VALLABHBHAI PATEL
(Sardar Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel)
He was echoing proposals that he made in the Delhi Emergency Committee that had been called to cope with the butchery and murder when the Hindus and Sikhs were trying to leave the areas that were to be part of Pakistan under the Partition and the retaliations against the Delhi Muslims who were trying to flee to the new Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Muslim leadership did not want such a truce as while the land had been partitioned, Indian Money, military equipment, and other resources were yet to be divided and the Muslim leaders who had been so successful playing the violence card to gain and independent Pakistan, did not want to give up that option in the remainder of the division of India. Also, it was not at all clear that the Muslim political leaders could even then control the mobs who they had already whipped up to violence.
This speech to over 100,000 people galvanized the Indian nationalists They had been asking the British to change the constitution to give India more independence. Churchill was opposed to any policy that would diminish the British Empire, but needed the Indians as men of India served in the British Army in every major theater of WWII. So instead of saying "No" Churchill held out the possibility but at a later time. He argued that it was inopportune to alter the Constitution in the midst of a world war.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, popularly known as Sardar Patel, was an Indian statesman. He served as the first Deputy Prime Minister of India. He was an Indian barrister, and a senior leader of the Indian National Congress who played a leading role in the country's struggle for independence and guided its integration into a united, independent nation. He was one of the conservative members of the Indian National Congress. In India and elsewhere, he was often called Sardar, meaning "chief" in Hindi, Urdu, and Persian. He acted as Home Minister during the political integration of India and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.
