Interrogating Reorganisation of States: Culture, Identity and Politics in India 9780415685580

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Interrogating Reorganisation of States

Interrogating Reorganisation of States
Culture, Identity and Politics in India

Editors


Asha Sarangi
Sudha Pai

First published 2011 in India by Routledge
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A

ISBN: 978-0-415-68558-0

Contents Foreword by B. G.

vii xxiii

Verghese

Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Contextualising Reorganisation

Part I Historical and Political Context of Reorganisation 1. Nehru and the Reorganisation of States: Making of Political India

2.

Governmental of States

Rule,

Rationality

and

29

Reorganisation 48

Part II

Reorganising the Hindi Heartland 3.

'Making of a Political Community': The Congress Party Integration of Madhya Pradesh

and the

4.

Reorganising the Hindi Heartland

in 2000: The

Deep

Regional Politics of State Formation

Languages

69

107

Part III and States: Western and Southern India

5. The Paradox of a

Linguistic Minority

6. Political Currents in Maharashtra: Language and Beyond

129

144

7. Discourses

on Telangana Nationality Principle

and

Critique of the Linguistic

8.Competing Imaginations: Nationalism in India

Language

164

and Anti-colonial 190

Part IV Culture and Identity: Reorganisation in the East and the North East 9.

10.

11.

Revisiting the States Reorganisation Commission in the Context of Orissa

211

Provinces' to 'Homelands': Shifting of State-making in Post-colonial India

249

'Linguistic Paradigms Assam

through the Prism of Reorganisation Experience

About the Editors Notes on Contributors Index

282

304 305 309

Foreword* B. G. Verghese When we talk about the states, one thing that primarily springs to our mind is the territorial aspect. However, India is not a territorial expression — it is an idea, a tradition and, lest we forget, an aspiration. It is a civilisational concept. Mere geography does not tell us what India is about. The reorganisation of states focused on the territorial aspects. However, we cannot ignore the other and more important axis representing the people of India. The idea of India is encapsulated in the Preamble to the Constitution which, though seldom read or remembered, enshrines the heart and soul of the constitution. It says ‘We, the People’, the most diverse set of people in the world. The Anthropological Survey of India’s ‘Peoples of India Study’ under Kunwar Suresh Singh some years ago enumerated 4,635 13,156 clans; 91 eco-cultural zones and represented in this broad set of communities all major types of sects, cults, castes and tribes of the country. These communities are dynamic. They are moving both through space and, as importantly, through time. Hence there is no one clear, constant and territorial definition of India which is possible. The Indian ideal was Vasudeva Kutumbakam, i.e., the world is a family — an early concept of globalisation which, contrary to given wisdom, was always part of the Indian tradition and not alien to it. It was only the interruption of the western colonial world that instead of connecting all colonies, like spokes in a wheel, to the metropolitan power in Europe, separated India from the rest of the world. The rise of the nation–state, a relatively new phenomenon, was based on language more than religion. This is sot surprising as language is a more powerful and older identity marker than religion, encoding as it does the history and culture of people. In terms of nationalism, modern India is a compendium of states or, as some scholars prefer to call it, a state–nation rather than a single nation–state. The Preamble to the Constitution again refers to ‘India, that is Bharat’. What is Bharat? It is not a territorial concept but cultural or civilisational one, embodying traditions, values and aspirations. The Constitution goes on to state that ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union

communities;

*

Interrogating Reorganisation of

States

of States.’ States are building blocks whose contours and content have kept changing. The Gandhian ideal of a decentralised state structure based on the principle of subsidiarity had to be abandoned because of the exigencies of partition. Instead, we opted for a relatively strong centre, reinforced by planning, financial levers and a range of controls that invaded the states’ domain. Until 1967, the single-party dominance of the Congress itself

shaped constitutional practice. Parts of the Constitution remained in animated suspension as reference was quite often made not to the Constitution or the courts but to the party for resolution of issues in contention. The Congress Working Committee was the supreme arbiter. Panchayati Raj, another Gandhian ideal, fell victim to the same process of centralisation though a gesture was made through a reference in the Directive Principles of State Policy. In pursuance of that, ‘democratic decentralisation’ was introduced in 1959 through an administrative fiat. That failed. If power brokers in Delhi were chary of devolving power to the states, Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) likewise declined to part with power to the districts and lower echelons. However, Panchayati Raj, including a municipal component, was enacted as part of the Constitution in 1992, ushering in a third tier of government. It is sometimes said that states’ rights were always illusory because

Article 3 provides for the formation by Parliament of new states and alteration of the area, boundaries and names of existing states. So, the argument goes, there is nothing sacrosanct about states or states’ rights because the centre can change all of that by whim and fancy. Such an interpretation would be misleading as Article 3 was intended to accommodate the impulses of growth and change and to permit the integration of princely states. A third of undivided India and over 40 per cent of the Indian Union that came into being consisted of princely states, large and small, scattered all over the place. Flexibility was necessary in order to accommodate them in an evolving structure. The process went through many phases, even prior to reorganisation of states.

essentially

The present order can be traced to the Mughal and other subas

(provinces) and earlier janapaads (autonomous principalities). The British established provinces by conquest, as a matter of military and administrative convenience. The only concession to language that they made was the creation of Orissa and Sind in 1937. 1 The Congress, however, had promised linguistic reorganisation in the early 1920s and since then, the establishment of the provincial Congress Committees

Foreword

*

were based on linguistic identities. We had the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) the Kerala PCC, the Utkal PCC and so on. Inevitably therefore, with the coming of independence there was pressure to fulfill earlier promises and the formation of Andhra was pressed. There were resistance, but it was conceded following the death through fasting of Potti Sriramulu. This was followed by the setting up of the States’ Reorganisation Commission (SRC). Further, the SRC’s report in 1956 was in a way advise to change the map of India. Assam, Bombay Presidency and post-partition united Punjab were left alone. This led to several agitations. Maharashtra and Gujarat, demanded separate statehood and after intense struggle, they were finally able to succeed. Later, Haryana, Himachal and Punjab came into being and Assam gave birth to a number of hill/tribal states. The demand for a Punjabi suba was unwisely resisted on mistaken premises causing a linguistic demand to take on communal overtones, aggravated by a battle over whether the script should be Devnagari or Gurmukhi. In the process, the traditionally used Urdu script was abandoned. Earlier, during the framing of the Constitution, there was a bitter battle over what should be the official language — Hindi or Hindustani. Unfortunately, Urdu got sidelined and Hindustani sadly lost to Hindi by a single vote in the Congress Parliamentary Party. The south and Bengal took up cudgels against what they termed Hindi imperialism. According to Article 351, Hindi was required to evolve by words and idiomatic expressions from Hindustani, Urdu and all the other languages of India. This direction was unfortunately ignored in official thinking. Fortunately, this was not the case in respect of the bazaar. The bazaar spoke the language the people spoke and Bollywood embraced and embellished the trend. The Official Language gave us a rather stilted, Sanskritised Hindi. Curiously, despite the emotions aroused by the language issue, the country never gave itself a coherent language policy. This appears extraordinary for a polyglot society trying to build a new nationhood.

incorporating

For years, barring the effects of a certain Bhargava, there was no

worthwhile Hindi–English bilingual dictionary.2 Interlanguage were minimal, simultaneous translation a rarity and there was no effort to promote basic vocabularies and publish books to promote rapid language learning. 3 Standard keyboards were not developed. Hindustan Teleprinters Ltd was granted a monopoly and initially manufactured only Roman typewriters and teleprinters and, later, Devnagari keyboards. Working in The Times of India, Delhi, I found that copies of our Hindi and Marathi editions were

translations

keyed in Roman and transmitted to our Mumbai office. These were later transliterated there into Hindi and Marathi. In the process, comprehension and style were lost. There were great tensions in Tamil Nadu and the south generally and in Bengal over official language and language policy. A huge and totally meaningless fuss was made over incorporating certain languages in the Sixth Schedule and there is now a rising controversy over some languages such as Tamil being declared ‘classical’ to the exclusion of others, like Malayalam. Moreover, it is tragic that even today, we have the most inadequate language policy — something so vital to the concept of nation building, cultural bonding and togetherness. Assam and the north-east of India saw other kinds of tensions. Assam witnessed anti-Bengali riots. Later, minority tribal groups within Assam rose up against Assamese ‘chauvinism’. Within these groups, further tensions developed with the rise of identity politics. Smaller communities demanded that their linguistic and other rights be recognised. It is noteworthy that in Assam, identity politics is by Sahitya Sabhas. If you do not have a Sahitya Sabha, you essentially do not exist. So every community has a Sahitya Sabha which has written the political agenda and provided the basis for agitations for linguistic and script recognition and cultural rights.

nurtured Having drawn a new political map based largely, though not

entirely, on language, the SRC recommended a three-language formula so

that people learnt the state language/mother tongue, Hindi or another modern Indian language and English. This formula was, however, never well implemented. The office of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities that was instituted to carry out the task proved to be a weak instrument with a vague mandate. English, however, was adopted as the country’s associated official language, virtually for all time. The SRC also recommended the establishment of five Zonal Councils — North, South, East, West and North-Eastern — to bring together states within a given region for purposes of mutual cooperation and coordination. This was a useful institutional mechanism but it fell by the wayside after some time. It merits revival.

unfortunately The linguistic reorganisation of states has had its critics. Jawaharlal

