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Jimmy Schneidewind
Placing an Identity on Post-Independence India
To assign one true identity to India is not unlike attempting to describe a rainbow with one single color. Mahatma Gandhi believed that India was a nation of small communities. Jawaharlal Nehru envisioned India as a metropolis with the potential to become a modernized world power. These are merely two of the colors that can be used to paint the picture of India, although examining three specific eras of post-independence India help to add depth and understanding to the portrait. India’s post-partition years can be characterized initially by national secularism, followed by the beginning of lower caste unity, and currently, the continuation of lower caste unity and the beginning of Hindu nationalism.
India’s transition from British rule to it’s first identity of it’s own, was not necessarily a smooth one. Many different elite thinkers had many different ideas on what direction India should be pointed in. Many of these thinkers had received Western educations, which was evidence that India had not completely escaped the grasp of British rule. Mahatma Gandhi further complicated the situation by introducing his idea of an ashram system (meaning small communities), which proved to be an unrealistic and unobtainable vision.
A face was finally put with India when Nehru, the leader of the Indian National Congress, was elected India’s first Prime Minister. This officially kicked of the national secularism era in India, which lasted from 1947 until roughly 1965. ... To implement the constitutional democracy that Nehru desired, he believed India needed to be modernized through democratization, secularization, and industrialization. ...
One of the chief issues that Nehru wanted to incorporate into the “new” India was industrialization. To do this, he gave India’s Planning Commission the power to determine an economic policy. ...
Due to the caste system in India, a system that could be described as India’s social hierarchy, Nehru was forced to implement some sort of policy that would reduce inequalities that resulted from this system. ... Secondly, he recognized the need to maintain India’s cultural traditions: “a model committed to protecting cultural and religious differences rather than imposing a uniform ‘Indianness’” (Khilnani, 167).
Approximate Word count = 1707
Approximate Pages = 6.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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