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Subject: General Studies (Paper 1 - Indian Heritage and Culture, History & Geography of the World & Society)

Topic: Post Independence

POST INDEPENDENCE

Post- Independence Consolidation

A major problem, perhaps the most serious one, that India has faced since 1947 has been of national unity or consolidation of the nation. The problem is also sometimes referred to as national integration or the integration of Indian people as a political community.

Unity in Diversity

The Indian nation is the product of a historical process and has been therefore in the making for very long, at least some five centuries. The roots of India's nationhood lie deep in its history and also in its experience of the struggle for independence. Pre-colonial India had already acquired some elements of common existence and common consciousness. Despite its immense cultural diversity, certain strands of a common cultural heritage had developed over the centuries, knitting its people together and giving them a sense of oneness, even while inculcating tolerance of diversity and dissent. As the poet Rabindranath Tagore put it, the unity of India is the 'unity of spirit'. Elements of political, administrative and economic unity had developed especially under the Mughals. The politics of the rulers and their territorial ambitions often cut across regions and were, at their most ambitious, sub continental in their reach. Also, despite backward means of transport and communication, a great deal of India-wide trade, specializations of productions and credit networks developed, especially during the late medieval period, A feeling of Indianness, however vague, had come into being, as testified by the currency of the concepts of Bharat Varsha and Hindustan. As pointed out in an earlier chapter, the colonialization of the Indian economy, society and polity further strengthened the process of India’s unification. From the middle of the nineteenth century, Indians were more and more sharing common economic and political interests and social and cultural development even though they continued to be differentiated by language and ethnicity.

The national movement, as seen in Chapter 3, played a pivotal role in welding Indians together politically and emotionally into a nation and integrating them into ‘a common framework of political identity and loyalty’. The depth, duration and deep social penetration of this movement carried the feeling of unity and nationhood to the mass of the people.

The leaders of the national movement realized that the making of the nation was a prolonged and continuous process, and one which was open to continuous challenges and interruption, disruption and even reversal. One such disruption had already occurred in 1947. As founders of the republic, these leaders were therefore fully aware that after independence too the process of unifying India and national integration was to be carefully sustained, promoted and nurtured through ideological and political endeavours. In fact, the leaders of India after 1947 saw the preservation and consolidation of India’s unity as their biggest challenge. As Nehru put it in 1952,’the most important factor, the overriding factor, is the unity of India’, To quote him again; ‘Personally, I fee,’ he said in 1957,’that the biggest task of all is not only the economic development of India as a whole, but even more so the psychological and emotional integration of the people of India.’

India’s complex diversity is legendary. It consists of a large number of linguistic, cultural and geographic-economic zones. It has followers of different religions, Hindus, Muslims, Christians. Skihs, Parsis, Buddhists and Jews, apart from tribals with myriad belief systems. In 1950, the Indian constitution recognized fourteen major languages, besides hundreds others, many of which were spoken by just a million persons. The 1961 census listed 1,549 languages as mother tongues. The tribals, constituting over 6 per cent of the population, are dispersed all over India.

Given this diversity, the leaders of the national movement realized that the Indian nation had to be built on a very broad foundation.

India could be unified and its segmentation overcome only by accepting this immense diversity and not counterposing it to the process of nation-in-the-making. The emergence of a strong national identity and the preservation of India’s rich diversity were seen as simultaneous processes. Regional cultural identities would develop no in conflict with but as part of the all-India identity. This entire outlook was epitomized in Nehru’s approach who wrote in early 1951: ‘We have to remember always that India is a country with a variety of cultures, habits, customs and ways of living… It is very necessary, I think, for all of us remember that this wonderful country of ours has infinite variety and there is absolutely no reason why we should try to regiment it after a single pattern. Indeed that is ultimately impossible.’ At the same time, the hope as well as the answer there; ‘But India is far greater, far richer and more varied than any part of it. We have to develop an outlook which embraces all this variety and considers it our very own.’ Thus, the differences in language, culture, religion and ethnicity were to be seen not as obstacles to be overcome, not as antithetical to national consolidation, but as positive features that were sources of strength of strength to emerging nationhood. Consequently, the consolidation of independent India was to occur around the concept of ‘unity in diversity’

It was, however, recognized that the diversity of India could also be a source of weakness. Diversity could be use for divisive purposes and transformed into disruptive tendencies, such as communalism, casteism and linguistic or regional exclusiveness. The problem of integrating diverse loyalties was therefore quite real, especially as rapid social conflicts. The issues of jobs, educational opportunities, access to political power and share in the larger economic cake could and did fuel rivalries and conflicts based on religion, region, caste and language. Special efforts were necessary, different from those in other parts of the world, to carefully promote national unity. The broad strategy for national consolidation after 1947 involved territorial integration, mobilization of political and institutional resources, economic development and adoption of policies which would promote social justice, remove glaring inequalities and provide equal opportunities.

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