Independence and the three challenges of nation building

Detail

1. The moment of freedom (14-15 August 1947)

• Midnight of 14-15 August 1947: India became independent.
• Special session of the Constituent Assembly: That night the Assembly met in a special session. The Constituent Assembly was the body elected to write India's Constitution. In 1947 it also worked as India's Parliament.
• The session began at 11 p.m. in Constitution Hall, New Delhi. Dr Rajendra Prasad, President of the Assembly, was in the chair [2].
• Sucheta Kripalani sang the opening verse of Vande Mataram [2].
• Nehru moved the motion for the pledge. Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman seconded it, and S. Radhakrishnan spoke after him [2].
• At the stroke of midnight, members stood and took a pledge. They promised to "dedicate myself in all humility to the service of India and her people", so that India "attain her rightful and honoured place in the world" and work for world peace and the welfare of mankind [2].
• Hansa Mehta presented the National Flag to the Assembly on behalf of the women of India [2].
• The Assembly approved Lord Mountbatten as Governor-General of India from 15 August 1947 [2].

• The session ended with the opening verse of Jana Gana Mana [2].

• Nehru's 'Tryst with Destiny' speech: Nehru gave this speech to the special session just before midnight [3].

• Key line: "At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom." [3]
• Nehru said the pledge was redeemed "not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially". In other words, freedom was only the first step [3].

• He defined the service of India as "the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity". This already pointed to the development challenge [3].

• Gandhi did not attend the celebrations. He was in Kolkata, trying to stop Hindu-Muslim violence. He called 15 August "a day of rejoicing as well as of mourning". Freedom came together with Partition and its killings.

• First Republic Day (26 January 1950): The Constitution came into force on this day. Three postage stamps were issued to mark it.

2. Two shared goals of the national movement

Almost every stream of the freedom struggle agreed on two goals:

• (1) Democratic government: the people choose and control their rulers.
• (2) Government for the good of all, especially the poor and socially disadvantaged groups.
• People disagreed on how to reach these goals, but almost no one rejected the goals themselves.

3. Two voices of August 1947 (Exercise 5)

	Gandhi	Nehru
Words	Power is a "crown of thorns" … "you have to be more humble and forbearing"	"India discovers herself again"
Main idea	Duty, restraint, service. Power is a burden, not a prize	Opportunity, renewal, a new beginning
Agenda for nation building	Moral: rulers must serve, put up with others and stay humble	Forward-looking: build a modern nation and take its place in the world

• For exams: The two views fit together. Gandhi warns about how power should be used. Nehru describes what power should achieve.

4. The three challenges of nation building

Challenges of nation building means the three big tasks India faced in 1947: stay one country, become a working democracy, and develop the whole society.

Challenge 1: Unity with diversity (the subject of this chapter)

• Goal: Shape a nation that is united but also accommodative of diversity. "Accommodative" means it makes room for many languages, regions and faiths.
• Three questions India had to answer:
• Would India survive as one country?
• Would unity mean rejecting regional and sub-national identities (loyalty to a language, region or tribe that is smaller than the nation)?

• How would the territory be integrated? This covers Partition, the princely states and the reorganisation of states.

• Constitutional answer: Article 1 describes India as a "Union of States". The Union is one whole, but its states are recognised. Parliament can form new states and change state boundaries by ordinary law (Articles 2-4).

Challenge 2: Democracy

• The Constitution gave India:
• Fundamental Rights (Part III, Articles 12-35)
• Universal adult franchise, meaning every adult citizen can vote (Article 326)

• Parliamentary government, where ministers are responsible to the elected legislature (Articles 74-75)

• Necessary but not sufficient: A democratic Constitution is a must, but it cannot do the job alone. Democratic practice also had to be built: regular elections, opposition parties and respect for rules (→ one-party-dominance).

Challenge 3: Development

• Goal: The well-being of the whole society, not just some sections of it.
• Tools in the Constitution:
• Equality (Article 14)
• Special protection for disadvantaged groups, such as SCs, STs and backward classes (Articles 15(4), 46, 330, 332)

• The Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) (Part IV, Articles 36-51). These are welfare goals the government must keep in mind when making laws, but courts cannot enforce them.

• Policies: Planned development and poverty eradication (→ planned-development-politics).

5. Why many expected India to fail

• Continental size: India was almost as large as a continent.
• Deep diversity: It had many languages, cultures and religions.
• Old belief: A nation needs one language or one religion. Under this belief, India looked unlikely to hold together.
• Partition seemed to prove the doubters right: British India was divided on religious lines, mass violence followed and millions were uprooted.
• Outcome: India survived as one country and stayed a democracy. This turned the pessimists' forecasts upside down.

6. Guha's comparison: India and the USSR (Exercise 10)

Source: Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi.

• What the two countries shared:
• Huge size
• Ethnic, religious, linguistic and class diversity

• "Unpropitious" raw material, meaning conditions that were not favourable to building a nation

• How they differed:

	India	USSR
Method	Consent (people's agreement), elections, federal accommodation (for example, linguistic states)	Coercion (force), one-party control
Result	Survived as one democratic country	Broke up in 1991

• How the USSR ended:
• On 8 December 1991, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus declared that the USSR no longer existed [5].
• Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991. The USSR formally ended on 31 December 1991 [5].

• It was replaced by 15 independent countries [5].

• Lesson: In a diverse country, making room for differences builds unity. Forcing sameness on people can lead to break-up.

7. India as an "imagined community" (Exercise 9)

• Imagined community: a term coined by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities (1983) [4].
• Meaning: Members of a nation will never meet most other members. They still imagine a bond with all of them [4].
• Anderson argued that nations are not simply products of language, race or religion [4].

• Mass printing ("print capitalism") helped spread these shared identities [4].

• Applied to India: India is not held together by one language or one religion. It is held together by:

• a shared history of the freedom struggle
• the Constitution

• common political hopes: democracy, justice and development

• This idea links to the theory of nationalism.

Prelims Hooks

• The midnight session of 14-15 August 1947 was chaired by Dr Rajendra Prasad. Nehru moved the pledge motion, and Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman seconded it [2].
• Hansa Mehta presented the National Flag to the Constituent Assembly on behalf of Indian women on 14-15 August 1947 [2].
• Trap: On 15 August 1947, Gandhi was in Kolkata, not Delhi. He called it "a day of rejoicing as well as of mourning".
• "Crown of thorns … more humble and forbearing" is Gandhi. "India discovers herself again" is Nehru.
• NCERT's three challenges are unity with diversity, democracy and development. The chapter "Challenges of Nation Building" deals with the first.
• Imagined community comes from Benedict Anderson (1983), not Guha [4].
• The USSR was formally dissolved on 31 December 1991 into 15 republics [5].
• Article 1: India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. Article 326: universal adult franchise.

Mains Points

• Unity through accommodation, not uniformity: India's survival after Partition came from consent, elections and federal adjustment, such as linguistic states. The USSR used coercion and broke up in 1991 [5]. This contrast is useful for GS-I answers on post-independence consolidation.
• Democracy beyond the text: Fundamental Rights, Article 326 and parliamentary government were necessary but not sufficient. India's democracy rests on practices it built after 1950: regular elections, an opposition and institutional restraint.
• Two agendas at the founding: Nehru stressed national renewal and ending poverty and inequality of opportunity [3]. Gandhi stressed humility and restraint in power. Together they frame the debate on means versus ends in nation building.
• Civic nationhood: As an "imagined community" [4], India's nationalism rests on the Constitution and the shared freedom struggle, not on one religion or language. This is an argument against majoritarian readings of national identity.