Challenges of Nation Building . 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.” — R amachandra G uha (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?
LET US DO IT TOGETHER • Read a novel/ story on partition by an Indian and a Pakistani/ Bangladeshi writer. What are the commonalities of the experience across the border? • Collect all the stories from the ‘Let’s Research’ suggestion in this chapter. Prepare a wallpaper that highlights the common experiences and has stories on the unique experiences.