting by Narendra Modi, only the crude frame of Statue is raised in India, with 75000 cubic meters of concrete, 5700 tons of steel and 18500 tons of reinforced steel rods. This could probably be done by any country on the earth. Ironically, the most important part of the figure, the bronze shell, comprising of 2250 tons of Bronze sheets, is imported from China.
If the statue depicts anything, it is the incapability of the Indian bourgeoisie to produce even a statue at home. It belies all sectarian-nationalist claims of self-dependence while underscoring the increasing interdependence of countries upon each other, in our era.
To garner popular support and hoodwink the people, the then Gujarat Government under Narendra Modi, declared that the statue would be raised by crowd pooling of iron from all over India. After sometime, project costs were estimated at Rs.2063 Crore. Later, on October 27, 2014, a contract of Rs.2989 crores was awarded in favour of Larsen and Toubro Ltd, a construction company in India. Not even single gram of 5000 tons of Steel that was collected in crowd pooling, was used in the Statue. The same was handed over to the contractor L&T, who claims to have used it in the ancillary projects. The project is shrouded in mystery of PPP- the Public-Private Partnership, while the Government itself has contributed more than 3 billion to the project.
Since its declaration in 2010, the project had been under severe criticism for its taxing impositions upon the public exchequer. In a country, that remains at one of the tops in poverty, illiteracy and absence of basic public health and education facilities, such wasteful expenditure is demonstrative of the callousness and priorities of the Government. This insanity of the Indian rulers, however, finds its gross mismatch with already scanty resources in the public domain.
The favour, Vallabhbhai Patel reaps among the ranks of Indian bourgeoisie even today, is not without reason. It has its explanation in the life and deeds of Patel which young students of Marxism must dig out more intensely.
Patel is widely publicised by Indian bourgeoisie as ‘iron man’ of India, for nothing but his ruthlessness in executing the policies oriented towards imposition of the idea of ‘India’- the idea of a monolithic and authoritarian state. This idea, in turn, is fundamentally based upon acceptance of disjunction of the Indian sub-continent on reactionary-communal basis, alongside forcible suppression of the democratic aspirations- both national and class- of its people. The idea of 'One India', that Patel advocated and that finds overwhelming support among the far-right today, in no way represents political unity and freedom, but disunity, Hindu-Muslim communal strife and predatory repression upon nationalities and national aspirations from Kashmir to North-East. Geo-political rivalry among the states of India and Pakistan, that had been source of uninterrupted hostilities and violence since 47, is the contribution of this flawed policy.
Deeply infested with vice of communal prejudices against religious minorities, Patel was a muslim hater and an ardent supporter of the idea of a hindu-supremacist state. This psychosis led him to order the police slaughter of Muslims after arms were found inside Jumma masjid in Delhi. He disagreed with Nehru's appeals to muslims to remain in India saying that Muslims must come clean first of their past that according to him was associated with the demand of Pakistan. Entries in the diary of his late daughter Maniben, speak a lot on this aspect.
Patel did not even attempt to hide his aversion to the working class and socialism, that essentially constituted an important part of his idea of ‘India’. Proclaiming in no ambiguous words, his empathy towards communists, Patel said, “If we have to build up the nation, communists must have no place in it”.
Patel was ardent advocate for methods of employing brute armed force to resolve political issues, the methods that he used not only in princely states of Junagarh and Hyderabad, but in practice to silence all opposition to his reactionary policies.
Patel is credited by his supporters for subduing more than 550 large and small princely states to accede to the the Union of India. In fact, these accessions obtained through threats of direct violence through armed intervention and had gone hand in hand with decimation of genuine national aspirations of the billions, for establishment of their national states, from Kashmir to Tamilnadu. What was purportedly done to assimilate the princely states in bourgeois India, at the very bottom, its underlying design was to prevent the mass upheavals of workers and peasants against these states and thwart further radicalisation of the political scenario towards a socialist revolution.