Nehru was earlier for linguistic states but later changed his mind as he feared this would foster local nationalisms and breed parochialism and come in the way of national unity. He deplored the break up of Hyderabad. He was wrong because it was surely necessary to bring the administration nearer to the people so as to facilitate participative

governance. The absence of a language policy, however, defeated this larger objective to some extent. The north-east experienced a different trajectory. At the centre, there

was an understandable desire to ensure the rapid integration of these peripheral areas and peoples into the Indian union. On the other hand, the tribal populations who had earlier been confined to what were termed partially and totally ‘excluded areas’ — that is, excluded from provincial governance to remain directly under the Viceroy — wanted time to understand what was happening and where they were being placed and what all this might mean for them and their aspirations. So while the tribes wanted time to adjust, metropolitan India, as in Burma, China and Thailand, raced to fill the vacuum between the inner, administrative frontier and the outer, political frontier so as to define and consolidate the political boundaries of the new state. Nevertheless, the Indian state failed again to develop a border policy. Boundaries are important, but the fact of a boundary is less important than its nature — whether as a barrier or a bridge. Boundaries are fixed lines; borders are transition zones involving people, commerce, the environment, natural resources and so on. In the absence of a border policy, the government left these as wilderness areas as a defense stratagem. Territory was placed above people. Strangely, in post-partition undivided Punjab, border policy dictated that no large industry should be established there so that they remained beyond the mischief of Pakistani military incursions. Therefore, other than the Nangal Fertiliser plant, no large industry was set up. Small industries and Bhakra were all right. Safety for large industry lay in being located deep within the Indian heartland.

culture,

The departing British or some of their key officials thought of hiving

off parts of the tribal belt in the north-east of the country and Burma to form one or more Crown colonies — semi-Christian entities that might decide their future later. The idea was incorporated in a so-called Coupland Plan. The Mizos and Nagas alike turned this down. They preferred to remain with India and negotiate their future status with the new Indian government. It is interesting to recall this fragment of history. The future of the tribals of north-east of India and questions of identity, culture, customary law and way of life were remitted to a special committee of the Constituent Assembly. The result was the Sixth Schedule, applicable to the former ‘excluded areas’ in the north-east of the country. The Fifth Schedule was similarly fashioned for the rest of tribal India — an area much larger in extent and

population than the north-east of India. This later charter was in 1995 further reinforced by the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, (PESA). Taken together, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules constitute a constitution within Constitution for the tribals of India. Though written into the Constitution, most policy makers within

the central and state government, the legislatures and the have turned a blind eye towards it. Implementation has been poor and faltering or totally absent in some respects. Governors have overriding constitutional powers over state governments in ensuring implementation of the Fifth Schedule and PESA. They are required to make annual reports to the President regarding the administration of these areas as the Constitution provides that ‘the executive power of the Union shall extend to the giving of directions to the State….’ However, only few governors have discharged this responsibility and the fact remains that they are not well equipped to do so. Parliament does not get the annual reports regularly and those sent are often in content and are simply not debated. It is a travesty that a solemn social contract with tribal India, embodied in the Constitution, has been systematically rubbished in practice by the state over the years to this day. Still sadder is the fact that the parliamentary spokesmen of the victims, the tribal MPs (Members of Parliament) and MLAs, have been unwilling (if co-opted), rather unable to protest. The disregard of the ‘dignity of the individual’, a patent constitutional failure, has engendered cynicism and anger and thus sometimes leads to violence in the form of Naxalism. The answer to Naxalism therefore lies in looking at the promises made in the Constitution and working the salutary provisions made therein for the governance and the of these disadvantaged and neglected segments of our population, rather than treating it as a mere law and order problem.

bureaucracy,

perfunctory willful

welfare

If we now turn to what is seen as secessionism and insurgency in

the north-east of the country, three strands are discernible. Initially, only a section of the Nagas, organised under the banner of the Naga Nationalist Organisation, maintained even prior to independence that the Nagas were never a part of India. The argument ran that the British, having conquered India as well as the Naga people, brought them under a single administration as a matter of convenience in the same manner as Burma was tagged on to India (until 1937). Thus, with the departure of the British, both Indians and Nagas regained their freedom and should live as good neighbours. However, this was not something the Indian union understood or ever accepted. Discussion

brought about a partial resolution but a secessionist element continued with armed struggle. However, the dialogue was resumed and with several rounds of talks and with a ‘cessation of hostilities’ agreement in place, the differences have greatly narrowed. This has now left over only some residual matters that are capable of a just and honourable settlement. The Mizos opted for India but a section later somehow felt and opted to secede, going underground under the banner of the Mizo National Front. A change of heart led to negotiations ending in a settlement and erstwhile rebels assuming the reins of democratic governance. Subsequently other tribal groups elsewhere in the north-east of the country decided to tread the secessionist path for less than obvious reasons, some of which, like The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) in Assam, were largely adventurist. Some sections in Manipur and Tripura were, however, aggrieved that integration with (not accession to) India had been forced and hence demanded a reversion to sovereignty. None of these groups are very clear as to what they mean by ‘sovereignty’ as they are essentially equal partners and rulers in the Indian commonwealth and their ‘peoplehood’ has been and can be amply safeguarded in a variety of autonomous structures making for self-determination within the Indian union.

aggrieved

Sovereignty or leaving secessionist movements apart, other

movements have essentially sought separation from Assam and Assamese

domination. Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal fall in this category. Made up of hill tribals, they started seeking a dispensation of their own, going over and beyond the protection of the Sixth Schedule. However, once these units were formed, smaller ethnic groups within them joined with the hill people in the struggle against Assamese hegemony asking protection against the new overlords. Hence, there grew a demand for development councils, regional councils and autonomous councils for Chakmas, Karbis, Bodos and so forth and for non-territorial ‘apex councils’ for smaller scattered plain tribals like the Rabhas, Tiwas, Mishings and Sonawals within Assam, Tripura and Mizoram. This is a continuing process. Yet closure must be applied at some stage, or else fragmentation could produce political incoherence and impede development.4 Another kind of problem arose in Tripura whose ruling tribal

population was reduced to a minority as a result of tidal wave of Bengali

settlers and refugees. Sikkim felt similarly threatened by a Nepalese influx and sought safeguards in weighted preferences for ‘indigenous

state subjects’, namely the Bhutias and Lepchas who are of Buddhist Tibetan stock. There has also been an assertion of ethnic identity markers in movements for the revival of ancient languages, scripts and faiths: Kok Borok in Tripura, Sanamahi in the Imphal Valley and the Seng Khasi affirmation in Meghalaya. Roman has sometimes been preferred to Devnagari as a means of differentiation. Now these tendencies do not represent separatist movements but exemplify processes of self-discovery that have wisely been accommodated without getting unduly worried by such trends. The moment a demand of this kind is denied, it assumes huge agitational importance. Conceding the demand and those seeking the concession will be unsure if they are really going to benefit. So the ability to say ‘yes’ is a part of the process of state formation. With the spread of education and communications, migration,

globalisation and rising social consciousness, the underclass and sections within the Indian population pyramid started getting empowered. This empowerment started getting manifested, in the phenomena of identity assertion. Initially formed around local tribal, caste, language, religious and regional affiliations, this led to a built up of a process of making larger social coalitions by to kinship or kindred groups elsewhere. This was happening all over the country and certainly in the north-east of India too. However, the Naga nationalism and the demand for a larger ‘Nagalim’ still could not invent the bond of a single, unifying language.5 We sometimes get troubled when in the process of evolution of identity formations, communities keep enlarging and amending their demands. This does not signify any inherent perversity as much as a manifestation of maturation with the process of self-discovery and the evolution of their world-view. These issues go beyond territory to encompass culture and rising aspirations. As before, if we have the ability to say ‘yes’, we will be able to manage these attributes of and change with greater success. Opposition begets mistrust and tensions such as has occurred when demands for inclusion of certain languages in the Eighth Schedule have been rejected. Why should there have been a problem in including Nepalese or Manipuri in the Eighth Schedule? All this entails is the publication of official gazette notifications in these languages and the right to write the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examinations in them. Given the latter right, not too many might exercise it as they realise that they are not going to advance their careers or their prospects unless they

deprived increasingly, affiliation

diversity

are familiar with more widely used languages or a world language that offers better access to information and knowledge. In the process of local identity or sub-national assertion, as for among the Bodos, past and present are seen to clash. The Bodos were once the largest tribe on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, the rulers, the most indigenous among the indegenes, but are now scattered and reduced to a minority with resettlement of displaced persons in and migration into their homeland, development and other factors. So they demanded a self-governing Bodo Territorial Council within their traditional homeland. However, when the council area was defined after much bargaining, it was discovered that only about 38 per cent of the population was Bodo, making them the ‘ruling minority’, a situation resented by others who, though more numerous, were now reduced to a ‘subject people’. An answer has been sought to be found by assuring the cultural rights of all these other groups. In the case of Rabhas, Tiwas, Mishings and Sonawals, an ingenious nonterritorial concept has been fashioned to safeguard the development and cultural rights of non-contiguous plains tribal groups whose habitat has been interpenetrated by others. So we have a highly complex and evolving situation that calls for understanding, flexibility and political innovation in fashioning institutions and structures that can provide satisfaction in the course of nation building and social maturation. For many ‘younger members’ of the Indian family who are in a process of becoming, ‘India’ lies in the future. In all of this, Arunachal stands out. It is truly an extraordinary story that has gone unnoticed. I am no anthropologist, but from my limited knowledge I find no parallel between the success achieved there and anything else in any part of the world. It is mosaic of over 110 very diverse tribes of varied racial and linguistic stock, each numbering from a few hundreds to a few tens of thousands, speaking different languages, professing different faiths (indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian) coming together through a process of nation-building and state-building to acquire a new sense of identity as Arunachalese Indians. Arunachal continues to evolve and so we cannot sit back smugly but must use the existing platform for its further evolution on positive lines.

instance

What about the future? In any consideration of reorganisation

and centre–state relations, there is a third dimension that cannot be ignored, namely, federalism. Initially states’ rights were limited by the regulatory powers of the centre through planning, finance, the conduct

of international trade, licensing and a variety of controls. However, after 1990, with deregulation, economic reforms and indicative at home and with growing globalisation, market mechanisms and international financial, trade, environmental and other protocols have taken a centre stage. Deregulation has gone some way towards states’ rights without anyone necessarily doing anything about it. The government’s role is set to decline further with increased market dependency, outsourcing of many governmental functions, the rise of civil society, an enhanced role for NGOs and greater transparency with the right to information. Information has traditionally been a major source of state power as information is power. However in the new dispensation, with greater transparency and participation, state power has diminished while peoples’ power has been augmented.

