Ambalal received his primary and secondary education in Nadiad, which was the site used by Gandhi when he began his non-violent protest in India.

He enrolled in the London School of Economics to improve his chances of success in the exam by gaining direct experience of the English intellectual, social and political scene.

He changed his original plan for an ICS career without conferring with his parents joined the Middle Temple to qualify as a barrister, graduating in 1928 at the age of 23.

A reason for Patel to not want to return to India was his relationship with an English divorcee, Patricia Catherall Seymour, who had a son from her previous marriage.

He was involved in discussions with the Governor, Sir Murchison Fletcher, to resolve the political crisis brought about by the walkout of Fiji Indian members of the Legislative Council when their demand for common roll was rejected.

In 1935, when there was a proposal to have members of the Legislative Council nominated, instead of elected, Patel, together with Vishnu Deo, led the anti-nomination campaign from outside parliament as President and Secretary of the Indian Association of Fiji.

Chattur Singh was a well known Ba resident, he was the President of the Ba branch of the Indian Association and his elder brother, Parmanand Singh, was one of the 3 Indians elected to the Legislative Council in 1929, Patel had angered the Muslim community because of his strong public stance against nomination (The Muslims had asked for their own representative to be nominated), Patel was a Gujarati whom the farmers saw as exploiters because of the high interest rate charged by the Gujarati merchants.

When the majority of farmers refused to harvest their cane, the Government invoked the Defence Regulation and restricted Patel and Swami Rudrananda to a radius of five miles (8 km) from their homes in Nadi and required them to inform the police in person of their movements.

Both refused to pay, but before the five days allowed was over, an anonymous well-wisher paid the fine but Patel later won the case on appeal.

The 1943 strike propelled Patel to the forefront of the political arena in Fiji and he easily won the 1944 Legislative Council election, defeating the sitting member for North West Viti Levu, by 1841 votes to 554.

During his days in the political wilderness, Patel concentrated on his law practice and continued to support the Sangam and the Ramakrishna Mission.

The government appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve, into the sugar industry.

Patel wanted legislation compelling CSR to keep it book of accounts in Fiji so that the Company could not cheat farmers from the proceeds of molasses, establishment of growers co-operative mills to break the monopoly of the CSR, setting up of an independent Sugar Board to oversee smooth functioning of the industry and the abolition of the Sugar Price Stabilisation Fund.

The commission supported CSR's idea of setting up wholly owned subsidiary for managing its activities in Fiji and the South Pacific Sugar Mills Limited was born.

These included the establishment of the Western Regional Library in Lautoka with branches in Ba, Nadi and Sigatoka, the establishment of the Fiji National Provident Fund, reform to the prisons systems to laying greater emphasis on the reformative side of prisons.

He attempted to remove race form the names of schools but was unsuccessful due to strong opposition from Fijians.

A constitutional conference in London in 1965 had made minor concessions to Indo-Fijians, abolishing educational and property qualifications for the franchise while confirming the sectarian basis of the electoral system.

In protest at the new government's refusal to call a second constitutional conference, Patel led the nine NFP legislators in a mass walkout in September 1967.

Patel's inflammatory language - he called Ratu Mara "a crow among swans," declared that Mara was a swear-word in Gujarati, and characterized Chinese people as "eaters of cats, rats, and bats" - dissipated much of the remaining goodwill that Fijian and British leaders had towards him, and when all nine NFP legislators were returned with increased majorities (In the 1968 election, the NFP won 78.55% of the votes cast.

Denning commended Patel for having mastery of all the facts and problems of the sugar industry and presenting them with skill and understanding.

[citation needed] Patel died suddenly on 1 October 1969,[2] in the midst of negotiations leading to Fijian independence which was granted barely a year afterwards.

His successor as leader of the NFP, Sidiq Koya, did in fact agree to such a compromise with Mara at a London conference in April 1970.

Mara was of the opinion, however, that had Patel lived, an agreement with him would have commanded much greater respect in the Indo-Fijian community, such was his stature among them.

In 2005, then-Vice-President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi concluded after a study of Patel's private correspondence that in reality he was not unsympathetic to indigenous interests, but was misunderstood.