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Challenges of Nation Building
Question
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Describe the difficulties that was associated with Partition of India.

Answer

The following difficulties are associated  with Partition of India in 1947:

(i) There was no single belt of Muslim majority areas in British India.

(ii)Not all Muslim majority areas wanted to be in Pakistan. Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan or Frontier Gandhi, leader of the North West Frontier Province staunchly opposed to the two-nation theory.

(iii)Two of the Muslim majority provinces of British India Punjab and Bengal had very large areas where non-Muslims were in majority.

(iv) The fourth problem was related to ‘minorities’ on both sides of the border. They were undesirable aliens in their own home, in the land where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries. The minorities on both sides of the border were left with no choice except to leave their homes, often at a few hour’s notice.

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Some More Questions From Challenges of Nation Building Chapter

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.

What was percentage of Muslim population in India in 1951 ?