planning restoring

Likewise, international conventions and standards of various kinds

will increasingly erode national sovereignty. One can already sense the impact of global conventions on labour standards, bonded labour, child labour, green labelling, gender budgeting and so on. All these matters entail compliance with international standards and go beyond the lines drawn in national laws and the constitution. Increased environmental and climate concerns stress generational and future rights and enhance the salience of the commons. We are therefore in a state of evolution and cannot remain unaffected by international trends because this is the world in which we live. Some special issues merit attention. The National Socialist Council

of Nagaland (IM) is for instance demanding Nagalian, or a greater Naga state. This is not a ‘reorganisation’ that can be unilaterally imposed and would require the consent of other parties and states if civil strife is to be avoided as was earlier experienced in Manipur. This is where a non-territorial solution offers a way out. It would be entirely consistent with constitutional and political proprieties to delineate a larger Naga-inhabited area where the customary laws, language, educational system and Naga way of life and other rights are protected through a cooperative structuring of these across states. At the political level, there is already a Naga Hoho at the apex of the individual Naga ho-hos or tribal assemblies, going across all the Naga-inhabited regions in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal and into Myanmar. This has met from time to time in recent years to consult on pan-Naga issues. So it is possible to structure a non-territorial Naga entity or collective peoplehood if we look at this in a socio-cultural context and have the ability to say, ‘yes’. Such

relationships

acquiescence would most likely diminish the intensity of the demand and make people more rational than emotional in judging where their interests lie. There should be no difficulty if, as proposed in the course of the current Naga dialogue with the Government of India, the Naga political formations look at the Indian Constitution and state what they would like to add or subtract. The consensual agreement arrived at could then be incorporated in a ‘Naga constitution’ within the Indian Constitution through an elaboration of the existing Article 371A. The alternative would be to frame a separate Naga constitution and forge an organic link between it and the Indian Constitution as in the case of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) constitution. None of this will mean separation from India and a non-territorial entity will not entail further territorial reorganisation of the north-east of the country. It would mean accommodating things in a different way. None need cavil at this. A drastic amendment to the concept of

the Indian state and Constitution took place in 1973 when, between breakfast and lunch, the Lok Sabha converted India into a by incorporating Sikkim, a protectorate outside the Indian union, as an associate state. It was to be represented in the Indian Parliament without India formally gaining any corresponding constitutional rights over that principality. It is another matter that Sikkim was soon after fully integrated into the union. We do not have to worry about granting a new Naga entity its own flag, currency, or postage. Many Indian princely states of yore had their own stamps, coins and flags. This did not add anything to their ‘sovereignty’. The princely states were more subject to British dominion than were the British provinces. Their gun-salutes were a concession to vanity — no more.

confederation

The same issue has cropped up in J&K. The Prime Minister

Dr Manmohan Singh, in concert with the former Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf, had decided on a soft border dividing the two halves of the state. There was to be no redrawing of boundaries. Instead, what was proposed was the establishment of trans-border institutions for trade, tourism and other cooperative relationships, not excluding the joint development and management of the Indus rivers as provided for under the Indus Waters Treaty.6 What is envisaged in J&K is the evolution of something akin to a confederation or condominium across the Line of Control (LOC) without derogation of the sovereignty of the two states over their part currently administered by them. This is not a novel proposition. Jawaharlal Nehru hinted at

a J&K confederation in 1964 and sent Sheikh Abdullah to Pakistan to discuss the matter further. The death of Nehru interrupted the process, though the then President of Pakistan Ayub Khan was not initially inclined to favour the idea.7 There have been periodic demands for new and smaller states.

Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal were formed recently and Telengana and Vidharba are in the queue and there is a demand to break Uttar Pradesh (UP) into three states. There is no reason to resist the demand for more states subject to their techno-economic and administrative viability. There is no wrong in envisaging India at 2040–2050 with a population of around 1,600 million organised in 60 states, with an average population of 25 million each, and some 1,500 districts. At the base, there could be 15,000 development blocks, each with a population of around 100,000 governed by structures of local self-government through gram sabhas (village councils), panchayat samitis ( a grouping of village councils at the block level comprising about 100–120 villages) and zila parishads (an aggregation of panchayat samitis at the district level, i.e., district council). There is a certain optimum management span which could further shrink in certain fields or at certain levels as life becomes more complex and participative. Some might argue that such a multiplication of units of governance could be very expensive. However, the breaking of heads and burning of buses, which seems to be a national pastime whenever anyone gets a fit of anger, is obviously much more expensive, quite apart from the incompetence and inefficiency that sometimes comes with oversized units. Uttar Pradesh is ungovernable. So there is much to be said for smaller and more manageable units. However, alongside such fragmentation, it would be desirable to establish larger non-political entities like natural resource regions, river basin authorities, transport corridors, economic hubs, regional energy grids and agro-climatic zones in order to encourage functional coordination over and beyond zonal councils. The North-Eastern Council must in particular be revamped so that it becomes an empowered body for regional and geo-strategic planning. The counter argument is that smaller units may not be viable and

could breed localism and parochialism. However, sons of the soil chauvinism has been witnessed even in large states like Maharashtra. Yet Malaysia, whose Bhumiputra policy favours Malay sons of the soil as against the immigrant Chinese and Indian communities, is to outgrow this in some ways as its booming economy begins to

beginning

place increasing value on meritocracy so that it remains competitive in a globalising economy. That could be the antidote. Trans-state and trans-border migration on account of both push and

pull factors is also affecting political geography. The poverty belt of eastern India is emptying into the more prosperous regions of western and southern India in search of work and opportunity. Differential population growth across states is also giving rise to new political disparities in consequence of the periodic re-delimitation of constituencies on the basis of changing population figures. A close look again at our cities makes our argument more clear. The metro cities are becoming ever more cosmopolitan. Matunga in Mumbai is probably the fifth largest Tamil-speaking city in the country and Delhi’s Chittaranajn Park is a huge Bengali city. Furthermore, people are getting more inter-culturally exposed through marriage, education and domicile. India is changing and the mixing and churning going on is creating new identities and dissolving old ones.

northwestern,

So what we need is to create more and more examples like city

states. We have a National Capital Region and there are greater regions around Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad with their own authorities. These are all conglomerates of 15 to 20 million people or more, and growing. They have older municipal structures and need to be empowered while taking care to retain a certain urban–rural nexus. In addition to states and lower order units of governance, we now have to factor in a new entity — mega corporates like Tata, Reliance, Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) and the State Bank of India (SBI), which dispose of more wealth than the GDP of all but the largest states in the country. They constitute vast repositories of technology, manpower, management skills and natural resources. The state has to ally with these bodies and we need to foster a new concept of corporate social responsibility for development and welfare through constructive public–private–peoples partnerships. States’ rights are being reviewed by a new centre–state Commission. We must invigorate Fifth Schedule governance, promote gender equity and maybe enlarge legislatures with genderised proportional representation. The size of the Lok Sabha merits increase by at least 250 members. This component could well be elected by proportional representation with a stipulation that up to 200 members of the larger House shall be women, whether directly elected or coming through the List.

metropolitan outgrown

A Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is another necessary but much misunderstood concept. A UCC does not entail the abrogation of personal laws, which do however require codification. Few seem to be aware that Goa has a UCC, a legacy of Portuguese rule. Similarly, we have the Special Marriage Act which provides for a uniform code that has facilitated interfaith and inter-community marriage. However, there should be similar uniform civil laws or family laws for divorce, maintenance, succession and adoption, which at present are lacking. In the absence of a UCC, citizens are in effect being denied the right to be Indian but are in a sense condemned only to rise to membership of a particular faith, caste, community or sub-community, to be governed by Khaps (caste panchayats), and other traditional denominational bodies, many of them antiquated. Building unity out of diversity in civil society requires a uniform code. This will also make for fraternity, one of the richest words in the Constitution but, alas forgotten. It has been mistakenly displaced by the admittedly important notion of secularism, which in turn has been increasingly hollowed out by vote-bank politics. The idea of minority must connote more than mere numbers. To talk of 150 million Muslims, a number almost as large as the entire Arab world, is surely an absurdity. The Canadians refer to their miniscule Inuit (Eskimo) population as the second nation. Being a minority is more truly an attitude than belonging to a less numerous community than the ‘majority’. By relating minorities to numbers and vote banks, we segregate them in boxes labelled ‘we’ and ‘them’. Attitudes however do change with empowerment and education. Language has to be seen both as a vehicle of commerce and of

culture. The Imphal service of the All India Radio (AIR), for instance, broadcasts in eight or more languages, catering to the varied culture of its listeners. People will naturally learn their mother tongue and whatever language opens their door to opportunity. However, man does not live by bread alone. Literature, poetry, song and drama are no less important and have inspirational value. These too must be kept alive.8 There are many interfaces in our society where Bharat confronts or

is juxtaposed against India. A shining India living besides a suffering India will not endure. Growth and dignity must march together. Much of the violence we see around us is because of the indignity inflicted on our own people. Nevertheless, India is evolving both as a geopolitical construct and a people-centric commonwealth. Every year millions of Indians graduate from Bharatiya to Indian. This upwelling from below represents the country’s emerging diversity from a long, silent,

submissive, oppressed submerged under-mass into the sunlight of a modernising, democratic, inclusive India struggling to build an equal citizenship. These cohorts of ‘new Indians’ oftentimes proclaim their identity and assert their rights through new political formations that keep bubbling up, merging with kindred interest groups and then disappearing when their task is done. This explains the multitude of political parties jostling for leverage or power at the centre and in the states. This may be untidy and incoherent but is not therefore to be despised. This truly represents India. Coalition governments in turn have made for more consensual politics based on common minimum programmes and have helped empower states’ rights through consultative processes. This is not weakness but strength. Many yearn for the ‘good old days’ of Nehru and now fear that the

