discuss the factors that have made federalism a success in India
Answers
Linguistic States: The creation of Linguistic States was the first and a major test for democratic politics in our country. This was done to ensure that people who spoke the same language lived in the same State. Some States were created not on the basis of language but to recognise the differences based on culture, ethnicity or geography, e.g. Nagaland, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand.
Language policy: A second test for Indian federation is the language policy. Our Constitution did not give the status of national language to any one language. Hindi was identified as the official language. But Hindi is the mother tongue of only about 40 per cent of Indians. Therefore, there were many safeguards to protect other languages. Besides Hindi, there are 21 other languages recognised as Scheduled Languages by the Constitution. Hindi was not imposed on non-Hindi areas for most of the period after the independence.
Centre-State relations: Restructuring the Centre-State relations is one more way in which federalism has been strengthened in practice.