This is fairly accurate and has been accepted by several historians as how the events transpired.
Gandhi had two reasons to dissuade Patel , who was actually picked by an overwhelming majority of the members of the INC to become the PM , according to several historians of the era .
- Gandhi preferred Nehru’s more modern and secular vision and leadership of Nehru over Patel because of his educational background and overseas education and believed he will be able to lead India better with a more modern vision. After all, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah were all educated in England so maybe he saw Nehru as more modern and more secular and the vision and leadership India needed as a freshly minted nation. Patel was
- Gandhi also suspected that if not picked PM, Nehru might start a mutiny just like Jinnah did and that was not good for a fledgling country that was facing the prospect of partition and both Jinnah and Nehru were almost similar people from similar privileged backgrounds with similar aspirations… power. So a potential rift is another reason cited as Gandhi’s motive behind dissuading Patel who was picked overwhelmingly by the regional voting members of the INC. I don’t know if Nehru would have actually started a mutiny but that was the suspicion of Gandhi and India, shortly after its independence, went to war with Pakistan so a factional India would not be very good.
Patel was seen more Hindu-centric leader than the secular and British educated Nehru and Patel was fairly old then compared to Nehru and I think he died a few years after the independence and the calculation was right that Nehru could lead the country longer and into stability though the age factor was not Gandhi’s main consideration or at least described in history. He became Home Minister, a role he was better suited for and was more strong willed and instrumental in unifying all the princely states into the Union of freshly minted India.
This is actually one of the core themes of the 1975 book “ Freedom at Midnight “ by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre which is a popular book based on historical events though it’s dramatized but well researched, according to critics.
Both Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre were given exclusive access to Lord Mountbatten for the book and also his personal diaries and all his material so there is little dispute on the historical accuracy of the events depicted in the book whose chronology starts about a year before the independence of India and Pakistan and ends with the assassination of Gandhi.
The theory that Gandhi dissuaded Patel in favour of Nehru and his reasoning has been supported by several other books written on the same theme around the same events and historians and not just Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre and “ Freedom at Midnight” and both had a lot of exclusive access to Lord Mountbatten and his personal diaries and material and he was the only surviving member then out of the 4 main characters the book revolves around… Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten.
I guess Patel eventually deferred to Gandhi despite his initial reluctance and objection is the only reasonable conclusion you can draw from it. The book delves into details of what a firestorm it causes among leaders of the Indian National Congress about Gandhi’s decision to favour Nehru over Patel who was overwhelmingly picked by the voting members.
“ Freedom at Midnight” was made into a TV series last year and I kept seeing the trailers for it last year during the same time of the year but unfortunately, it’s not available in my geography on either Netflix or Amazon prime so I haven’t seen the TV series but read the book long time ago. There was also a movie based on the book called “ Viceroy House” which came out several years ago which I have seen but it’s a very condensed version of the book.
While “ Freedom at Midnight” is a dramatization of the actual historical events during the last year of the British rule in India and the events revolving around the power struggle, the partition and the post independence assassination of Gandhi, the historical accuracy of the material has been acknowledged by most historians as fairly accurate and sourced from reliable material, most of all from one of the four main characters of the book who was alive then and gave the authors exclusive access.