centre is falling apart. However, I argue, quite the contrary. Jawaharlal Nehru ruled a small India with a big Bharat that scarcely mattered. The House of the People was more truly a House of Elites and it is only now that we get to see a Lok Sabha. Despite the dust and din, indiscipline and failings, Indian democracy is today far stronger, more stable and has deeper roots than before, though, we have yet to go a long way. The complete merger of Bharat into India may take several more decades, but those who have been waiting in a non-existent queue for thousand years will not be denied and will certainly get their due. The anger and impatience we see around us represents a storehouse of great energy for positive and potential good in nation building, if we accept this and have the ability to say, ‘yes’ at the right time. We must build on our strengths and not lament our weaknesses. They will be overcome. So I conclude with two theorems. First, India’s unity rests on its respect for diversity, which embodies great strength, a rare beauty and immense hybrid vigour. Next, India’s stability depends on change. The process of becoming more fully India has an aspirational aspect which is as important for the future as the time and space dimensions of nation building. So the reorganisation of states has to be seen as a three-dimensional task and a great work in progress. Notes * This is the inaugural address given at a seminar organised at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, on 25 September 2008. 1. Burma, which was tagged on to India for administrative purposes, was also separated at that time.

2. I used to make it a point to go to all major book fairs in Delhi year after year to measure progress in this field. I found all manner of bilingual lexicons — Hindi–Portuguese, Hindi–Japanese or whatever, but no new and improved Hindi–English editions, let alone Hindi–Bengali, Hindi–Tamil, Malayalam–Bengali or Telugu–Oriya dictionaries. Indeed, linguistic illiteracy marked language policy. 3. It still remains easier to learn French or German in India today that any Indian language outside of some schools. 4. The concept of non-territorial councils is very interesting. However, it seems to be little known or understood, though it offers a solution for a great many problems. Nor is it a foreign concept. It is enshrined in the Constitution and we have operationalised it in the working of upper houses in state legislatures. 5. There were about 36 or so different Naga dialects and the lingua franca, Nagamese, a pidgin language with Assamese at its core, seasoned with a smattering of various Naga, Bengali, Hindi and English words being written in the Roman script. 6. Having reached the limits of what we can do with the partitioned flows of the Indus, the treaty provides for ‘future cooperation’. With climate change, the entire hydrology of the Indus system and the climatic conditions affecting it is undergoing change. Therefore, unless we operate on this axis swiftly and with understanding, both countries could be in serious trouble. 7. Between Nepal and India, both sovereign countries, we have an open border. It is a unique relationship that possibly does not exist anywhere else in the world. Indian currency can be used in Nepal. Nepalese can buy land, freely migrate to India, take up jobs and do business here and join the Indian Army. We also have in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a regional union on the pattern of the European Union, Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). SAARC’s vision is to build an Asian community with a common currency. The dates suggested for various milestones may have receded, but the ideal is there. We are also a member of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the Mekong–Ganga Association with countries further east. 8. Public Service Broadcasting (PBS) was intended to serve this and a host of other social purposes. Tragically, Prasar Bharati has been systemically throttled. Private commercial broadcasters understandably cater to the consumer who can buy the products and services advertised. There is nothing inherently wrong in this; but at our present stage of development, the commercial broadcaster, being market driven, essentially caters to the consumer whereas the not-for-profit PBS is well placed to serve the citizen. All consumers are citizens, but not all citizens are consumers, living as they do below or just above the poverty line.

Acknowledgement The essays in this volume were initially presented in a seminar organised at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi on 25–26 September 2008. The Seminar was jointly organised by Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and the SAP/UGC of the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The editors are grateful to Prof Mridula Mukherjee, Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library for her encouragement and support without which this seminar would not have been possible. We appreciate the sincere efforts of staff members at the Nehru Memorial in organising the seminar and ensuring that it was a success. In particular, we would like to thank the contributors who kept with the deadlines and went beyond the call of duty to revise their papers on time and thus made this volume possible. We appreciate the efforts put in by Professors Usha Thakkar and Nagindas Sanghavi for writing a paper on Maharashtra especially for this volume. Our colleagues at the Centre for Political Studies participated with enthusiasm in the seminar and gave their critical inputs and suggestions. We would like to acknowledge the of Prof. Balveer Arora, then Director of SAP/UGC at the Centre for Political Studies in giving his valuable advice for organising the seminar. Finally we would like to thank the team at Routledge for their patient and efficient handling of this volume.

support

Asha Sarangi and Sudha Pai

Introduction: Contextualising Reorganisation Asha Sarangi and Sudha Pai The creation of three new states in the year 2000 has continued to draw scholarly attention to the pragmatic rationale and political of the demand for smaller states emerging in different parts of the country. The political process underlying it has been questioned and debated over in the last one decade. Whether or not the rationale of reorganisation was democratically initiated and pursued or it was simply a case of political strategy and expediency can only be by analysing various reasons responsible for redrawing the state boundaries and their territorial jurisdictions. The present demand for Telangana statehood can be better understood in view of the earlier processes of reorganisation carried out periodically at various stages since the 1956 when the first phase of reorganisation of states began. The current proposal for setting up the Second States Reorganisation needs to evaluate, first of all, a more comprehensive view of various phases of reorganisation and their subsequent consequences affecting the political economy of development of different states and regions in independent India. The recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in 1956 were taken into account, though partially, while initiating the process of territorial re-demarcation of the country following broader principles of geolinguistic contiguity, economic efficiency, political unity and regional coherence and The newly installed federal institutional structure began to be evaluated within the larger social and political compulsions arising out of the cultural–linguistic remapping of the country. As a result of it, the initial federal design began to be recast gradually keeping in view the needs of cultural heterogeneity, social mobility, geopolitical contiguity, linguistic homogeneity and administrative–bureaucratic rationality of the state immediately after independence. The thick process of reorganisation shows the significance of understanding dense interlinkages in the contested relationship between language,

viability

ascertained

integrity.

Interrogating Reorganisation of States

culture, region and the state, and their overlapping hierarchical weaving into the formation of states in independent India. In this regard, institutional and political embedding of culture was more in terms of its relational attributes identified as language, region, history or social spheres of various groups and collectives establishing some kind of inter-individual and inter-group relationships. The statebuilding exercise could not be completed without integrating this diverse cultural order of the day.

settings

This volume aims at engaging critically with some of the central

themes and concerns that have been crucial to such a process of reorganisation in the last 50 years. The essays included in this volume interrogate principles underlying the process of reorganisation both in historical and contemporary contexts, and provide framework for a prospective thinking over the contested relationship between language, region, politics, culture and state. These essays suggest various nuances and reasons which contribute to the state-building exercise on the one hand, and the continuous assertion of the demand for smaller states on the part of various regions and sub-regions included in the existing larger states on the other. While mapping out the historical trajectory of events leading to the states reorganisation process culminating in the formation of 14 states and nine union territories, it is necessary to understand the long span of the reorganisation through at least four distinct phases of it. Each of these phases has witnessed a complex play among various factors responsible for shaping the discourses of reorganisation in the subsequent decades. We identify these four phases as; colonial state and its intervention, nationalist movement and the early signs of reorganisation, SRC and the states reorganisation after independence and the demand for smaller states in contemporary India. Colonial State and its Interventions The existence of numerous regions and sub-regions, and the complex processes of their formations in the Indian subcontinent, has been a well-recognised historical fact. Based on their dominant constitutive features, Barnard Cohn had long ago categorised them as historical, linguistic, cultural and structural regions. These regions inhabited diversities of social, cultural, political, economic and geographical order of some kind and marked their significant contribution into making of the larger subcontinental Indian empire. With the increasing coercive control of the British colonial state on Indian society and its various social and political institutions, regions too began to be affected

Introduction

by a complex power dynamics unfolding at various levels. The colonial state began to rupture the geolinguistic and cultural coherence of these regions by arbitrarily aligning and realigning their boundaries in order to weaken their supra-regional ties with the national movement. The division of Bengal and its subsequent annulment led to violent protests in Bengal and other parts of the country. Despite the violent suppression of these regional loyalties and affinities by the colonial state, the national movement continued to draw and grow upon the continued support provided by people and prominent leaders from various regions. This regional–national consciousness aimed at anti-colonial struggle in different parts of the country continued to sustain itself through an intimate association of these regions, and their historical lineages and ancestry within the larger geographical space that they were part of. The authoritative intrusive structures and practices of the colonial state began to be part of its governmentalising power which required it to create new domains of control and strategies to dominate over the colonised. On the other hand, the historical and cultural contiguity of various regions and provinces began to express itself in various political and social movements. The colonial state started devising policies of control over a large

land mass with many cultural regions inhabiting a highly diverse population in India. The manner, in which the colonial rulers brought most of the subcontinent under their rule left a lasting impact on subsequent attempts at reorganisation. The early period lasting from 1757 to 1857 was one of conquest and expropriation of land and various forms of surplus to uphold imperial interests. But from 1857 onwards began a period of territorial consolidation of colonialism. However, the attempts of the colonial government to govern the subcontinent from a single centre were not successful and the British rule was not a ‘monolithic structure’. Both policy decisions and implementation depended upon information about different regions, and ability to work within the political and legal framework stretching from local councils to legislatures in the provinces, each of which had its own political milieu (Barrier 1985: 114). This underlay the creation of provinces though these were carved out largely based on economic interests and administrative expediency rather than the needs and desires of the people. Colonial logic underlay the creation of Madras presidency that included Tamil and Telugu-speaking populations, the Bombay presidency that included the Marathis and Gujaratis and the Bengal presidency that had Bengali, Oriya and Hindi-speaking

populations. A significant lesson that emerges from the exigencies of British rule is that the centre emerged out of the regions, moving from Bengal to Delhi. The Montague-Chelmsford Reforms considered the linguistic reorganisation of the provinces impractical even though reforms favoured smaller states. The reorganisation of Orissa in 1936 on linguistic principles was the only example of the British acceptance of this principle. A few studies have pointed out the critical role fulfilled by these regions in mobilising and activating the process of nation in the making alongside the nationalist movement. The idea of ‘perennial nuclear regions’ situated within compact geographical, political and social space and history was to give primacy to the distinctiveness of regions like Gandhara, Punjab, Saurashtra, Kalinga, Bundelkhand, Chhattisgarh, Kaushal and Konkan among many others. The historical location of these regions and their distinctive relationship with the centre affected their subsequent significance as regional centres of power and politics in post-independence India. Ainslie Embree suggests that regions and their formations were affected by the varying influences of the eastern and western traditions leading to different notions of state formation in India and Europe in the nineteenth century (1985: 19–40). The multiple invocations of both region and nation thus were characteristic of twentieth century Indian The contestations over specific identities of regions and provinces continued to shape the discourse of Indian nationalism for several decades. The historical making of regional identities — whether linguistic–cultural, social–political or ideological — continued to have their impact on the national movement.

nationalism.

