PRINCIPLES BEHIND FORMING OF STATES | STATES REORGANIZING COMMISSION | INDIA

 

PRINCIPLES BEHIND FORMING THE STATES ON LINGUISTIC GROUNDS: STATES REORGANISATION COMMISSION

A special commission was appointed by the Government of India in 1953 to explore the feasibility of making the linguistic factor the main criterion in re-demarcating state boundaries. (Provincial boundaries of British India had been drawn either by historical accident or for reasons of administrative convenience). The Congress recognized the federal realities of Indian civilization in which, as the SRC Report of 1956 puts as, ‘linguistic homogeneity – reflects the social and cultural pattern of living, obtaining in well-defined regions of the country’.

The imperative of national unity however came to the forefront in the post – Partition trauma of independent India, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru feared a chain reaction of secession. Reluctantly, he asked the SRC to tackle question of linguistic communities, which coincided with regional diversities.

The SRC’s recommendations were made according to certain governing principles: to preserve and strengthen the unity of India; to keep in mind administrative, economic and financial considerations as in the implementation of five year plans; and to pay attention to cultural linguistic homogeneity as reflected in democratic and popular movements.

The SRC published its report and recommendations in 1955 and a States Reorganization Act followed in 1956. The boundaries of states in Southern India were redrawn in closer conformity with traditional linguistic regions, and eight major language groups got separate states immediately: Assamese – Assam, Bengali – West Bengal, Kannada – Karnataka, Kashmiri – Jammu and Kashmir, Malayalam – Kerala, Oriya – Orissa, Tamil – Madras (Tamil Nadu), Telugu – Andhra.

The SRC rejected demands for a separate Jharkhand state for lack of popular support in all the affected districts. It also rejected demands for a Punjabi Subah on grounds of disguised communalism. The SRC could not insist that fifty percent of all centrally recruited civil servants posted in a given state be non-residents, but it refused to recommend that recruitment to state civil services be restricted to sons of the soil.

After agitations in both Gujarati speaking and Marathi speaking areas, the State of Bombay was divided between Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960. And after a change in leadership in the Akali Dal, its demand for a separate Punjabi speaking state was also conceded in 1966.

Despite the apparent political turbulence associated with the reorganization of states, the SRC recommendations and their implementation prove the genius of the Nehru era in managing centrifugal forces through democratic solutions and pluralistic compromises.