Many nationalists feared a chain. Step 1: community rights are recogn…

Many nationalists feared a chain. Step 1: community rights are recognised. Step 2: ? Step 3: it is difficult to forge a strong nation and a strong State. What is Step 2?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 3

The correct answer is Option (3) → Divided loyalties among the people

Option (1) Permanent isolation of the minorities — Incorrect. Pant said isolation would harm the minorities themselves. The fear about a weak nation came from something else.

Option (2) Loss of the cultural rights of communities — Incorrect. Nationalists were willing to assure communities cultural rights. Their worry was about giving communities political weight.

Option (3) Divided loyalties among the people — Correct. Nationalists wanted every member of every community to act as an equal member of one State. Political weight to communities, they feared, would create divided loyalties and weaken the nation.

Option (4) A demand for yet another separate nation — Incorrect. Patel linked the earlier agitation to Partition, but the book does not name a new separate nation as the link in this fear.

NCERT (2026-27): “3.1 The problem with separate electorates …
Behind all these arguments was the concern with the making of a unified nation state. In order to build political unity and forge a nation, every individual had to be moulded into a citizen of the State, each group had to be assimilated within the nation. The Constitution would grant to citizens rights, but citizens had to offer their loyalty to the State. Communities could be recognised as cultural entities and assured cultural rights. Politically, however, members of all communities had to act as equal members of one State, or else there would be divided loyalties. “There is the unwholesome and to some extent degrading habit of thinking always in terms of communities and never in terms of citizens,” said Pant. And he added: “Let us remember that it is the citizen that must count. It is the citizen that forms the base as well as the summit of the social pyramid.” Even as the importance of community rights was being recognised, there was a lurking fear among many nationalists that this may lead to divided loyalties, and make it difficult to forge a strong nation and a strong State.”