National Movement and the Early Signs of Reorganisation The Indian National Congress, a leading party of the national movement, was composed of diverse regional leaders and their supporters. In order to make itself into a mass political party, it began to broaden its support base by incorporating various regional elites to acquire a ‘supra-regional nationalist vision’ of a unified country. As Broomfield (1982) has suggested that despite the use of nationalism as a universal notion, the party continued to be local and regionally specified in practice such as in the forms of regional institutions, regional leaders, regional histories, myths and patriotism. In due course of time, the Congress politics became intricately embroiled

in the local and provincial politics of different regions and states. It was through this kind of bonding between the regional and the that Congress built up its wide and heterogeneous support base. It also established some kind of chain of command to ensure that it functioned effectively both as a national and regional party however, undermining its image of a national party and In due course of time, certain regions acquired more prominence than others. The early Indian National Congress has been described as a ‘national geographically widespread gathering from all parts of the sub-continent a point of reference as well as an idea of India as a comity’ (Masselos 1987: 1–58). A number of language-based cultural movements emerged in India since the mid-nineteenth century. They aimed at mobilising and collectivising people on their dominant linguistic–cultural regional identities. To name a few, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese, Gujarati and Marathi movements were in the forefront of the national cultural renaissance project. Language emerged as an important fulcrum around which demands for demarcation of regions along linguistic lines arose. A large number of people joined the movement in different parts of the country and integration of certain regions within the national movement became a norm of the day. The growth of regional elites played a key role in shaping the demand for linguistic states. A number of scholarly works indicate that they arose in different ways and at different points of time; some very early as in Bengal, Madras and Maharashtra. They held different of the past and of the emerging nation, which formed the core of each group’s sense of identity (Broomfield 1982: 9). Due to the highly uneven speed at which they developed, there was ‘competition and collaboration’ between them during the national movement, particularly over boundaries of the emerging regions which was to spill over into the post-independence period and cause problems (Seal 1971: 23). The establishment of a centrally organised state under the British, and of English as a link language, helped the new regional elites who were in most cases from the upper castes/classes, to acquire a ‘supra-regional nationalist vision’ which allowed them to work effectively outside their own region. Many of the manifestations of this nationalism in practice were local and exclusive in nature — regional institutions, regional leaders, myths and patriotism.1 These developments underlay the demand from 1920 for the linguistic reorganisation of the provinces. The idea had been mooted by

national

without, movement.

interpretations

both the British and the Congress on a variety of occasions since 1903 when Sir Herbert Risley, then Home Secretary in the Government of India, first raised the issue in connection with the proposed partition of the large multilingual province of Bengal. The first evidence of support by Congress to this principle was its opposition to the partition of Bengal in 1905. The official recognition of the principle occurred at the Congress session of 1917 and was necessitated by the agitation for a separate Andhra Pradesh. However, Congress opinion had not fully crystallised in favour of the linguistic principle, and despite being discussed for two hours in the subjects committee, it was not supported by the group led by Annie Besant who felt that the issue could await the imminent 1919 reforms (Nag 1993). It was only in 1920 that under the leadership of Gandhi that it adopted the principle as a clear political objective and in the following year began to reorganise its branches along these lines. Under the leadership of Gandhi, Congress voiced the concerns of linguistic reorganisation of the Provincial Congress Committees to make the Congress regionally more democratic and plural. In Gandhi’s views, this will make the Congress a more mass-based party and will shrink its elitist character. To this effect, a resolution was made in the Nagpur session of the Congress in 1920 with a scheme to reorganise the 20 Provincial Congress linguistically and culturally more homogeneous. They Madras, Karnataka, Andhra, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Sind, United Provinces, Punjab, Delhi, Ajmer, Marwar, Rajasthan, Central Provinces, Berar, Bihar, Utkal, Bengal with the Surma Valley districts, Assam and Burma. The nationalist leaders like Nehru, Patel, Rajgopalachari, Abdul Haq, Rajendra Prasad and Ambedkar intensely debated and intervened in this project of the reorganisation of the provinces. By this time, the national movement began to be drawn within the contestations over hierarchies of languages, regions, cultures, castes and classes much more intensely. Nationalist leaders hoped that the idea of provincial autonomy could be realised if the provinces were reorganised linguistically. This required redrawing of boundaries of these provinces to make them more homogeneous. The Congress party continued to support the idea of linguistic reorganisation of the provinces for several years. In 1927, it clearly stated in a resolution its support for the redistribution of provinces on the linguistic basis and referred to the right of self-determination of the people speaking the same language and bound by the same tradition and culture. The Motilal Nehru Report of 1928 also examined this demand in detail

Committees included

and recommended that factors such as administrative convenience and financial viability along with ‘people’s wishes and the linguistic unity of the area’ concerned should be taken into account. SRC and the Reorganisation of States At the time of independence, different visions about the reorganisation of regions and provinces were shared and debated over among various political leaders belonging to different political parties. The Congress leadership put forth the Nehruvian vision of reorganisation on the broader principle of ‘unity in diversity’ which was much contested by several other leaders including Ambedkar, who seriously thought and extensively wrote on this subject. Even though the reorganisation question had been much discussed among the nationalist leaders after independence, the events of partition, communal riots, rehabilitation of refugees, food security and the fear of disintegration of the country remained a matter of uppermost concern in their mind. The nationbuilding exercise of the newly independent India had to be envisioned in a more participative manner. The new federal democratic political structure was supposed to reconcile the balance of power between a strong centre and stable regions and states. The ‘civilisational’ state that the Indian subcontinent symbolised in pre-colonial India began to find expression in new cultural and political terms after independence. Initially for a few years, no active policy was formulated on this issue. However, the subject of reorganisation of the provinces began to be thought afresh after independence and the Linguistic Provinces Commission, popularly known as Dar Commission, was set-up in 1948. This commission recommended that the formation of new states should be postponed for a few years. However, soon after this, a committee consisting of Nehru, Patel and Sitaramayya known as JVP Committee was formed to further reflect and act upon the issue of reorganisation of provinces. This committee cautioned against disintegrative effects of reorganisation. Both the Dar Commission and JVP Committee expressed their concerns regarding new forms of inequalities and hierarchies based on the disproportionate spread of linguistic majority and minority groups in these reorganised provinces. Nehru, like many other Congress leaders at that time, was

ambivalent and uncertain about the timing of the reorganisation of states

after independence. Even though he had supported the idea since his days as a member of the Motilal Nehru Committee, he continued

to suggest for delaying of this process for some more time as he was worried about its potentially disintegrative consequences. Therefore, he said that the ‘first thing must come first, and the first thing is the security and stability of India’ since ‘it would be extraordinarily unwise to unsettle and uproot the whole of India for a theoretical approach or linguistic division’ (quoted in Government of India 1955: 22). However, despite his initial reluctance and restraint to take a decision on this subject, he continued to support the demand for Andhra province, and subsequently conceded to it much before the recommendations of the SRC were actualised in 1956. Nehru was not fully convinced of the viability and durability of monolingual states which, in his views, would not be sustainable in the long run. Even though he agreed to the formation of Andhra province, he to accept serious alterations in the provincial boundaries of the existing provinces. He warned against any kind of passionate surge in demand for separate states based on an exclusive ideology of language or religion. He wanted these provinces to become examples of administrative efficiency and icons of multi-cultural and multilingual political order. He wanted large states to retain their cosmopolitan character and be capable, in due course of time, to carry forward his vision of a socialistic democratic and planned development of different regions and sub-regions of the country.

