New Delhi: History remembers conquerors for wars, thinkers for ideas, and dreamers for vision. But rarely does it remember a man who did all three — not through conquest, but through conviction; not by blood, but by belief.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Iron Man of India, stands in the same pantheon as Otto von Bismarck, who united the German-speaking States into one nation. Patel bound together 562 princely states into the Indian Union, forging from a thousand divisions the soul of a single nation.

A nation on brink

As the British prepared to withdraw in 1947, they left behind a political minefield. The princely states, constituting nearly two-fifths of India’s territory, were given the freedom to accede to India, Pakistan, or remain independent.

This proposition was not merely a con

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