Sardar Patel wanted to launch the Quit India movement earlier

If Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had his way, the Quit India movement would have been launched weeks before August 9, 1942.

Of all the Congress Working Committee members, Patel extended maximum support to Mahatma Gandhi's call for Quit India against the British. He strongly upheld Gandhi's 'do or die' slogan to the countrymen in the thick of the second World War and castigated the Communists for joining hands with the colonial government in the war efforts.

T Wickeden, a judge in the Central Provinces, who wrote the famous report on the Quit India movement, summed up that Patel thought a movement could have been launched immediately after the departure of the Cripps Mission. This would be the most fitting expression of what the country thought of the proposals which had no takers among the national leadership.

Wickeden described Patel's attitude as 'anti-fascist and bitterly opposed to continuance of British rule.'

The role of the 'Iron man' in the decisive phase of India's freedom struggle, building up to the historic Quit India movement (May 1940 to December 1942) has been chronicled in the Collected works of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Volume IX), edited by Dr P N Chopra.

This is the latest of the 15-volume series on Patel, planned by the author, and is to be followed by a two-volume biography of the great leader.

Delineating Wickenden's assessment of Patel, the book says while mobilising the people in Ahmedabad for the movement, the Sardar 'encouraged' them towards violence while expecting the Congressmen to observe nonviolence.

Presiding over a meeting of the Gujarat Congress Committee on July 6, 1942, he said the campaign would include everything that had been tried in previous campaigns. Significantly, he did not care to whom power was handed over as long as Britain cleared out and said it was better to die fighting for freedom than to die after being completely ruined.

Referring to the 'Quit India' slogan, he said it could be effective if four hundred million Indians asked one hundred thousand Englishmen to quit India. He added that the Congress did not seek power for itself and would be satisfied if it was handed over to the Muslim League.

Sardar Patel was named along with Jawaharlal Nehru by Giani Mehr Singh as being present at the secret meeting of the working committee at which the sabotage was decided upon.

According to Jai Chand Vidyalankar, Patel had dictated the sabotage programme an hour or so before his arrest and the arrangements for dissemination were made through a Gujarat worker.

Though Mahatma Gandhi was aware the movement might take the form it did, it was actually started in that form by Patel who was in favour of open rebellion, says the book.

Referring to the Communists' slogan about the 'people's war', the Sardar said it was suitable for Russia. "How can India call it a people's war?' he asked. Patel favoured India's participation in war only after attainment of Independence and disbandment of Congress.

''Between slavery and lawlessness, we shall have to choose lawlessness. Even after lawlessness, Independent India will emerge. But if India chooses slavery, it will not be able to rise forever,'' Sardar Patel told journalists in Ahmedabad on July 28 while putting forth the programme of the movement.

Three days later, addressing a private meeting of Congress leaders, he said the programme would include the 'no-tax' campaign, national strikes, breach of salt laws, disobedience of government orders and defiance of all government authority.

Patel told AICC delegates a day before the movement was formally launched about British betrayal and untrustworthy character of the Japanese which had brought the country to the brink.

The official resolution of the Congress Working Committee, demanding withdrawal of British power from India and vesting leadership in Gandhi to conduct a mass movement in case this demand was not accepted by the British was moved before the AICC in its August 7 session.

Seconding the resolution, Patel proclaimed that if America and Britain were thinking that they could fight their enemies from India without the cooperation of her people, they were being foolish.

In the same vein, he warned against putting faith in Japan about her intention regarding India. From her acts in Manchuria, China and elsewhere, it was clear that Japan was following the same ambition of empire-building as the British and even outdoing them.

''The movement will not be confined to the Congress only, it will take in all men who call themselves Indians. It will also include all items of nonviolent resistance, already sanctioned by the Congress, and probably more,'' the Sardar thundered.

The Quit India resolution which Patel wanted the Congress Working Committee to pass at Wardha in July in spite of Nehru's opposition, was finally passed at the Bombay session of the AICC on August 8, 1942.

Patel, along with other Working Committee members was detained under the defence of India rules the next day and lodged in Ahmednagar fort as the movement engulfed the nation.