# Born in Nadiad, Gujarat, Sardar Patel was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress who played a leading role in the country’s struggle for independence. He acted as Home Minister during the political integration of India and the India-Pakistani War of 1947. He also served as the first Deputy Prime Minister of India.
# A successful lawyer, he subsequently organized peasants from Kheda, Borsad, and Bardoli in Gujarat in non-violent civil disobedience against the British Raj. Under the chairmanship of Patel, the “Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy” resolution was passed by the Congress in 1931.
# He led the task of forging a united India, successfully integrating into the newly independent nation those British colonial provinces that had been ‘allocated’ to India. It was Patel who persuaded almost every princely state to accede to India. His commitment to national integration in the newly independent country was total and uncompromising, earning him the sobriquet “Iron Man of India”.
# Patel died on December 15, 1950, at Birla House in Bombay, after suffering a massive heart attack. He is best remembered as the “Unifier of India”.
# In 2019, PM Modi dedicated his government's historic decision to nullify Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir to Patel, saying that his dream of the region's full integration with the Union of India, had been fulfilled.
