Xavier Graham Mr.

Aguilar HSS-Period 4 23 April 2012 India Post-Independence Essay As India grows in population, many problems grow with it, such as the pollution, the religious differences, the differing gender roles, and so forth. There are many different problems, major and miniscule, of which India is trying to solve, however, five major topics will always be found at the roots of these problems. These five major topics Post-Independence India has dealt with and still deal with are, womens gender roles, government organization, religious conflict, environmental issues, and Indias role in the modern age and in the global market. Post-Independence Indias religious conflict has deep roots in its majority Hindu and minority Muslim society. As Gandhi liberated the country, he was forced to separate the Hindus and Muslims by creating a new country, Pakistan, which would have a population that was majority Muslim. However, this failed to stop the battle between the differing religions, as shown by the Indo-Pakistani War over Kashmir in 1947, and two more wars occurring in 1961, which was another unsuccessful fight over the state of Kashmir, and in 1975, where Pakistan tried to pacify Bengals peasantry by taking Hindu/Indian land and handing it the Muslim society of Pakistan (Ismail; par. 4). These actions left terrible consequences for both sides, where India ended up receiving 8 million refugees, placing a huge burden on the government, and Pakistan being utterly crushed in 2 weeks by the Indian military after tension built up over Bengal and war was declared (Ismail; par. 4). There is still currently some conflict between the two countries today, although not nearly as brutal. This current conflict has to do with Kashmir and who can

grasp a better hold onto it. The current standing for this conflict over the state of Kashmir revolves around the question of which country will receive a better hold on the state. Right now, India holds around a little more than one-third, Pakistan holds almost exactly one-third, and China holds the remaining fourth or so, just to keep things balanced (Ismail; par. 3). However, Pakistan has recently presented an argument than has resulted in stronger support, which is the fact that when the British pulled out in early 1947, the agreement was that areas of India that contained 70% or more Muslim population would be Pakistan (Ismail; par. 5-7). Again, however, India has a much larger population, and therefore still holds a firm grasp on the state of Kashmir. This conflict is still occurring today. Gender roles, mostly womens, in India have also been a major issue regarding India after the British pulled out in 1947. According to the Hindu religion, Hindu women are more sexually voracious than men and must be controlled (Nanda; par. 2). Thus women were restricted to housework and used as a means of reproduction whilst the men of the household were noted as the bread-winners (Sudha; ch. 1 par. 4). Women do two-thirds of all the [country]s work. In exchange they receive ten percent of all income and receive a mere one percent of all the [country]s means of production. On the contrary, men perform one-third of the [country]s work and are rewarded with ninety percent of the income and ninety-nine percent of means of production (Sudha; ch. 1 par. 6). This is a prime example of how women held a submissive gender role in the household, and were expected to live up to these guidelines. Gender roles, however, have changed since this time period. Recently, women have received expanded freedom in their households, even if the freedom is still limited, and have also received more income and means of production.

Post-Independence Indias government is another major topic, including its state organization, legislation, political parties, and political leaders. Since 1947, many different political leaders have fallen and risen, starting with Gandhis fall from power when he was assassinated a few years after Indias Independence. Starting after the British left, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister, held power from the start in 1947, through the assassination of Gandhi, until 1964 (Kapur; par. 3). Next came Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964-1966), Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai (1977-1979), Charan Singh (1979-1980), Indira Gandhi (1980-1984), Rajiv Gandhi (1984-1989), Vishwanath Pratap Singh (1989-1990), Chandra Shekhar (19901991), Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao (1991-1996), Haradanahalli Dodde Deve Gowda (1996-1997), Inder Kumar Gujral (1997-1998), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004), and the present Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh (2004-present) (Kapur; par. 6). The most significant of these leaders were Nehru, who greatly influenced Gandhis decisions during his lifetime, and Indira Gandhi, who took the position of Prime Minister twice and influenced India. India has had many environmental problems, major and minor, some of which are still occurring today. Particularly, much of Indias water and air is polluted, and even with this pollution, the water is running out. Also, India has taken a lot of land damage, including the deforestation in 1987 when 21% of Indias total land was forested (India; Environment par. 2). This deforestation produced another problem, flooding, which started occurring after deforestation occurred around the Himalayan watershed areas. Although, India has tried to prevent this flooding with 30 years of flood control programs, costing the country near an estimated 10 billion dollars, the floods still do much damage to crops, agriculture, cattle, and population, taking nearly 2000 lives in the 1980s and ruining 60% of the potential crops in 1990 (India; Environment par. 3). In addition to these floods, over 70% of the water in India is

