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Challenges Of Nation Building

Question

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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 ?

Solution

The agenda of nation building that flows from these two statements is as given below :

According to M.K.Gandhi, there were different challenges of nation building viz. to shape a united nation, to establish democracy and to ensure the development and well-being of the entire society and not only of some sections. The problems would have arisen again and again had we been not been humble and forbearing to solve those problems. It was a fact because the partition led to one of the largest, most abrupt, unplanned and tragic transfer of population that human history has known. It was a test for the Indian leaders as their rehabilitation was not an easy task and there was a crown of thorns on their heads.

Whereas for Jawaharlal Nehru, freedom of India was only a step. There were problems of poverty, unemployment, rehabilitation of people, harmony among people and establishing democracy but freedom has given an opportunity to solve them.

The agenda of Gandhi appeals to me because it deals with the problems as a crown of thorns and advises the leaders to remain ever wakeful on the seat of power. It advises them to be humble and forbearing.

Some More Questions From Challenges of Nation Building Chapter

Take a current political map of India (showing outlines of states) and mark the location of the following Princely States:
(a) Junagadh (b) Manipur

(c) Mysore (d) Gwalior

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 ?

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