Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Quotes

This book is really about the making of a great leader. In my own research and writings over many decades, I have concluded the following about leadership: You can neither manufacture nor can you buy leadership. You must earn it. Great leaders are great doers. They have a knack of organizing and inspiring the followers. Sometimes, they even generate cult-like loyalty. When the followers are ready, the leaders show up. Therefore, in times of crisis, uncertainty and chronic dissatisfaction, unexpected people become leaders. This was the case with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. In short, ordinary people become extraordinary leaders. Great leaders are driven by purpose and passion. They derive boundless energy from their purpose and passion. To them, leadership is all about people. Management is all about grit and determination. Great leaders not only promise the future but deliver it. Great leaders are great architects. Like good architects, they imagine building something unique, enduring, and inspiring. Examples include the Pyramids, the ancient temples, churches and mosques; more recently, the Opera House in Sydney; the Olympic Stadium (Bird’s Nest) in Beijing; and Putrajaya, the new capital of Malaysia. There are three universal qualities of all great leaders: passion, caring, and capability. This is also true of great teachers.

In 1949, Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel decided to found a think-tank specifically devoted to monitoring Communism, the Democratic Research Service, which was formally started in November 1950. It was sponsored by the industrialist Birla family, and initially led by Morarji Desai, who passed the job on to Minoo Masani. It was as secretary of the DRS that Ram Swarup prepared a History of the Communist Party of India, which Masani published in his own name. A lot of bad blood developed between them, and Ram Swarup quit the DRS to join Sita Ram Goel in Calcutta.

Out of 15, 12 Congress Pradesh Committee’s the only body with the power to nominate and elect the President of the Party nominated Sardar Patel.[26] Not a single Congress Committee nominated Nehru, but at the end of the day that did not matter. He was the Mahatma’s blue-eyed boy. Gandhi acted like the feudal lord he pretended he wasn’t and ‘advised’ Patel to withdraw his candidature. He asked Acharya Kripalani to find a proposer and seconder for Nehru’s candidacy. The historian Rajmohan Gandhi records how ‘as soon as Nehru had been formally proposed,’ pursuant to the Mahatma’s instructions Kripalani ‘handed Patel a fresh piece of paper with the latter’s withdrawal written out on it. Vallabhbhai was pulling out, Kripalani’s draft said ‘so that Nehru could be elected unopposed.’[27]