Nehru and Patel just pulled along. What both the BJP and Nehru camp followers forget is that it was Nehru who was in a minority in the Congress, and Patel who had the majority with him.Even over Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir, the two stayed in close touch. It was Nehru and Patel who were fed up with the Muslim League’s intransigence during the short coalition phase in the Provisional Government, and they knew that Partition was inevitable. At the same time, he didn’t let go his control of the party. He was a practical man, never given to high-flown phrases.The author is a Delhi-based commentator and analystend-of.
Patel didn’t endure Nehru due to any sentimental deference to Gandhi’s memory and wishes.So when the BJP and Narendra Modi want to praise Patel to denigrate Nehru, they are going against the facts.He was a right-wing Congressman. They didn’t put aside their differences. Even his most implacable critics can’t cull out evidence to show he left Muslims to fend for themselves at a time when ejector sleeve the communal frenzy was at its peak. Apparently, he didn’t even want President Rajendra Prasad to go as well. Patel was in the middle, and he didn’t agree with either. Patel was an unapologetic right-wing politician, who had nothing but contempt for much of the socialist rhetoric of Nehru and his acolytes, and particularly Jayaprakash Narayan.At the end of the day, despite their growing irritation with each other, Nehru and Patel stood by each other.  
It is, however, based on anecdotal evidence that is not sufficient to qualify as historical evidence. That is why he didn’t do anything to undermine Nehru’s position. There is a famous letter that Patel wrote to Nehru on the issue of Tibet in 1949.
The BJP’s bid to latch on to him as they know Savarkar the politician faded away too long back for his name to resonate with people, and that Mookerjee, with his admirable talents, abandoned the national role he could have had if he didn’t choose a narrower ideology. Patel and Nehru shared information and notes when Patel set to work pulling in all the princely states into the Indian Union. But he didn’t.There is an unmistakable false note in the BJP’s bid to appropriate Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for its own. He would have if he believed in the argument of India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. He checkmated Nehru. Patel didn’t leave the Congress and didn’t walk away from Gandhi. Muslims were killed in the Partition riots despite that.The most important thing the BJP forgets about Patel is that he was a formidable Congressman, just like Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and others. There were nearly three years when Patel and Nehru were face to face with each other, and their sharp differences didn’t  disappear.  
He was determined that Muslims in India who stayed back would remain equal citizens, but he refused to handhold them. He didn’t drop Patel from the Cabinet, which he could have. Nehru too could have threatened to walk out of the party. As India’s first home minister, Patel left no stone unturned to see that there was no massacre of Muslims moving from this side to the other. It isn’t necessary to deny the narration as he might have been worried about precedents for the future, or may have hated Patel so much that he thought this was the time to get his way. That was the man.