WHAT HAS INDIA DONE TO SHARE POWER IN THE CONTEXT OF CREATION OF NEW STATES LIKE TELENGANA, UTTARAKHAND, and JHARKHAND AFTER INDEPENDENCE? DO YOU THINK IT WAS A GOOD STRATEGY TO KEEP THE COUNTRY UNITED? ARGUE IN FAVOUR OR AGAINST WITH RELEVANT POINTS. (CHOOSE ANY ONE STATE AND RESEARCH)
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Answer:
When the states of what would be independent India were drawn up in the dying days of the British Raj, the criterion used was linguistic: people who mostly spoke the same language were brought together in one state. This principle ignored minority languages and dialects within these areas, as it glossed over the fact that several north Indian states were all predominantly Hindi-speaking.
Demands for regional autonomy or separate statehood began to be raised fairly quickly in different parts of India. Among the first was the demand for a separate state of Telangana, which had been merged with other Telugu-speaking regions to create the state of Andhra Pradesh, despite local opposition. The States Reorganisation Commission of 1954 did not recommend the merger, especially as the area was just emerging from the Communist party-led Telangana uprising, a moment that is still regarded as an inspirational struggle for the left movement in India. But the merger went through, with some supposed safeguards, even though the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said this particular marriage should contain provisions for divorce.
The creation of Telangana—almost 60 years after the people of the region voiced their misgivings about being co-opted into Andhra Pradesh—is yet another step in rationalising and restructuring the Union of States that India is meant to be.
India was never meant to be a union of linguistic states, but a union of well-governed and managed states. Thus, the demand for newer administrative units will be a continuous one, seeking to bring distant provincial governments in remote capitals closer to the people.
Similarly, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and other linguistic states have no historical basis. The yearning for linguistic sub-nationalism is a post-independence phenomenon. Often, this linguistic sub-nationalism has been a fig leaf for secessionism, as we have seen in Tamil Nadu in the past.