It was October 31, 1950. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was addressing a huge gathering at a ground near Lal Darwaja in the heart of Ahmedabad on his 76th birthday. It had been 22 years since he had quit the job as president of the municipality — Ahmedabad had by then become a municipal corporation.

So overwhelmed were the over two lakh people who had gathered to listen to his one-and-half-hour-long speech that they pooled together Rs 15 lakh as a gift, which he promptly donated to the Gujarat Provincial Congress Committee to be spent on public works. This would be his last speech in Ahmedabad before he passed away on December 15 that year.

In December 1959, then President Rajendra Prasad had unveiled a statue of Patel on this very ground, which would later be developed as a municipal garden named after him.…