Read the passage given below carefully and answer the following questions:

The interim government took a firm stance against the possible division of India into smaller principalities of different sizes. The Muslim League opposed the Indian National Congress and took the view that the States should be free to adopt any course they liked. Sardar Patel, India‟s Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Minister during the crucial period, immediately after Independence, played a historic role in negotiating with the rulers of Princely States in bringing most of them into the Indian Union.

(i) Which government has been referred to as the interim government?

(ii) Why did Muslim League oppose the Indian National Congress?

(iii) What makes the role of Sardar Patel a historic one? Explain.

“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 ?

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

one but ________ people, _______ and Muslims.