Word: patel
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...Leaguer Mohamed AH Jinnah, more than Jawaharlal Nehru's eloquent idealism, more, perhaps, than Gandhi's combination of mysticism and manipulation. India needed an organizer. It had one. Gandhi listened to God and passed on his political ideas to Vallabhbhai (rhymes with "I'll have pie") Patel; Patel, after listening to Gandhi, translated those ideas into intensely practical politics...
...Patel has no pretensions to saintliness or eloquence or fanaticism. He is, in American terms, the Political Boss. Wealthy Hindu and Parsi industrialists (like C. H. Bhabha, Patel's son's employer, who has just become Works, Mines and Power Minister) thrust huge campaign funds into his hands. With their money, Congress Party patronage, and ceaseless work, he has built a machine that touches every one of India's conflicts. In every fight his objective is the same-power for India...
...Home and Information Minister of the new Central Government, as boss of the Congress Party, Patel represents what cohesive power Free India has. This cinder-eyed schemer is not the best, the worst, the wisest or the most typical of India's leaders, but he is the easiest to understand, and on him, more than on any man, except Gandhi, depends India's chance of surviving the gathering storms...
Interrupted Rubber. The first movement Patel ever organized was a student revolt against a teacher he accused of profiteering in pencils and paper. Later, Patel went to London, studied law 16 hours a day, topped the list in a bar examination and headed back for his beloved India without stopping to tour the Continent. He has never left India since...
...legal career was mainly defending murderers and bandits and frightening district magistrates with his caustic tongue. One magistrate, hearing that Patel was expanding his practice, moved his court to a town out of Patel's reach. In later years Gandhi found in Patel "motherly qualities" that eyes less inspired than the Mahatma's never saw. Today, Patel is coldly pleased when his enemies call him "the Iron Dictator" and "Herr Vallabhbhai." Enemies and friends tell an anecdote of his criminal law days. He had just put his wife in a Bombay hospital, returned to Ahmedabad to argue...