A few weeks back, a prominent environmentalist, Himanshu Thakkar, sent me a message stating — and let me quote: “There is one issue that you can research and write about, this is a suggestion. The Narmada dam is called Sardar Sarovar Dam and they have also put up that huge statue at the dam site. But to the best of my information, Vallabhbhai did not advocate such a dam. Did he?”
As would usually happen nowadays, I immediately turned to ChatGPT for an answer. It confidently told me, yes, it was Sardar Patel who had envisioned the dam on the Narmada. It cited Wikipedia as the reference. I turned to Wikipedia, and it said: “This project was envisioned by the first Home Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of this project in 1961.”
Apparently, Wikipedia appears to have said this on the basis of a Government of India site, which states: “The Sardar Sarovar project was a vision of the first Deputy Prime Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,” though adding in the same breath, “The foundation stone of the project was laid out by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on April 5, 1961.”
More recently, I was reminded of Thakkar’s query again following a rather lengthy conversation on a Facebook post with a Gujarat government official who has long worked in the state information department and claims to have deep knowledge of Sardar Patel. A known Narendra Modi protégé, he wrote on his Facebook wall that the “farsightedness of Sardar Patel and the vision of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” among others, created a “harmony” which “brought the Sardar Sarovar Dam into being.”
Curious, I immediately asked this official to give a reference of Sardar Patel speaking about a dam on the Narmada, asking him, “Has he written anywhere on this, or is it just hearsay?” In his reply, this official — whom I am not naming because he has not made his post public — said that after India’s independence, Sardar Patel “outlined preliminary administrative frameworks for various river and irrigation projects, including large dams.”
However, he hastened to add, “While it is true that the name Sardar Sarovar had never been conceived at that time, there is no doubt that he encouraged states to take up such ambitious projects. It was his dream that the rivers and water resources of the nation should be linked with canals in such a way that no part of the country would ever face scarcity or drought. It is possible that the very concept of interlinking rivers in our country emerged from such foundational thinking.”
This led me to seek “specific quotes from Sardar Patel stating he favoured big dams,” and this time he was more specific. Let me quote him: “During his lifetime, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was at the forefront of the nation’s freedom struggle. After independence, he dedicated his life to shaping the newly independent India. Naturally, at that time, his priorities were the freedom movement and nation-building.”
“Yet,” he continued, Sardar Patel “was also a visionary, and for the well-being of independent India — especially for this agriculture-based nation and its farmers — he held water-related ideas, even if he may not have expressed them in the form of official documents. In many of his speeches during public life, wherever relevant, he likely conveyed such thoughts. That is why it is not easy to find a direct, official statement from him on this subject.”
The official hastened to add, “Even if no official statement from Sardar Patel directly supporting water management or large dams is discovered — so what? My point is simply this: whatever literature is found on such topics must be interpreted comprehensively, as a summary or essence of his ideas. Nowhere is it stated that he opposed large dams, and there is no evidence that he ever objected to them.”
Following this, I again turned to ChatGPT, and lo! I found it had changed its stance. It told me — and again I quote — “There is no concrete historical evidence that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel personally envisioned a dam specifically on the Narmada River or formally proposed the Sardar Sarovar Dam.”It asserted: “Patel strongly supported irrigation and water management projects as part of rural development. He believed in harnessing rivers, building canals, and creating reservoirs to make agriculture self-sufficient,” but added, “After independence (1947), as India’s first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, Patel was involved in administrative planning for development, but there is no documented speech, letter, or policy paper from him specifically mentioning the Narmada Dam.”
Thereafter, I decided to contact several individuals who had studied Sardar Patel, and all of them confirmed that the idea of a big dam on the Narmada was not envisioned by Sardar Patel but by Jawaharlal Nehru. Wikipedia tells me: “India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation of the project on 5 April 1961.” Other sources say it was named after Sardar Patel by the Gujarat government in 1970.
Meanwhile, I found one article in News Club, with the heading, “Dream of the Narmada Dam by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in 1946 – A False Political Declaration.” The article seeks to dispute Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim in a 2017 speech where he said the idea of a dam on the Narmada was envisioned by Sardar Patel.
The article gave the following timeline of Sardar Patel’s activities prior to independence and thereafter:
- 09.08.1942 — Patel was imprisoned with the entire Congress Working Committee.
- 15.06.1945 — Patel was released from jail.
- 1945 — When Sardar Patel was released, he realised that the British were preparing proposals to transfer power to Indian hands.
- 1946 — Election for the Congress presidency; Sardar Patel stepped down in favour of Nehru at the request of Gandhi. The plan for harnessing the river for irrigation and power generation in the Narmada basin was initiated.
- December 1946 and January 1947 — Sardar Patel worked with civil servant V.P. Menon on the latter’s suggestion for a separate dominion of Pakistan.
- 03.06.1947 — Formally proposed the plan for partition/independence.
- 15.08.1947 — India became independent.
- 15.12.1950 — Sardar Patel passed away.
This is followed by another chart, which says:
- 05.04.1961 — Foundation stone of Navagam Dam (now Sardar Sarovar Dam) was laid by Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
- December 1979 — Under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal gave its final award.
The article asks: “In the above history, where is the dream of Sardar Patel in 1946 (before 71 years)? Where was the time to think about development during the British Rule when the exercises for independence started? Moreover, in the initial proposal in 1946, four locations — namely Bharuch in Gujarat, and Bargi, Tawa, and Punasa in Madhya Pradesh — were under consideration.”
The article concludes by stating: “In fact, it was also a political trick of PM Modi to link the Sardar Sarovar Dam to Sardar Patel and to blame other Congressmen. And it is an attempt to write/create a new history.” In the end, the article offers the YouTube link of Modi’s 2017 speech, calling it a “lie.”
Interestingly, Union Home Minister Amit Shah tried to put the record straight in the following words in 2022, even as making it an anti-Congress plank: “Nehru had laid the foundation stone of the dam in 1961, even before I was born, but it was Morarji Desai’s ‘mistake’ that he named it after Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The moment the dam became Sardar Sarovar, the Congress stepped back and did not want to complete the project… They couldn’t make do with the name.”
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