You'd generally be mad to go in without a genuine spinner (which Patel isn't) in India, even though Mohali has been one of the most seam-friendly grounds in the country.
However, outside India and Sri Lanka, I feel - and have felt for the last decade - that England are simply handicapping themselves by repeatedly picking someone (first Croft and Tufnell, then Giles, then MSP, and now possibly sometime soon Swann) principally to bowl fingerspin. Fingerspin simply isn't, can't be, effective in most places around the globe - there aren't enough pitches that allow it to be any more.
Given there's never been a wristspinner from this country who's looked remotely close to Test-standard and that doesn't appear likely to change any time soon, England are much best served going into most Tests with their specialist bowlers (ie, who are not picked principally for their batting) being four seamers. I believe this now and I've believed it since 2000, at the latest, when I first saw how well the strategy can work if the seamers have the requistite quality.
However, the trouble is that there's too often the belief that "you must have variation". It's believed that a decent-to-good fingerspinner (which all of Croft, Giles, MSP and quite possibly Swann are) is a better bet on any surface than an average seamer if the rest of the attack is seam, which quite simply isn't true. Of the seamers who've played for England in the last decade, all of Fraser, Gough, Cork, Headley, Caddick, Mullally, White, Hoggard, Flintoff, Anderson, Jones and Sidebottom are much, much preferable on the vast majority of pitches. Even the less long-lasting types like Tudor, Giddins, Johnson, Kirtley, Bicknell and (to date) Tremlett would've been preferable to a fingerspinner under most circumstances IMO.
Only the sheer useless types like Plunkett and Mahmood (and, to date, Broad, though that's clearly likely to change sometime eventually) are less preferable to a fingerspinner. Harmison is a moot point, as he's mostly been useless but has had odd Tests (and one 7-Test spree) of huge effectiveness.