Word: gandhis
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Money Makes the Mare Go. After Bardoli, Patel became recognized as the Congress Party's chief organizer and disciplinarian. He checked up on what Gandhi's followers ate, drank and wore. He passed on the party lists in provincial elections. He approved party-sponsored legislation, and personally drafted much of it. No detail was too unimportant or sordid for Boss Patel. Recently he took charge of negotiations between the Congress Party Ministry in Bombay and the Western Indian Turf Association, which wanted to renew its license for the Bombay racetrack. Patel, who has never seen a horse race...
Patel's closest friend is probably Ghanshyam Das Birla, jute and cotton magnate, who boycotts his own textile mills by wearing khadi (homespun).* Though Birla dotes on Gandhi, he dreams of an industrialized India. (Birla has contracts with Britain's Nuffield for an India-assembled automobile called the Hindustan Ten.) India's liberals and leftists are stridently suspicious of Patel's friendship with Birla and the other big industrialists, but Birla insists that he seeks no Government favors. Says he: "I already have all the money I need...
...matter of severance pay; the 850 remaining British members wanted to get out. It was up to Patel to find the new men who, with the 750 Indians in the two Services, would rule India.* Nehru called twice. He and Patel have a deep bond of mutual attachment to Gandhi and to Indian independence. Otherwise, politically and temperamentally, they are antipodal. Two subjects almost certainly mentioned in Nehru's bedside talks with Patel were the Moslems and the Marxists...
Which Way? Fidelity to Gandhiji was still the dominant note in Indian politics. But what did it mean in practical terms? Gandhi, in steaming Bengal, talked of love, and sang...
Patel would not walk alone if he could help it. He was obviously trying to base the new Indian nation on a compromise of the communal issue, a mildly rightist line in the labor split-plus full use of the police power (which Gandhi deplored but Organizer Patel did not). When the British Cabinet Mission reminded Patel last spring that he might be sent to jail again for defying the Raj, Patel replied calmly: "My bags are packed." That is the way he understands the game, and that is the way he plays it, in & out of power...