refused

Ambedkar, unlike Nehru, supported the demand for reorganisation

of states on the linguistic basis. As chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar gave particular attention to this issue in his writings and speeches, and strongly argued for the creation of Maharashtra as a case of linguistic reorganisation.2 He justified the creation of linguistic states due to certain ‘definite political advantages’ that would accrue for the ‘functioning of a democratic polity’, and four basic principles such as development, efficiency, equality and democracy for ushering in the era of reorganisation of states in independent India. Contrary to Nehru, Ambedkar argued that a common language and culture would promote unity and stability in the country, and listed numerous reasons in support of it. A heterogeneous population, he argued, could get divided into hostile groups leading to discrimination, neglect, partiality and suppression of interests of smaller groups with power remaining in the hands of one powerful group, which would be detrimental to the working of the democracy. He proposed that each state may have its own language for purposes of administrative communication with the centre and other states but disregarded the thesis of ‘one language, one state’. Like Nehru, he too

considered

favoured a strong centre to ensure an equitable survival of different languages, cultures, regions and states within a broader framework of an inclusive developmental polity. Pointing to the dangers of numerically dominant language groups becoming communal and exploitative, he cautioned against the dangerous alliance between caste, class and language dominance which could result in the upper class, caste and language controlling land, commerce, economy, and education. He warned against the war of languages between dominant regional and numerous provincial languages on the one hand and between regional languages and English language on the other. Ambedkar put forward a number of proposals in his Needs for Checks and Balances: Articles on Linguistic States which, in his views, would provide safeguards against linguistic communalism. He held onto the view that people speaking the same language need not be grouped into one state but ‘there could be more than one state with the same language’. The formula of one state, one language, he pointed out, was not to be equated with one language, one state. Instead, people speaking one language might be divided into many states depending upon other factors such as the requirements of administrative efficiency, specific needs of particular areas and the proportion between majority and minority communities within a state. For Ambedkar, states in a democratic polity needed to have equitable size limits since this would ensure proportional distribution of resources among the states as well as their inhabitants. In fact, K. M. Pannikar, a member of the SRC, in his dissenting note on Uttar Pradesh, had argued that too great a disparity in size could lead to suspicion and resentment among states and generate forces likely to be divisive for the federation. As the recent demands for smaller states suggest, larger state can become hegemonic and undemocratic through their numerical strength and command over natural and physical resources which can have serious impact on the federal democratic structure of the country. Ambedkar, on the other hand, pointed out that the issue of Hindi to be made as the national language had already divided the northern and southern states. His views regarding the equality of size are important in the contemporary context when the demand by the southern states for postponement of the redrawing of parliamentary constituencies to the year 2030 is being proposed to maintain the balance of membership in Lok Sabha among states. Ambedkar recommended the division of four large states of UP, MP, Bihar and Maharashtra much before the

administration

recommendations of the SRC were made. The political events which have occurred in the last few years have already secured the division of the first three states whereas the demand to bifurcate Maharashtra is gaining ground at present. The trifurcation of UP seemed to be coinciding with his proposal to divide it into three states of western, eastern and central UP with their capitals at Meerut, Allahabad and Kanpur respectively. By the early 1950s, demand for linguistic reorganisation of states had become intensely political. The Congress party itself had been severely divided over this issue with its central leadership reluctant and somewhat opposed to this demand whereas the state-level was keen to pursue it. Stanley Kochanek’s classical work on the Congress party pointed out significant changes which occurred in the membership of the Congress party from the mid-1930s onward. The increasing membership saw a number of middle caste land-owning elites who benefitted from the abolition of the zamindari joining the party. They became the new power elite in the countryside and the Congress began to use them as supportive vote banks in various states. This was particularly true of states in western and southern India where regional elites had emerged and represented themselves in the Congress party during the national movement. The Marathas in Maharashtra, Kammas and Reddis in Andhra and Lingayats and Vokaliggas in Karnataka, among others, had emerged as middlecaste, economically better-off and upwardly mobile regional elites within the Congress party. Their caste–class alliance began to find expression in their support for the linguistic reorganisation of the states soon after independence. It was no surprise that demands for Greater Gujarat, Maha Punjab, United Maharashtra, Vishal Andhra and Maha Vidarbha were primarily supported by their economic and political interests. The SRC was set up in 1953 with Syed Fazl Ali, H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar as its members. The commission toured the country and examined documents and memoranda and interviewed more than 9,000 people. It reconsidered four principles which it felt were being important in laying down the recommendations for the reorganisation. These were preservation and strengthening of the unity and security of India, linguistic and cultural homogeneity, financial and efficiency and the successful working of the five-year national economic plans. However, the commission did emphasise primacy of the linguistic factor while demarcating the boundaries of the states.

leadership

administrative

It tried to strike a balance between larger and smaller states and a strong centre dependent on economically and administratively viable and democratic states. In a sense, the SRC drew outlines of the political geography of independent India. Criteria such as size, financial viability, political unity, stability and regional coherence were favoured by the commission to provide guidelines for the future demarcation of boundaries between Gujarat and Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana, northeastern states and so on. However, it had recommended against the merger of Telangana into Andhra Pradesh, suggested to retain the composite state of Bombay with Gujarati and Marathi-speaking areas remaining with it and argued for a separate state of Vidarbha. The Congress Working Committee members from both of these states rejected these recommendations. The proposal to merge Bihar and Bengal, which ran counter to the SRC’s recommendations, had the support of the chief ministers of both of these states and also of Nehru. However, it was opposed by the West Bengal States Reorganisation Committee consisting of left parties and political groups. It held that distinct linguistic nationalities existed in the subcontinent and must be recognised. The central government thought that if the merger of Bihar and Bengal could be effective, similar moves could also be made for merging many other states and regions such as Gujarat and

Maharashtra or combining all four southern states into one (Bondurant 1958: 76–104.) Even though the SRC submitted its recommendations in 1956, and several states were reorganised soon after this, the following decades continued to witness demands for reorganisation of other states. Maharashtra and Gujarat were created in 1960, Haryana and Punjab in 1966, Nagaland in 1963, several states in the north-east of the country during the years of 1970–1980 and Goa in 1992. The last to join the list are Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand in the year 2000. In this long journey of reorganisation, a few principles have been made into guidelines by the centre while deciding to redraw or reorganise the existing boundaries of the states. Paul Brass has listed them as follows: these regional demands must stop short of secession; demands based on language and culture could be accommodated but not those based explicitly on religious differences; demands must have clearly demonstrated public support; and the division of multilingual states must have some support from different linguistic groups (1974: 17). For example, the demand for the Sikh state was conceded only when the Akali movement under Sant Fateh Singh explicitly stated that it was not a secessionist demand and was based on and not on religion. The formation of Nagaland and Assam

language

was no exception in this regard. As the democratic functioning of the Indian state unfolded, more demands for creating smaller states arose primarily due to their continued economic backwardness and increasingly becoming sub-regions within the larger states. The linguistic–cultural minorities also began to feel the fear of increasing minoritisation within these states. Demand for Smaller States in the Contemporary Context After independence, a number of demands were raised by various linguistic–cultural minorities in the then existing large states for of their languages and cultural identities such as Bodos in Assam, Coorgs in Karnataka and Nepalese in West Bengal. The Bodo movement raised twin issues of making Bodo as the language of within the growing hegemonic control of the Assamese language, and the recognition of economically backward position of the Bodo community in the state of Assam. The movements for a separate state of Coorg in Karnataka in the late 1990s or for the creation of a Tulu state on the coast in the erstwhile Hyderabad–Karnataka northern have emerged due to their ‘cultural distinctiveness and economic neglect’ (Assadi 1977: 3114). Assadi argues that the movement for Coorg has been led by rich plantation owners and landowners, and can be understood as part of the contradictions prompted by changes in the economy due to the process of globalisation on the one hand and the defining of Coorgis over the years as a culturally dislocated and de-ethnicised category on the other. Similarly, the Napalese in the hill districts of West Bengal have been demanding for a Gorkhaland state due to reasons of cultural distinctiveness and economic marginalisation of the community within the existing state of West Bengal. These demands reveal some of the inherent tensions between the centre and states with the latter asking for more autonomy in the spheres of culture, economy and polity. As many as 30 such demands seem to be pending for consideration before the government at the moment (Majeed 2003; Sarangi 2010). With the creation of three new states in the year 2000, several other states began to voice their agitation for smaller states more explicitly. The twin processes of democratisation and regionalisation of the politics have expanded demands focusing on better governance, equitable economic growth, a more responsive bureaucratic state apparatus, increased participative political order and better indices of development of various regions and sub-regions

recognition education region

within the existing states. Due to the former, new social collectives and groups have asserted themselves creating a highly competitive electoral politics within which regional and state-based political parties have staked their specific demands. The latter has led to the transfer of power from a single centre to various blocks within the states generating demands among new sub-regional elites for greater share in governance in these states and in coalitional governments at the centre. At the same time, globalisation and liberalisation have led to the establishment of a global–national market economy which has opened up the floodgates for private capital leading to increasing regional inequalities among states, and contributing to the rising demands for smaller states. It is noteworthy to see a significant shift in the recent decades

indicating that the focus has moved away from language and culture that shaped the earlier process of reorganisation to the one driven by specific needs of the political economy of development and social– cultural inclusion. The issue of size remains highly controversial. Both Haryana and Himachal Pradesh are often put forward as examples of small states that have performed well. Critics have argued that mere creation of smaller states does not guarantee that they will be wellgoverned, or will experience faster economic development. However, others have pointed out that the recently created small states are not performing badly. As per recent Central Statistical Organization (CSO) data, Bihar’s growth has been 11.03 per cent over the last five years following negative 5.15 per cent growth in 2003–2004, and is above the national average of 8.49 per cent (Singh 2010). The new state of Uttarakhand has attained a growth rate of 9.31 per cent as against 6.29 per cent in the case of its parent state of Uttar Pradesh. Commentators have underlined that the issue is not merely of size but of ‘state capacity’ which varies widely across India. Hence, the focus should be on the conditions under which different states are likely to acquire the requisite state capacity (Mehta 2009). Maya Chadda (2002) explains the formation of the three new states in 2000 as one of the reasons for closer integration of ‘ethnic and caste-based regional parties’ in the central government. These states, which were part of the larger states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, were also the ‘first ones not created on linguistic or cultural grounds’ (Majeed 2003: 97). They were part of the larger states which were created on the basis of ‘regional identity enshrined in cultural and geographical differences ... the justification being administrative efficiency’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, there has been ample scholarly evidence

to suggest that the three new states formed remained backward and underdeveloped in several aspects within the larger states they were part of. The emerging political elite in all of these three states remained important as part of the rural politico-economic structure but was absent from the political representation in the parent states. As a result of the formation of smaller states, they are able to enter the political and administrative structure of the state, and exercise control over its resources and patronage network which gradually increases their prospects of playing role in the national politics. If Uttarakhand was separated from Uttar Pradesh to address the specific problems of the hilly regions and their inadequate development, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were formed to make the tribal populated regions more developed and autonomous in the democratic functioning of their states. It is equally important to consider the timing of the formation of these new states as the party in government, during whose tenure these states were formed, hoped to build support and a future base in these particular states. Promises for the creation of new states were often made by political parties in the 1990s prior to the state assembly or national elections in order to obtain support and to build a future base in the state. A good example was the announcement made just prior to the 1996 state election by the then Prime Minister Deve Gowda on 15 August 1996 that the centre was considering a new state of

