The Architect of Integration: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Administrative Unification of India, 1946-1950

Abstract

The Chapter will focus on an important contribution made by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the orchestration of the administrative and territorial consolidation of India during the critical transition in the years between 1946 and 1950. Patel had a monumental task as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs and States bringing together the more than 560 princely states into the newly formed Indian Union and at the same time stabilizing the inherited colonial administrative apparatus. This Chapter holds that the distinctive combination of pragmatic statecraft, coercive diplomacy and political realism would have played a crucial role in India developing the territorial integrity after the colonial invasion through the view of pragmatic statecraft, coercive diplomacy and political realism as developed by Patel historically and analytically using official handwritten documents, parliamentary debates, and the wisdom of the contemporary literature. It discusses his two-tiered approach in the first place, his handling of the so-called Instrument of Accession process to the various princely states, combining persuasion, negotiations with the thorough domination of force (as in Hyderabad and Junagadh) and in the second place his strong-armed advocacy of the principle that administrative continuity must be maintained by keeping the so-called steel frame of the Indian Civil Service (ICS). It also discusses the conflicts between his centralizing, securitybased vision and those of Nehru, who was more pluralistic and developmental in his approach. The conclusion states that the legacy of the person named Patel as the Architect of Integration, is core to the contemporary Indian state, to creating a powerful, centralized administrative framework which forestalled balkanization during an extraordinarily frail condition.