Demands for New States

The demand to carve out new states has been the other major source of tension within India's federal system. India's freedom movement had created a broad, pan-Indian sense of national unity, but at the same time it also encouraged a strong sense of identity built around shared language, region and culture in different parts of the country. Because the national movement was also fundamentally a movement for democracy, it came to be accepted, as far as possible, that new states after Independence would be organised on the basis of common linguistic and cultural identity -- leading to a sustained demand for linguistic states.

In December 1953, the States Reorganisation Commission was set up, and it recommended that states be created broadly along the lines of the major linguistic groups. In 1956, several states were reorganised on this basis, marking the real beginning of a process of creating linguistic states that has continued ever since. Gujarat and Maharashtra were created as separate states in 1960; Punjab and Haryana were separated from each other in 1966; and later, the north-eastern region was reorganised to create new states such as Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. …