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Challenges of Nation Building
Question
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Explain the challenges that India faced at the time of independence in 1947 of nation building.

Answer

India faced the following three challenges at the time of independence in 1947 :

(i) The first challenge was to shape a nation that was united, yet accommodative of the diversity in our society. India was a land of continental size and diversity. Its people spoke different languages and followed different culture and religions. At that time it aws widely believed that a country full of such kinds of diversity could not remain together for long.

(ii) The second challenge was to establish democracy. The Constitution had granted fundamental rights and extended right to vote to every citizen. India adopted Representative democracy based on the parliamentary form of goverment.The challenge was to develop democratic practices in accordance with the Constitution.

(iii) The third challenge was to ensure the development and well-being of the entire society and not only of some sections. The Constitution had adopted the principle of equality and provided special protection to socially disadvantaged groups and religious and cultural communities. The real challenge was to evolve effective policies for economic development and eradication of poverty.

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Some More Questions From Challenges of Nation Building Chapter

Here are two opinions –

Bismay : “The merger with the Indian State was an extension of democracy to the people of the Princely. States”.

Inderpreet: “I am not so sure, there was force being used. Democracy comes by creating consensus”.

What is your own opinion in the light of accession of Princely States and the responses of the people in these parts ?

Read the following very different statements made in August 1947 :

“Today you have worn on your heads a crown of thorns. The seat of power is a nasty thing. You have to remain ever wakeful on that seat...... you have to he more humble and forbearing... now there will be no end to your being tested. ” – M.K Gandhi

“... India will awake to a life of freedom....we step out from the old to the new...we end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity... ” – Jawaharlal Nehru

Spell out the agenda of nation building that flows from these two statements. Which one appeals more to you and why ?

What are the reasons being used by Nehru for keeping India secular ? Do you think these reasons were only ethical and sentimental ? Or were there some prudential reasons as well ?

Bring out two major differences between the challenge of nation building for eastern and western regions of the country at the time of independence.

What was the task of the States Reorganisation Commission ? What was its most salient recommendation ?

It is said that the nation is to a large extent an “imagined community” held together by common beliefs, history, political aspirations and imaginations. Identify the features that make India a nation.

Read the following passage and answer the questions below:

“In the history of nation-building only the Soviet experiment bears comparison with the Indian. There too, a sense of unity had to be forged between many diverse ethnic groups, religious, linguistic communities and social classes. The scale – geographic as well as demographic – was comparably massive. The raw material the state had to work with was equally unpropitious : a people divided by faith and driven by debt and disease. ”

—Ramachandra Guha

(a) List the commonalities that the author mentions between India and Soviet Union and give one example for each of these from India.

(b) The author does not talk about dissimilarities between the two experiments. Can you mention two dissimilarities ?

(c) In retrospect which of these two experiments worked better and why ?

Which famous speech did Jawaharlal Nehru deliver in 1947 and where? 

What was borne by India with its independence ?

Fill in the blanks:

“According to the ________ advanced by the ______-,India consisted of not

one but ________ people, _______ and Muslims.