Uttarakhand. Similarly, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) was keen in the late 1990s to control the proposed state of Chhattisgarh, seen as an extension of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS-controlled Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram centred in Jashpur and Sarguja and other tribal areas rich in mineral resources, to build an electoral base. Emma Mawdsley suggests that one way in which the BJP fought to respond to the challenge of the emergence of lower/backward caste parties in north India was to back these regional movements as it would give them a foothold in the region and accrue political pay-offs in terms of controlling the state governments and their representatives in the Parliament at the centre. She suggests that even though the number of seats involved was relatively small, in the new era of unstable coalition government at the centre, a few seats either way could help determine who would govern in a particular state or even at the centre (Mawdsley 2002). The idea of smaller states has found support among political elites across parties over time due to the changes taking place, particularly with the emergence of other backward caste and the presence of their strong leaders within the Congress and the BJP.

communities

At times, promising a new state might prove to be a better strategy than promising development in exchange for votes. The formation of these states, in contrast to earlier rounds of reorganisation, lacked a sustained mass movement and popular agitation for a long period of time. Rather the demand for separate state was triggered off in conjunction with several other regional issues related to the preservation of forests, welfare of tribal communities, emergence of new regional elites, new economic and political power equations among rich cultivating peasantry and rise of other backward castes and a number of regional political parties in these states. Economic backwardness of sub-regions within large states has emerged as an important ground on which demands for new states are being made. This is evident from the immediate demands for smaller states of Vidharbha, Saurashtra, Bodoland, Coorg and Harit Pradesh among others. The colonial state supported commercial agriculture and industry in selected areas such as the coastal regions, deltas, river valleys and mineral-rich areas leaving the vast hinterland underdeveloped. Such a distorted pattern of unequal development among regions continued into the post-independence period as well. The result has been an uneven development in the big states of India, surrounded by poorer regions remaining backward and underdeveloped. Telangana, Bundelkhand, Poorvanchal, Vidharbha and the inner tribal regions of Orissa have continued to remain as deprived regions within large states. However, liberalisation and the emergence of a growing private

sector within the market economy could mean that the formation of a separate state of Telangana may not benefit the people of this backward region. After independence, the rich landlord class in the coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh moved inland into the agro-industry manufacturing and in more recent years the information technology sector in Hyderabad. With the advent of a market-led economy, it is questionable if the aspirations of the people of Telangana (and other such regions) can be easily fulfilled. Regional inequalities have markedly increased since the early 1990s with retreat of the state and a growing private sector increasingly controlling investment decisions of scarce resources. It will be difficult for the poorly educated and disadvantaged groups in the underdeveloped regions to obtain employment, particularly in the better paid and more dynamic sectors of the economy. The well-educated and better-off ‘outsiders’ might benefit leaving the people of the new state behind, heightening

feelings of regional chauvinism. While the above discussed aspects are significant and have generated much debate on the manner in which the issue of reorganisation should be handled, the more immediate reasons underlying the formation of three new states in 2000 lie in the changes that have taken place in the politics of the states in Hindi heartland. The states in this region were not formed on the basis of regional identities as in southern and western India. The form and degree of resistance to the creation of these three states was different and much less than at the time of the first wave of reorganisation of states in 1956. The existing writings on the reorganisation of states have focused more closely on the questions of language, region and state as the central aspects of reorganisation which were carried out at phases. Significant attention has not been paid to the political economy of formation of socioeconomic regions and their roles in the economic and political restructuring of different states from time to time. Historically, it is clear that the colonial state invested heavily in the coastal regions leading to the development of big metropolises like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and a few other important cities. The colonial state introduced commercialisation of agriculture through irrigation projects in selected regions such as the canal colonies of Punjab, delta regions of Andhra and Madras and canals in western Uttar Pradesh. Industrial investment too was in selected enclaves. This kind of uneven pattern of development was carried forward in independent India despite the socialist objectives envisaged under the centralised planning of the Indian state. The green revolution in agriculture, following capitalist technological mode of production, was introduced in the same regions and districts which had prospered under the colonial rule. Thus water and other required resources were easily available for giving a boost to agricultural yields and plentiful supply of food. Despite the assurance that centrally-funded industrial projects were meant to be established in the backward regions in order to develop them and to provide local employment, this did not happen under the license-raj system. The result has been a pattern of capitalist development in enclaves in the large states, surrounded by poorer regions which have remained backward and underdeveloped on various levels. At the time of independence, it was hoped that the capital would move from the developed to the underdeveloped areas and labour from underdeveloped to developed areas, thus creating a

different

‘trickle down’ effect which would result in the overall development of different states and regions within them. Now the demand of these backward regions such as Telangana, Bundelkhand, Baghelkhand, Marathwada, Mahakoshal and Poorvanchal for separate statehood is for reasons of equitable distribution of resources for their people who have been left out of the circuit of state-led development. On the other hand, with the onset of the market-led economy, it is doubtful as to how the regional inequalities, which have increased manifold over the last few years, will be addressed by the privatised and corporatised economic institutions of the Indian state. With a vigorous and growing private sector shaping the economy and controlling the investment of the scarce resources, limited funds have been made available for public investment on the part of the state. This makes it difficult for the poorly educated and disadvantaged groups in the poorer regions to acquire jobs and guaranteed employment in better-paid and more dynamic sectors of the economy. It is once again the educated and better-off sections of the population who are benefiting from new forms of job opportunities and disinvestment of the state resources, leaving the marginalised more and more disadvantaged. The formation of new states was also a process of reformatting their

linguistic–cultural and regional identities which over a long period of time gave a notion of ‘homeland’ to communities living within these states. However, in the process, distinct cultural regions began to take shape alongside a more intense process of democratisation and regionalisation of power at various levels. The federalisations of democratic structures and practices have strengthened the bargaining power of various states which have also followed their own distinctive ‘political culture’ and socioeconomic pattern of development. Liberalisation and globalisation, leading to the establishment of a market economy, have opened up the floodgates for private capital and more financial autonomy to the states. The formation of coalitional in the last two decades has made the roles of regional parties more significant in the national politics. Due to the democratisation of this sort, new social collectives and groups have asserted themselves, changing the established contours of the state party system and leading to newer political alignments in every election (Pai 2002). This in turn has given rise to the emergence of a highly competitive electoral politics within which regional and state-based political parties have staked their specific demands. With the decline of the Nehruvian

governments

model of democratic consensus and the onset of newer forms of political central-ism, demands for several smaller states can be seen as ‘low-key state demands’ without having a well-defined political design and even economic outlay for these states (Kumar 1998: 130–40). The Congress party passed a resolution in 2001 proposing to set up a reorganisation commission to consider redrawing the map of India for addressing the demand for smaller states. In 2008, prior to the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, the Congress again supported the proposal. However, it was a short-term tactic to form a partnership with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) to obtain votes in Telangana and was abandoned after the Congress emerged victorious as the party fear antagonism from the coastal Andhra leaders. The leader of the TRS Chandrashekhar Rao’s 11-day fast in late 2009 again pushed the United Progressive Allaince (UPA) government to agree to a resolution on the formation of Telangana. However, the backlash from political leaders — including Congressmen — in Andhra and Rayalseema and demands for other states, has put the Congress in a bind. The Srikrishna Committee, set-up to look into the issue of a separate state of Telangana, submitted its report in December 2010 and suggested six broad options to address this demand. The report suggests the creation of a separate Telangana only if this demand is supported by a large majority of people in the region. However, the report also fears the surge in the demand for several other smaller states if Telangana gets formed, and thus advises to develop a mature consensus, grown and sustained through the wises and desires of people of all three regions — Telangana, Coastal Andhra and Rayalseema. The issue of reorganisation of states — in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere — remains a complex and unfinished task before the political leadership at the centre, and in the states today.

leadership

Specificity and Significance of the Volume The essays included in this volume address the question of reorganisation from historical–contextual perspectives as well as reflect upon the contemporary demands for newer and smaller states. Drawing both on theoretical and empirical bases, these essays open up conceptual and empirical frameworks of analysis for understanding this subject. The various essays of the volume have been organised around the four distinctive themes in the following manner.

