THE advice of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi to the Congress party and its rank and file to connect with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel first, has a background of apathy the party has heaped on the ‘Iron Man of India’ -- Loh Purush -- right from the days of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to today. That Sardar Patel does not appear in Congress party’s advertisements, per se, need not be Mr. Modi’s concern. But by pointing to that flaw, all Mr. Modi wanted to achieve was to tell the people how the Congress party has ignored its iconic leader only because it wanted to promote the image of the Nehru-Gandhi family whose every member in the past four generations became a public figure. In sharp contrast, the common people of India may not be able to name Sardar Patel’s two off-springs -- daughter Maniben Patel, and son Dahyabhai Patel. And that is so because the Nehru-Gandhi family deliberately ignored the Patel family and kept its members out of public glare for whatever reasons. By asking the Congress party to connect with Sardar Patel, the Prime Minister was pointing to this massive and deliberate apathy of the Patel family for the past 75 years.

Enough historical evidence is available to prove that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had tried to stop many senior Congress leaders and bureaucrats from attending Sardar Patel’s funeral in Bombay (now Mumbai). He even advised President Mr. Rajendra Prasad to stay away from the funeral, reportedly saying that it would create a bad precedent that the President attends the funeral of a minister. That nobody bothered about these efforts of Pandit Nehru, is another story. But to say that the President need not attend a minister’s funeral, was to suggest that Sardar Patel was just a minister. Obviously, Pandit Nehru was desirous of down-playing Sardar Patel’s historic role in India’s unification.

There were many other instances when the Congress under Pandit Nehru ignored Sardar Patel’s family that actually reeled in a serious lack of resources. It was one senior leader of the Congress party in Gujarat who offered a ticket to Smt. Maniben Patel and she got elected to Parliament not once but twice. Yet, she was not given any place of honour in Pandit Nehru’s Council of Ministers. Sardar Patel’s son Mr. Dahyabhai Patel, too, did not get any position of honour even though he was had won many electoral victories. Finally, tired of the apathy, Smt. Maniben Patel and Mr. Dahyabhai Patel left the party in sheer disgust.

These are not just wild allegations, but find mentions in accounts of many personalities who wrote their autobiographies -- such as Mr. K. M. Munshi (who was a senior minister in Pandit Nehru’s Government), and Dr. Verghese Kurien, the legendary ‘Milkman of India’ (Amul and NDDB fame). Those who have known these details realise how shabbily the Congress party treated Sardar Patel.

In fact, the Congress party kept Sardar Patel in secondary consideration all along -- right since the days of Mahatma Gandhi who chose Pandit Nehru over Sardar Patel. In those days, out of 15-16 regional committees of the Congress parties, as many as 14 had favoured Sardar Patel as President at the dawn of Independence. It was a given that the Congress President would be the Prime Minister of India. But Mahatma Gandhi chose Pandit Nehru, and Sardar Patel was relegated to a step -- just a step -- behind Pandit Nehru. Sardar Patel did not cringe or sulk, and started working with full enthusiasm for the Government and the country. For such a man’s funeral, the then Prime Minister did not want his senior colleagues to go!

When Mr. Modi mooted the idea of the Statue of Unity to perpetuate Sardar Patel’s memory, the Congress party shouted itself hoarse that he was usurping a Congress leader. That whining was out of politics, and not out of any genuine respect for Sardar Patel. Mr. Modi might not have said all these things in so many words when he advised the Congress to connect with Sardar Patel first. But the message he meant for the nation included all those spoken or unspoken details of the Congress party’s apathy to one of the tallest and the greatest leaders of the country in the past 150 years. That the Congress party won’t learn any lesson, is a foregone conclusion. But Mr. Modi did well to highlight the issue.