Nation Building and Nehru's Quote Analysis

Nation Building and its Challenges

• Jawaharlal Nehru's quote "The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity…" highlights the idea that nation building is a continuous process.

Secularism in India

• Nehru's reasons for keeping India secular were not only ethical and sentimental, but also prudential.
• The prudential reasons may have included maintaining unity and stability in a diverse country.

Differences in Nation Building Challenges

• The challenges of nation building differed between eastern and western regions of India at the time of Independence.
• Two major differences include the varying levels of economic development and social structures in the two regions.

States Reorganisation Commission

• The States Reorganisation Commission was tasked with reorganizing Indian states along linguistic lines.
• The commission's most salient recommendation was the creation of linguistic states, which helped to strengthen national unity.

Features of India as a Nation

• India is an "imagined community" held together by common beliefs, history, political aspirations, and imaginations.
• The features that make India a nation include its diverse ethnic groups, religious, linguistic communities, and social classes.

Linguistic States and Democracy

• The creation of linguistic states changed the nature of democratic politics and leadership in India.
• It opened up the path to politics and power to people other than the small English-speaking elite.

Comparison with the Soviet Experiment

• The Indian nation-building experiment is comparable to the Soviet experiment in terms of its scale and diversity.
• Commonalities between the two experiments include the need to forge unity among diverse ethnic groups and the massive geographic and demographic scale.

Principles of Indian Democracy

• Indian democracy is associated with the recognition and acceptance of differences, which can at times be oppositional.
• The choice of democracy in India was a choice in favour of plurality of ideas and ways of life.