INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Cover of INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

I received an email from Indus Source, a book publisher in Mumbai, alerting me to the publication of INDIA'S BISMARCK: Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, in response to my article The Assertive Indian.

INDIA'S BISMARCK covers Sardar Patel's career as a satyagrahi, creator of the Indian Administration Service (IAS), and Congress Party boss. Given their strong wills, it should not be surprising that Sardar Patel clashed with Netaji when Netaji presided over Congress, my article on The Assertive Indian notwithstanding.

The most important part of INDIA'S BISMARCK covers Sardar Patel's leadership as Unifier of India. He used Indian troops to compel accession of Junagadh (in Gujarat) and Hyderabad. His lasting achievement was the accession of 560 princely states to form the geographic whole that is India.

Westerners know about Gandhi and Nehru, but don't know about Sardar Patel. While the widely read Freedom at Midnight discusses Sardar Patel, his leadership as Unifier of India gets short shrift and ultimately, he is treated almost as an afterthought in the epilogue (Sardar Patel died in 1950, only three years after Independence). Even many Indians might not be familiar with Sardar Patel's accomplishments. I recommend INDIA'S BISMARCK to these reader audiences.

You may purchase INDIA'S BISMARCK on Amazon.com.

Being the Bahu of Bengal is no longer a joke

I chose the screen name Bahu of Bengal as a joke. I extended that joke with a reference to Amitabh Bachchan, who worked as a shipping agent in Calcutta before he went into movies and met and married Jaya Bhaduri.

True, I am married to a Bengali and I have a loving relationship with my husband’s parents, who still live in Kolkata, so there’s the sentimental attachment. I realized that calling myself the Bahu of Bengal was something other than a joke when I reacted to this story about Muslims taking over a historic terracotta mandir in Bangladesh to build a madrassa.


Terracotta temple in Birgonj, Dinajpur, Bangladesh

We had visited this mandir (which is similar to those in Bishnupur, Bankura District, West Bengal) when we traveled to Bangladesh to see where my father-in-law was born and grew up. I was indignant and shocked to learn that this mandir has been appropriated to serve as a madrassa. These stories hit home when there's a personal connection.

Auroville

As Sri Aurobindo went deeper and deeper in the spiritual life, he turned over operation of his ashram to The Mother née Mirra Alfassa.

Some years after Sri Aurobindo's mahasamadhi in 1950, The Mother had a vision for a utopian community to bring people from all over the world together for spiritual evolution. This was the beginning of Auroville.

An unpaved road lined with shops that cater to "counterculture" types leads to Auroville. On the day we visited, it was pouring, and the road was gutted. When we ventured out of the car, red clay mud clung to our shoes.

The centerpiece of Auroville is the Matrimandir, a dome-shaped building with a golden exterior. One can go inside the Matirmandir to meditate only at certain hours of the day, and then, only with permission. In fact, one can view the exterior of the Matrimandir only at particular hours of the day.


Matrimandir, Auroville

No flowers, incense, or images are allowed in the Matrimandir. If meditation is withdrawal from sense-objects, the Matrimandir enables it!

Mahakavi Bharathi Memorial Museum

Sri Aurobindo was not the only nationalist to flee to Pondicherry. The Tamil Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi also found refuge in Pondicherry.

My husband and I visited the Mahakavi Bharathi Memorial Museum and Research Centre in Pondicherry. It's not easy to find: our driver had to ask for directions several times before we found the museum.

The museum is housed in the home where Bharathi lived in Pondicherry. It is very small, consisting of only three rooms. We went about the three rooms, and nothing was intelligible to us, as neither of us read Tamil. We mentioned this to museum staff, and they showed a well-produced video in English about the museum.

In one room, photographs of people who had influential roles in Bharathi’s life are hung on the walls. In the display cases are journals and other publications for which Bharathi wrote and served as editor. In the largest room, there is a large oil painting of Bharathi, surrounded by pictures of his family. In another room are letters he wrote to other notables.

Subramanya Bharathi

We love checking out museum shops, but alas, the only publications for sale were in French and Tamil. A few CDs of Bharatiyar kritis for purchase would have been great.

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

The Union Territory of Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) is a former French colony that provided refuge to Indian nationalists who fled prosecution under British rule.

Sri Aurobindo settled in Pondicherry in 1910 and stayed there until he left his body in 1950. He withdrew from politics and devoted himself to spiritual work in the forty years he lived in Pondicherry.

On a previous trip, we visited Sri Aurobindo Nivas in Vadodara (formerly Baroda), where Sri Aurobindo lived from 1893-1907. It was a logical progression that we visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry.

Our visit to the Ashram was a short one. We had darshan at the cenotaph for the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.


Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

Then we went into the bookstore, which has a comprehensive collection of books by or about Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. In a room off the bookstore, the chair in which Sri Aurobindo is seated in the photograph below is preserved: