In those days Patel was constantly by Gandhi's side. He was the Mahatma's chief lieutenant in the Kheda agitation in 1918 (a no-tax campaign in which the peasants refused to pay revenues demanded by the British despite famine and crop failure following heavy rains and flooding). The British tried to crack down by confiscating the farmers’ land, cattle, and even what little crops they had grown. Patel exhorted them not to give in. When Gandhi went to Delhi for talks with the viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, he left Patel in charge of the struggle on the ground. In the end the government relented, the taxes were lifted on the poorest cultivators, and the confiscated property returned. It was the first of many organizational triumphs for Patel.
In 1920 Patel resigned from the Viceroy's Council, on which he served alongside the likes of Jinnah, to support the Mahatma's non-cooperation movement. In 1927, when Nadiad and other districts of Gujarat were flooded and Gandhi was traveling in South India, Patel led the relief work, keeping the Mahatma informed and acting as his surrogate in the region. In 1928 he led the Bardoli satyagraha campaign and proved himself a champion of nonviolent resistance. Once again the British hiked the tax on land and Patel led their resistance to the new and unjust charges. Once again the British reacted by confiscating land, cattle, and crops; they went further than they had in Kheda by arresting hundreds of farmers and provoking an exodus of the dispossessed. Patel rallied the remnants, vowing not to give in. He devised a system whereby the farmers only sold milk, vegetables, and other essentials to purchasers bearing a chit from the local satyagraha committee. The struggle raged for six months, before it ended with the government agreeing to hold an inquiry into the merits of the tax increase, to return all the confiscated items, and to release the arrested farmers. With Bardoli, a city in Gujarat, Patel acquired the stature of a hero in the eyes of Congress leaders; the Mahatma bestowed upon him the title of “Sardar,” or leader, and hailed him publicly as “my right hand.” Many thought he might be made president of the Congress Party in Calcutta at the end of 1928 as a reward, but Gandhi asked Motilal Nehru to take on that role once more, and Patel bided his time.
The following year Gandhi prepared the ground for a political earthquake: he wanted Motilal to be succeeded as president of the Congress Party by his son. Jawaharlal, a stirring and radical leader who had done his own share to organize the peasantry in Uttar Pradesh and had gone to jail several times, had acquired great popularity as the glamorous face of Indian nationalism, his appeal differing greatly from that of the spiritual Mahatma and the doughty Patel. Though his writings and speeches and his international standing had made him a national figure, Nehru was conscious that he would not yet be the genuinely democratic choice of the party. But Gandhi would not be deterred. He cajoled and cudgeled Jawaharlal into submission, overcoming the objections even of Motilal himself, who feared that imposing his son on the party would not be fair either to the party or to Jawaharlal. (Ironically, it was Motilal who had first suggested to the Mahatma that “the need of the hour is the head of Gandhi and the voice of Jawahar.”) Sardar Patel, fifteen years older than Jawaharlal and a valiant organizer who was already being thought of as the “Iron Man” of the Congress Party, had more support than Nehru for the top job. But though the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) was not enthusiastic about Gandhi's announcement that Jawaharlal would lead it, the party could not repudiate the Mahatma. On September 29, 1929, two months before his fortieth birthday, Jawaharlal Nehru was elected to preside over the Congress Party at its December session in Lahore.
Sardar Patel it was, though, who conducted talks with Jinnah in the hope of forging a common front for the Round Table Conference convened by the British. He was the cool-headed, calm lawyer; Nehru the impatient, mercurial, hothead whom Patel sought to exclude from the process. Nonetheless, this attempt at peacemaking with the Muslim League failed. Patel was a leading light of Gandhi's Salt March to Dandi, in the course of which he earned his first prison sentence. A year later, having been released from prison as a result of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Patel succeeded Nehru as Congress president. He succeeded in steering the Karachi Congress session toward moderation, despite the passions aroused by the British execution of the unsuccessful insurrectionist Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries.
It was to be of no avail. Gandhi, Patel, and Nehru were all arrested following the failure of the Round Table Conference. Gandhi and Patel spent sixteen months together in Yeravada prison in Pune. Gandhi, Nehru, and Patel all spent much of the early 1930s in prison. While the Sardar was in jail his mother and brother both died; on each occasion he refused to accept a conditional release to attend their funerals.
In 1937 the British called elections based on the Government of India Act, which offered only a limited franchise to Indians and did so under the iniquitous system of “communal awards,” which entitled voters only to vote for candidates of their own religious persuasion. Nehru wanted to boycott these elections, but Patel felt that half a loaf was better than no bread. This time the Patel view (which was also that of Rajagopalachari and others) prevailed. Gandhi persuaded Nehru to lead the Congress election campaign. Patel was in charge of selecting the candidates and the overall organizational effort. It was a great success for both of them: Congress won 62 percent of the seats it contested, emerging as the largest single party in nine of the eleven provinces and winning an outright majority in six of them.
In 1937 Patel hoped to succeed Nehru again as party president, but the Mahatma nominated Nehru for a second successive term and Patel, ever the loyalist, withdrew his candidature. After Congress resigned office in protest against the viceroy's unilateral declaration of war against Germany in 1939, Maulana Azad assumed the party presidency. Both Nehru and Patel wasted the war years in jail, having been arrested for their role in the “Quit India” movement. After their release, both Nehru and Patel assumed key leadership roles in the waning days of British rule. In February 1946, when the famous Indian naval mutiny occurred in Bombay and Indian sailors on board the cruiser INS Talwar took command, hauled down the Union Jack and raised the tricolor instead, training their guns on the city, it was Patel who rushed to the port and firmly persuaded the young men to surrender.
In April 1946 Maulana Azad, after an unprecedented six years as Congress president, announced that he would be resigning and handing the reins to Jawaharlal. Sardar Patel and Acharya Kripalani, Congress's general secretary, announced their candidacies as well, but the Mahatma intervened swiftly and decisively, and both men withdrew. On May 9, Kripalani announced that Jawaharlal Nehru had been elected unopposed as president of the Congress Party — leading inevitably to his becoming the first prime minister, initially of an interim government, and then, a year later, of independent India.
In Nehru's first cabinet, Patel was named his deputy and in charge of home affairs, bringing his considerable organizational skills to the calamitous law-and-order situation and to the integration of the princely states. The new prime minister of India and his deputy had to deal with the consequences of the carnage sweeping the country; preside over the integration of the princely states into the Indian Union; settle disputes with Pakistan on issues involving the division of finances, of the army, and of territory; cope with massive internal displacement, as refugees thronged Delhi and other cities; keep a fractious and divided nation together; and define both a national and an international agenda. On all issues but that of foreign policy, Nehru relied heavily on Patel, who welded the new country into one with formidable political and administrative skills and a will of iron.