Rajnath Singh’s remarks on Nehru, Patel, Somnath and Babri Masjid, rather than being fabrications or distortions of history, reflect realities that were suppressed later by the Nehruvian ecosystem. – Utpal Kumar

Truth can often be stranger than fiction. This became obvious when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s recent statement about Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Babri Masjid opened a Pandora’s box, pushing the country to revisit the uneasy truths of its early years as an independent entity.

The Congress, quite expectedly and duly supported by its ecosystem, has strongly denied Singh’s assertions, calling them “lies” devoid of archival backing. Yet, when one turns to the memoirs, diaries, and biographies written by contemporaries of Nehru and Patel, a more complex picture emerges—one that suggests history is more often than not written by victors, which in the country’s case were Nehru and his acolytes.

Rajnath Singh’s intervention touches on two sensitive issues: one, whether Nehru had proposed using government funds to build the Babri Masjid; and two, the first prime minister’s alleged reluctance to support a national memorial for Sardar Patel. Contrary to claims that Singh is distorting or inventing history, the fact is that these incidents were explicitly recorded in books and personal documents from the 1950s and 1960s.

The Babri Masjid Question

The most striking material comes from the diary of Maniben Patel, Sardar Patel’s daughter. In one of her entries, she notes that Nehru had raised the question of the Babri Masjid and its reconstruction. According to her account, Sardar Patel immediately made it clear that the government could not spend public money to build or rebuild a mosque. He also reminded Nehru that the case of the Somnath temple had been entirely different. In her entry dated September 20, 1950, Maniben Patel writes,

“Bapu (Sardar) said (the) government cannot give money for building a mosque? He knew it very well so that Junagadh was taken over well in advance, and land [was] obtained from [the] Junagadh government for Somnath, and a trust was created and credited Rs 30 lakh. Panditji wrote a chit to Munshi that [the] government cannot spend money on Somnath, as ours is a secular state. Munshi transferred [it] to him (Bapu). He replied that this is a trust of which Jamshed is chairman and Munshi a member and no government money is going to be used in it. He (PM) was silenced then.”

This diary entry is significant because it directly contradicts the categorical denials made today that Nehru ever entertained any proposal regarding government involvement with the Babri Masjid. It also supports Rajnath Singh’s remark that Patel had explicitly opposed such an idea. The suggestion that Nehru even considered using public funds for the mosque complicates the popular portrayal of him as a secularist who maintained a firm line separating religion and state.

The Somnath Saga

The Nehruvian double standard becomes more acute when one looks at the Somnath temple reconstruction episode. In his book Pilgrimage to Freedom, K.M. Munshi, a key leader in the Somnath project, recounts that when Junagadh acceded to India, Sardar Patel, as deputy prime minister, pledged the government to rebuild the temple. Munshi writes that the Union Cabinet, with Nehru presiding, initially approved the reconstruction at government expense.

It was Mahatma Gandhi, not Nehru, who advised that the temple must be rebuilt not with state funds but with voluntary contributions from Hindus. Sardar Patel accepted Gandhi’s advice and swiftly set in motion the creation of a trust to oversee public fundraising. Munshi himself was appointed chairman of the advisory committee for reconstruction.

What surprised Munshi was Nehru’s conduct after Sardar Patel’s death. He records that Nehru repeatedly criticised him for his involvement, despite the fact that the early Cabinet decision had Nehru’s own assent. Munshi writes that he had to remind the prime minister in a detailed letter that “everything was done … in accordance with the decision of the Cabinet taken under his guidance”.

The Somnath saga thus exposes another, little-known aspect of Nehruvian hostility to things Hindu—that the first prime minister’s opposition to state involvement in temple reconstruction was not a position he held from the start; it emerged only later, especially when he became all-powerful after the death of Sardar Patel. And, more damningly, this secular posturing did not stop him from discussing public support for the Babri Masjid, as Maniben Patel’s diary shows.

The Unfinished Legacy of Sardar Patel

The second part of Rajnath Singh’s critique concerns the systematic neglect of Sardar Patel’s memory and legacy after his death. Here, too, the archival material is extensive.

In his book The Sardar of India, P.N. Chopra describes how a plan to build a national memorial for Patel was approved by the Congress Working Committee. The target was Rs 1 crore. Industrialist G.D. Birla, a close aide of both Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, raised Rs 50 lakh and handed it to the All-India Congress Committee, while state units began collecting contributions.

Yet the project stalled. According to S.K. Patil, a Congressman, as quoted by Chopra, Nehru “remained passive throughout” and eventually suggested that since Patel had been an “agriculturist” and “friend of villagers”, the collected money should be used instead for digging wells and constructing village roads. S.K. Patil found the suggestion “nonsensical”, as “digging of wells and constructing roads was the normal responsibility of the government. That responsibility could not be shared by the memorial fund”.

Chopra also records that Nehru objected even to raising Patel’s statue at Vijay Chowk. Only after much difficulty was a new site secured on Parliament Street, funded not by the Congress’s official memorial fund but by money raised separately in Bombay, now Mumbai.

More startling is the account related by R.L. Handa in his book Rajendra Prasad: Twelve Years of Triumph and Despair. Handa, who was the press secretary to President Rajendra Prasad, writes that upon Patel’s death in 1950, Nehru issued a direction to ministers and secretaries asking them not to go to Bombay for the funeral. When he requested President Rajendra Prasad to avoid attending as well, Prasad refused. Durga Das, in his book India: From Curzon to Nehru and After, corroborates this, noting that Prasad felt Nehru was attempting to diminish Patel’s stature.

These testimonies strengthen Rajnath Singh’s argument that there was a concerned attempt to diminish Patel’s legacy in the years following Independence—an observation shared not merely by modern political actors but by several of Sardar Patel’s contemporaries.

Rajnath Singh’s remarks, rather than being fabrications or distortions of history, reflect realities that were suppressed later by the Nehruvian ecosystem. They show that the early years of the republic were far from monolithic, carved from Nehruvian stone, as is being projected today, and that the country’s slide towards amoral, soulless secularism detached from ageless Sanatana ethos was neither inevitable nor uncontested. In that sense, the ongoing debate sparked by Rajnath Singh has reopened a window onto a past that continues to challenge our assumptions, proving yet again that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. – News18,

› Utpal Kumar is Opinion Editor at Firstpost and News18 and is the author of the book Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History.