Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Vallabhbhai Patel (1875 to 1950), known as Sardar Patel, was a Congress leader who became independent India's first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. The UCLA Center for India and South Asia says that he oversaw the integration of more than 500 princely states into the Indian Union, and that he had been elected President of the Congress in 1931. For the Panth he matters as the minister and committee chair who dealt with Sikh demands for safeguards after Partition.

Key moments

• 24 February 1948: he was made chairman of a sub-committee to examine safeguards for the Sikhs. It did not meet until 23 November 1948, and then rejected their demand for special reservation of seats in provincial and central legislatures. The Advisory Committee upheld this and, on 11 May 1949, recommended that statutory reservation of seats for religious minorities be abolished (Encyclopaedia of Sikhism).
• February 1949: as Home Minister he had Baldev Singh, the Sikh cabinet minister, press Master Tara Singh to call off the Akali conference planned in Delhi for 20 February. The Akali Dal refused to cancel it but changed it to a shahidi diwan at Gurdwara Rakab Ganj. Master Tara Singh and other members of the Akali working committee were arrested at Narela station on 19 February.
• 17 July 1949: Gurmit Singh writes that Patel told Nehru in a letter that Punjabi was not a language but a dialect.
• 14 October 1949: in the Constituent Assembly, replying to the Sikh member Hukam Singh, Patel said he did not know what promises were meant, that there had been not a single Sikh voice against partition, and that for a brave community like the Sikhs to charge Congress with a breach of faith was not right. Gurmit Singh rejects this and points to the Congress resolution of 1929 that no constitution would be accepted unless it fully satisfied the Sikhs.

The UCLA page also records that rumours circulated in his lifetime that he had not protected Muslims enough during Partition, and argues that these rest largely on rumour and innuendo.

He is remembered in India as the man who integrated the princely states. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism and Gurmit Singh record him as the Home Minister under whom the Sikh demands for safeguards were turned down, and who called Punjabi a dialect.