Tribute to Sardar Patel

Author(s): Friends of Sardar Patel Awrd Association UCLA
Publisher: USA Friends of Sardar Patel Awrd Association UCLA

Page 14

Wit And Wisdom of Sardar Patel
“Work is undoubtedly worship but laughter is life."
-Sardar Patel
I do not believe in any caste or community. The whole of India is my village and men of all communities are my friends and relations...All are children of the same God. After a man dies, does anyone ask if the corpse is that of a Brahman or a Chamar?
- Sardar Patel quoted in Narahari Parikh, Patel, 11 p.456
On WWII... The battles of today...take place in the skies. Wars take place under water. Both sides are robbers. Both are fighting in the name of God. Both claim to worship Christ. Both call themselves civilized and claim to preach to uncivilized people....
When such a devastating war is going on in the world, only one person (Gandhi] keeps his feet solidly on the ground and says that those who fight with the sword will be destroyed by the sword.”
-Sardar Patel quoted in Narahari Parikh, Patel, II p.455
August 1, 1942, a week before Gandhiji's call to "Quit India"
The Congress has been charged with stabbing Britain in the back. It is really a question of pushing them off our chest.
For the people of a country which wishes to be independent there can be only one burning desire: to drive out their present rulers and to do everything possible to prevent others from taking their place.
This struggle will be all-embracing...Congress will welcome non-payment of taxes, civil disobedience, and such direct actions as will obstruct the government.
Let the railwaymen refuse to work on behalf of the railways. Let the post and telegraph men go on strike. Let government servants give up their service. Let teachers and students keep away from schools and thus cooperate in bringing to a standstill the entire administrative machinery.
If there is your wholehearted support, the struggle will be over and won in a matter of days. The British will have to quit.
- Sardar Patel quoted in Rajimohan Gandhi, Patel, A Life p. 314 (A week later, on Aug 9, Gandhiji asked the British to quit India. Activities all over the country came to a standstill.]
In response to Sir Samuel Hoare's, (Secretary of State for the Dominions), statement in the House of Commons questioning India's fitness for independence, Sardar said in Oct 1940:
"If you lose the war, you will have lost everything, and even if you win, you will have suffered so heavily that your victory will be an empty one. At the end of the war, I declare no nation will remain subject to another. A great revolution is going to sweep the people everywhere. We shall see a new world emerge out of the fiery ordeal of this war."
-quoted in Durga Das, Sardar Patel's Correspondence, 1945-50, Vol. X, Ahmedabad, Navjivan, 1974, p. xxv.
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