polluted. The air is also polluted, especially in urban centers like Mumbai and Delhi, but also in rural areas, where the burning wood or charcoal mixed with the dust in the air can create some pretty significant problems. These problems include the airborne acids, which are dulling the exterior of the Taj Mahal (India; Environment par. 5). Not only that, India holds the sixth highest amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which in 1992, amounted to 769 million metric tons (847.7 million tons), or around 0.88 metric tons (about 1 ton or 2000 pounds) per person (India; Environment par. 6). This would mean that everyday, each person in India in 1992 let into the atmosphere 5.5 pounds of carbon dioxide. In 1972, twenty years before these statistics, the National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination was created to solve environmental problems created by the population growth and industrialization, however, not much progress has been made. India is currently a major part of the worlds economy and global market, with the technology and engineering markets blowing up in India. The money spent on the research and development of technology is $20,782.676 million ($20.8 trillion). The value of Indias technology exports in 2002 rose up to $1.788 billion (India; Science and Technology par. 2). Also, from 1987 to 1997, technology and engineering students have accounted for more that 25% of the total college and university applications. Additionally, Indias nuclear technology facility, Bhabha Atomic Research Center, which is also the countrys largest scientific establishment, contains four nuclear reactors for the sake of research and trains, on average, 150 nuclear scientists per year (India; Science and Technology par. 4). Currently, Indias recent successes in technology are good signs that things can get better. And even though, India is still a new country that is facing many problems such as pollution and religious differences, it can still be a successful country nonetheless.

Annotated Works Cited "India." Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. I was pretty happy with this source because I found a lot of information from it. If it was allowed I could of written my whole paper off of this one source, but that's not allowed and it would probably result in too much similar wording. There was also minimal bias evident because not many bias-able adjectives were used, such as brutal of terrible. Ismail, Sloan. "Kashmir Conflict - Who Is Right, India or Pakistan?" Web. 20 Apr. 2012. <http://www.anusha.com/kashmir.htm>. This is not a source as credible of a source as the one above (the one with the encyclopedia) because its written by someone, however, this someone is a person living in Pakistan who has lived through most of the conflict between the two countries and there was not as much bias against India as I thought there would be so I think it is safe to say that this source is reliable as a secondary source. Kapur, Harish, and Rene Wadlow. "Foreign Policies of India's Prime Ministers." Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <http://www.transnational-perspectives.org/transnational/articles/article495.pdf>. For some reason I felt like this source was somewhat biased against the foreign policies of the Prime Ministers like Manmohan Singh. Nonetheless, it also provided me with information on the order of the prime ministers and explained what each of them did and how each of then were equal in significance even though some were more equal than others. Nanda, Serena. "Gender Roles in India." Safraproject.org. Safra Project. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://www.safraproject.org/downloads/Gender_roles_in_india_by_ser ena_nanda.pdf>.

This source had a lot more information on sexual relations in terms of religion, than I would have wanted. However, it did provide me with some interesting quotes to use during my second body paragraph when I explored the gender role of women. Sudha, D. K. Gender Roles. New Delhi: A.P.H. Pub, 2000. 19 April 2012. Print. This book is a very interesting book to read because it not only covers gender roles in India in the first chapter but also covers many other social issues in many different places such as China and the U.S. It used a lot of detail as it explored the gender roles as well and gave me a quote that was very relevant, useful, and meaningful to my paper.