Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel CIE (27 August 1904 — 30 November 1993) was an Indian civil servant who played a major role in the issues regarding internal and national security in the first years after the independence of India. From 1977 to 1979, he served as the Finance Minister and later Home Minister of India. He was also the chairman of the Charutar Vidya Mandal, which founded Vallabh Vidyapith that was later on named as Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar Early life and career Patel was born on 27 August 1904 in Bombay (now Mumbai), in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency of British India. He was educated St. Xavier's in Bombay, before he left for England, aged 14. He graduated from St Catherine's College, Oxford with a major in economics and joined the Indian Civil Service in October 1927. From 1927 to 1933, he served as an assistant collector in North Canara and Ahmednagar, and as Collector of Bharuch, after which he received attachment to the Central Board of Revenue in 1934. In March 1936, he was appointed as an officiating deputy secretary in the finance department of the Bombay Presidency. From July 1937, he served as the Indian Trade Commissioner in Hamburg, Germany until the outbreak of war, after which he returned to India and was posted as a deputy Trade Commissioner in January 1940. In September that year, he was appointed a deputy secretary in the Department of Supply, rising to the rank of full secretary by 1945. In the 1946 New Year Honours list, Patel was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE). One of his benefactors was a member of the erstwhile ICS & former chief justice of the Patna high court As a civil servant Patel became Home Secretary under Vallabhbhai Patel in 1946, serving till 1950. Up to independence, Patel worked with Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, the future Prime Minister of Pakistan, and Walter John Christie on the preparation and implementation of the crucial document The Administrative Consequences of Partition. He was the head of the Emergency Committee administering Delhi in the days following the outbreak of massive violence following the Partition of India in 1947. Patel headed the effort to rehabilitate millions of Hindu and Sikh refugees entering the city, while protecting the Muslims living in the city. Patel served as India's Defence Secretary between 1947 and 1953. In 1950, he was