SA 2: 9

A Marriage of Convenience (p.900)

Convince marriages went against Gandhis views by saying that there should not be integration in society and that people should marry accord ding to their ethnicity

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS: Two Versions for India (p.893)

Gandhis views differ from Nehru because Gandhi wants it to be more laid back modest lives while Nehru wants socialism to increase the Economy

dalit

Oppressed or an untouchable

General Zia Ul Ha'q

Pakistani general who served as the 6th President of Pakistan from 1978 until his death in 1988, after declaring martial law in 1977. He was Pakistan's longest-serving head of state.

How did Gandhi's and Nehru's goals for India differ, and what role has each leader's views played in shaping modern India?

The observer of India in 1997 is rightly struck by the immense stability of this, the world's largest democracy, in contrast with her South Asian neighbours and many other new nation states which emerged out of the former British Empire. But equally striking is the great dichotomy between the reality of India at the end of the century and the vision of the new nation offered by its two greatest leaders at the time of independence, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. From 1920 at least, India's growing nationalist movement had stressed through its main organisation, the Indian National Congress, the meaning of independence for the poor and disadvantaged. There was to be a new and more egalitarian society, where the state would have a moral obligation to help the poor and under-privileged and provide opportunities to those who for centuries had been despised and deprived. These ideals were enshrined in the new constitution of 1950, whose preamble committed India to securing for all its citizens justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, and were spelt out in the sections on Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles of state policy. Gandhi and Nehru had, in their different ways, spoken constantly of the moral, social and political regeneration of the country as the true heart of swaraj, or self-rule. But despite the seminal role of these two leaders, amongst the greatest visionaries of the post-colonial world, after fifty years of democratic government and economic development, there is still widespread and desperate poverty in India. With inequalities of status, consumption and opportunity as great as any in the world, the economy, having teetered on the edge of international bankruptcy at the start of this decade, now moves towards an open market policy with little ideological framework to distinguish it from Western economies. Moreover, this secular state has at times been rent by sectarian loyalties and violence, and India's religious minorities remain fearful and often profoundly disadvantaged. Why has this happened in place of the Mahatma's spiritual vision, and despite Nehru's eloquent pledge at the moment of independence that India would keep her `tryst with destiny'? Gandhi and the younger Nehru were, of course, very different as people and also in their vision of the new India to be created as imperial rule ended. A generation separated them, as did social origin and political experience. The older man came from a far more provincial and less privileged background, had reached professional competence as a lawyer by strict personal discipline and a regime of self-denial and hard work: and he had spent twenty formative years in South Africa, where exposure to a wide range of cultural influences and the experience of racial discrimination refined both his political skills and his religious sensibility.

communalism

allegiance to one's own ethnic group rather than to the wider society

B. Vajpayee

is an Indian statesman who was the 10th Prime Minister of India, first for 13 days in 1996 and then from 1998 to 2004. A leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he is the first Prime Minister from outside the Indian National Congress party to serve a full five-year term

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

was a Pakistani politician and statesman who served as the 4th President of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that as the 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

was a lawyer, politician, and the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah served as leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistan's independence on 14 August 1947

green revolution

was a period during which agriculture in India increased its yields due to improved agronomic technology

Benazir Ali Bhutto

was the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan, serving two non-consecutive terms in 1988-90 and then 1993-96

Rajiv Gandhi

was the Prime Minister of India, serving from 1984 to 1989. He took office after the 1984 assassination of his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to become the youngest Indian Prime Minister

Indira Gandhi

was the first female Prime Minister of India and central figure of the Indian National Congress party. Indira Gandhi, who served from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, is the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office