India After Independence: 1947-2000 by Bipan Chandra Page B

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, subcontinental in their reach. Also, despite backward means of transport and communication, a great deal of Indiawide trade, specialization of production 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 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 andloyalty.’ 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 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.’ 1 To quote him again: ‘Personally, I feel’, 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.’ 2
    India’s complex diversity is legend. It consists of a large number of linguistic, cultural and geographic-economic zones. It has followers of different religions, Hindus, Muslims, Christians. Sikhs, Parsis, Buddhists and Jews, apart from the tribals with a 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 1549 languages as mother tongues. The tribals, constituting over six 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