Story of India's States

The “inner (state) lines” of India, as Salil Misra describes in his wonderful article, were drawn in the past “not according to geographical factors, but the discretion of the ruler, the pattern of conquest, and the convenience of revenue collection”. He was talking of the Mughals and the British.

In the 1920’s, the Congress decided to make “language the major determinant in the creation of administrative units within India”. As opposed to British units like the Madras Presidency that had “a large number of Telugu, Oriya, Malayalam and Kannada speakers”, for example.

But Partition changed all that. Nehru, Patel, Gandhi, Ambedkar and others realized that the concept of a united nation needed to be “protected against certain political tendencies from within”:

“It was felt that a strong linguistic passion, bordering on chauvinism, could be one such tendency. It began to be argued that strong linguistic passions might come in the way of national considerations.”

And so the new nation backed away from redrawing states based on language.

But the people did not agree with the decision of their leaders:

“The reluctance of the national leaders, Constituent Assembly and the Indian government was contrasted by vehement passion among the people in favour of creating linguistic provinces.”

In a democracy, the rulers cannot ignore what the people want. And so Nehru set up the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in December 1953 to figure out if it was practical to create states on a linguistic basis. To evaluate the pros and cons. It was a tough choice:

“A new map of India was to be drawn and could not be done by entirely disregarding the wishes of the people. Giving in to the language claims might satisfy the linguistic aspirations of the people. Or, alternatively, it might elevate language patriotisms to the level of sub-nationalisms and create conflicts. The choice was not going to be easy either way.”

Besides, it wasn’t as if everyone wanted to redraw based on language. Telangana wanted to be separate from Andhra though they shared a language because of their fear of being “swamped and exploited by the people of Andhra”. Mysore did not want to pay the price of being consumed by a “backward Karnataka”.

But the majority did want a split on linguistic grounds:

“Thus it was that on the question of linguistic provinces the top leadership gave in to the pressures from below. Since then this has generally been treated as the legitimate criterion for redrawing the administrative boundaries of the old states.”

Regardless of whether it was good or bad, Misra is right in saying that:

“The work of the States Reorganisation Commission, it can be safely concluded, was a victory of the people and a triumph of the Indian democracy.”

We don’t give enough credit to our leaders at Independence for adjusting to events like Partition, their attempts at building a united nation, and their willingness to respect the will of the people even if they didn’t agree. As I’ve said before, maybe we should learn from the Americans in respecting our founding fathers. Sure, let’s criticize them too; just so long as we remember that it isn’t a black or white evaluation we’re making…