Patel got hardly three years in office, after independence and before his death. In these three years, he worked tirelessly for reinforcing the capitalist regime through methods of violence and bloodshed. He was ardent supporter of rule through state bureaucracy and despised any independent movement of the working class. Patel favoured retention of the colonial state machine, laws, standing army and above all the bureaucracy.
He supported Gandhi when Gandhi unilaterally withdrew Satyagrah after Chauri-Chaura incident. It was under his leadership that Congress ratified the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in its 1931 Session in Karachi, sans the demand of clemency for Bhagat Singh as a pre-condition to it. Later Patel openly sided with the idea of partition of the Indian sub-continent on communal grounds, into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan.
Patel used his influence upon the peasant movements in Kheda, Borsad, and Bardoli in Gujarat, for reinforcing his position inside Indian National Congress and to promote rightwing elements during the Assembly elections in 1934 and 1937.
Patel opposed the resolutions in favour of 'Socialism' adopted at the 1936 Congress session, moved by Nehru, on the ground that the same would be diversion from the main goal of achieving independence. In 1938 Patel opposed the then-Congress President Subhas Chandra Bose accusing him of moving away from Gandhi's principles of non-violence. He led the senior Congress leaders to protest against Bose that resulted in Bose's resignation. The fact was that both Gandhi and Patel had imposed their own authoritarianism upon the party to remove Bose against the will of majority. On their part, both Nehru and Patel, however, far from being genuine supporters for the cause of socialism, were bourgeois demagogues, who intended to use this demagogy to fortify their position among the radical youth and workers and to bind them behind bourgeois-led Congress.
Sir Girija Shanker Bajpai, Secretary General of Ministry of External Affairs, lauded Patel for his conservative character: “……Sardar Patel was no believer in abrupt or violent change; progress by evolution was really his motto. And so, although in August 1947 power changed hands, and with it the spirit of the administration, the machinery of Government was preserved.”
A disciple of Gandhi, Patel died on December 15, 1950, in the Birla House, the plush mansion of one of the biggest capitalists of India, at New Delhi. Earlier, his mentor Gandhi was also assassinated at Birla House. Both Gandhi and his Patel, feigned their sympathies for the poor and downtrodden while having close association with big capitalists like Birla, Tata, Sarabhai and so on.
However, in contrast to the demagogues like Nehru, Patel was more blunt in his support for capitalists and capitalism.
Even the pseudo-socialists like Jai Prakash Narain and Ashok Mehta criticized Patel for his siding with capitalists against the poor.
During cold war period, Patel exhorted the government to support the Western Imperialists against Soviet Union.
Despite of his being inside Congress, Patel stood far nearer to the Hindu right-wing elements than even the Congress left-wing. Patel’s antipathy to socialists and communists and sympathies for hindu rightwing organizations, were open secrets. After assassination of Gandhi, Patel’s hand in the assassination was suspected by a section of the Congress, which Patel attempted to cover up by demagogy against the assassin and the RSS.
Patel's Statue, depicts no glory of the past, which we must be proud of, but sheer shame. It reflects and reminds us of the oppressive and bloody character of the Indian ruling elite from 1947 till today.
Rightwing Hindu Supremacist leader, Narendra Modi, maneuvers to use Patel’s diehard legacy for his own purpose of discrediting the moderate Nehru lineage of Congress. Congress leadership, however, claims Patel’s association with Congress to their credit discounting his apparent rightwing leanings.
Instead of using the occasion to make scathing criticism of Patel and his reactionary politics, Stalinists have limited their critique to the Modi government and its priorities. They simply shared the concern of Congress that Modi should not usurp the legacy of Patel that belongs to Congress.
A nationalist with very limited vision, Patel had attempted to shape the polity of India on lines of bourgeois-conservatism. Had he lived longer, he himself would have proved worse than Modi. Patel and Modi are only the two sides of the same coin. If Patel did not join the bandwagon of RSS and instead remained with Congress, it is not for the reason that Patel did not share the ideas of RSS, but for the simple reason that the rightwing lobby inside the Congress was no less reactionary than the one outside of it under RSS or Hindu Mahasabha.
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