Introduction

+ 19

Reorganisation: Historical-Political Context and Contemporary Concerns The 'Foreword' by B. G. Verghese narrativises the process of reorganisation of states from the time of the SRC till the future year 2060. It draws attention to democratic challenges before the Indian state, its federal political structure and the difficult task of striking a balance between integration versus segregation of tribal identity, particularly in the case of north-east India - a region that has witnessed a number of movements over questions of sovereignty, separate statehood, homeland and autonomy. In his 'vision 2060', he imagines that the country would have 60 states each with an average of 25 million population, 15 districts of one million population and 15,000 development blocks each with population of 10,000. Smaller units, he argues, could make planning much easier, could ensure better political participation, governmental transparency and accountability to address more specific needs of people. Asha Sarangi in her essay takes into account historical narratives and readings of reorganisation since the N agpur session of the Indian National Congress where Gandhi proposed to reorganise the 20 Provincial Congress Committees on the linguistic-cultural basis. The essay focuses on Nehru's ideas about the reorganisation of states and his initial fears, confusions and doubts about the viability of linguistically and culturally shaped and sized states. Based on a close reading ofNehru's writings- both political and personal- she points out the philosophical and conceptual strands of thinking in Nehru's writings on this subject. She rightly suggests that for Nehru, language was not a simple communicative device but signified a deep cultural symbolic order of a society. Nehru's vision of a new independent India rested primarily on creating economically viable and politically integrative states with a proper balance being maintained between territorial size of different regions and the national sovereignty and integrity of the country. Nehru's continued caution to his fellow colleagues and political leaders on this subject before and after independence is a good reminder for the present context. It is within this larger context that the next chapter by Ranabir Samaddar argues for the 'right size, right territory and right people' to be the central concern for the reorganisation process. The colonial rule ignored this principle completely. In post-colonial independent India, what seems to be a governing principle for the reorganisation of states, according to him, is not simply a cultural criterion but the

logic of capital, of economy and development of core regions and states. Samaddar poses an extremely significant question — whether the reorganisation of states and regions would make the political space available for generating more capital in post-liberalised economy and polity of contemporary India. Reorganising the Hindi Heartland

The two essays in this section discuss the trajectory of state formation in the Hindi heartland with focus on the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Sudha Pai suggests that large states like Madhya Pradesh, with diverse cultural sub-regions in the Hindi heartland, lacked political integration and a composite identity. Analysing the integrative role of the Congress party in the state, she argues that the process of political integration was slow and partial due to endemic factionalism and bipartisan politics as this became gradually evident from the demand for creating the state of Chhattisgarh. This essay also suggests that perhaps smaller states would not necessarily translate into better units of governance or faster economic development without more inclusive structures for regional and socioeconomic development. The following essay by Louise Tillin attributes the of three new states to the claims of regional neglect. Taking the case of Chhattisgarh, she provides a detailed analysis as to why and how consensus was achieved and why politicians at the regional level began to support such demand for separate statehood. Her chapter rightly draws attention to the dual trends — the rise of certain groups belonging to owner-cultivator farmers in some regions and their mobilisation via quota politics of the lower castes — in many states of north India. In her view, such a complex set of factors changed the political logic of the old geography of border in the dominant regions of north India and its states.

creation

Languages and States: Western and Southern India

The four essays in this section examine the process of reorganisation and the formation of specific states in western and southern India. Rita Kothari’s essay critically analyses how the Sindhi language has become a minority language in independent India and how Sindhis too have become a linguistic minority. This despite the fact that Hindu Sindhis, Kacchis, Khojas and Memons in Gujarat, Tharis and Jaisalmeris in Rajasthan speak varieties of Sindhi. In this regard, she points out that Sindhis enter into a dialogue with the state in the arena

of land, language and script as symbolic spaces of power. However, state grant provided through activities like education, literature and publication is limiting for a community which does not have a state of its own based on the linguistic–cultural basis. The essay brings out the nuances over the choice of script — Devnagari or Perso-Arabic — for the Sindhi language at the time of its entry into the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution in 1967. She reminds us subtly that ‘instead of becoming an organic expression of pluralism, Sindhi has become a structural expression of pluralistic design’. The next chapter by Usha Thakkar and Nagindas Sanghavi track down the long historical trajectory of events leading to the creation of Maharashtra and Gujarat as two separate states in 1960. They point out that while most of the leaders in Maharashtra under the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti supported the demand for a unified state of Maharashtra, Vidarbha insisted on being a separate state. Gujaratis too staked their claim to Mumbai. The essay brings critical events of contemporary times dealing with Maratha elites’ dominance over rural economy, the split in the Congress in Maharashtra, the formation of the Congress Party under the leadership of Sharad Pawar, the rise and development of the Shiv Sena over the past several decades and most recently the emergence of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). The two other essays in this section deal with the state of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka of southern India. K. Srinivasulu in his essay situates the demand for Telangana statehood within the larger problematic of linguistic nationalism. In his critical analysis of this demand historically over the past six and half decades, he shows very competently the two opposite demands — one for Vishalandhra (greater Andhra), a unified state for the Telugus, and another one for Telangana. He suggests that the demand for greater Andhra was theoretically informed by the nationality question articulated by the Communist Left whereas the demand for Telangana has been more in terms of the logic of political pragmatism and an idea of regional under/and uneven development. This chapter traces the long historical journey of the Telangana demand and shows limits of the linguistic principle on the one hand, and an increasing power of democratisation process as a whole on the other to understand the logic of this demand. The essay by V. B. Tharakeshwar analyses Kannada nationalism in the early twentieth century colonial India. Elaborating the idea of Karnatakatwa or Karnatakaism in the writings of Kannada writers like Venkat Rao, he suggests that three concentric

Nationalist

governed

and not vertical hierarchical notions of global, Indian and Karnataka order were present simultaneously. The ideology of Karnatakatwa was for the reunification of Kannada-speaking regions during the colonial period. The author argues that a certain degree of cultural unification is a precondition for the political unification and thus tries to establish a close relationship between language and land in his analysis of the Kannada nationalism. Culture and Identity: Reorganisation in the East and the North-East

The three essays in this section address the question of reorganisation in the state of Orissa and the north-eastern states. Nivedita Mohanty traces Oriya movement in the nineteenth and twentieth century colonial India. She describes how different parts of Orissa were adjoined with different provinces namely Central Provinces, Bengal and Madras Presidencies and Chotanagpur division. In this entire course of events, the Utkal Sammelan remained in the forefront for the linguistic formation of Orissa. Mohanty argues that the SRC did not have anything much to offer to Orissa where the language movement had already acquired sufficient support several decades before other states were formed and reorganised linguistically. Both Sajal Nag and Ivy Dhar discuss the complex process of reorganisation of Assam and its impact on the north-east regions of India. Situating his analytical framework within the theory of ‘imagined community and territory’, Sajal Nag in his essay argues that the SRC provided a departure from the linguistic principle for the formation of states in independent India. The SRC made cases for the multilingual provinces to be formed. He further clarifies that the SRC did not favour the demand for the formation of a separate hill state initially and in this case, it did not seem to adhere to the principle of formation of linguistic provinces in the north-east of the country. The creation of several states in 1971 in this region went beyond the recommendations of the SRC because, as Nag suggests, the concept of homeland became more and more acceptable in this part of the country. The essay by Ivy Dhar clearly suggests that the SRC did not favour formation of small states in the north-east of the country, even though the Assamese middle class had been active in standardising the Assamese language at the time of reorganisation. In this context, Dhar draws attention to Asom Sahitya Sabha and its crucial role in the making of Assamese as the state language of Assam. She also examines the conflict between plains and

hill tribes and the demand for Bodoland being a result of the reorganisation of the north-east region. She examines in detail as to how the medium of instruction had already gained momentum after Asssamese was declared as the medium of instruction in the universities of Assam following the North-East Reorganisation Act 1972. The essays included in the volume aim at addressing the question of reorganisation from an interdisciplinary framework which further provides the sets of questions which are yet unresolved and Whether the reorganisation was a success or failure is not the task at hand in this volume. Instead, the theory and practice within which the rationale of reorganisation was conceptualised and carried forward is a subject of serious academic engagement that will open up the debate on issues of vital concern such as the nature and form of political and cultural inclusion, democratisation of regional identities and centralisation of political power, both at the centre and states. The demand for setting up of a second state reorganisation commission is to understand newer demands for state autonomy situated within the larger context of coalitional structures of state power and its various constituents engaged in their political bargaining of various kinds. The emergence of regional political parties and their importance in coalitions formed at the centre to form governments could push demands for creating more states in the near future. The continuing process of democratisation aiming to reach down to new social groups and regions will not only create and increase political consciousness among the disadvantaged groups in the states, but also produce new local and regional elites who would like to participate and determine the contours of political governance in their regions. Widening regional inequalities among states under the process of globalisation will create more intense competition for sharing resources in intersecting regions and sub-regions of the states.

unanswered.

Notes 1. This has been made clear in a number of historical writings by various scholars. A few such writings are Frykenberg 1965; Arnold 1977; Baker 1976; Washbrook 1976; Bayly 1975; Brass 1974; Masselos 1987; and Broomfield 1982. 2. For more details on it, see Sarangi (2006). Ambedkar (1979a, 1979b) wrote extensively on this subject.

References Ambedkar, Bhim Rao. 1979a. ‘Maharashtra as a Linguistic Province’, in and Speeches, vol. 1, comp. and ed. Vasant Moon. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra. ———. 1979b. ‘Thoughts on the Linguistic States’, inWritings and Speeches, vol. 1, comp. and ed. Vasant Moon, pp. 11–12. Bombay: Education Government of Maharashtra. Arnold, David. 1977. The Congress in Tamilnad. Delhi: Manohar. Assadi, Muzaffar. 1997. ‘Separatist Movement in Coorg’, Economic and Political Weekly, 32 (49): 3114–16. Baker, Christopher J. 1976. The Politics of South India, 1920–1937 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barrier, Gerald. 1985. ‘Regional Political History: New Trends in the Study of British India’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation, pp. 111–54. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bayly, C. A. 1975. The Local Roots of Indian Politics: Allahabad, 1880–1920 . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bondurant, Joan V. 1958. ‘Regionalism versus Provincialism: A Study in Problems of Indian National Unity’, monograph. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brass, Paul R. 1974. Language, Religion and Politics in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Broomfield, John. 1982. ‘The Regional Elites: A Theory of Modern Indian History’, in John Broomfield (ed.), Mostly About Bengal: Essays in Modern Indian History, pp. 1–15. Delhi: Manohar. Chadda, Maya. 2002. ‘Integration through Internal Reorganisation: Containing Ethnic Conflict in India’, Ethnopolitics, 2 (1): 44–61. Embree, Ainslie. 1985. ‘Indian Civilisation and Regional Cultures: The Two Realities’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Frykenberg, Robert. 1965. Guntur District, 1788–1848: A History of Local Influence and Central Authority in South India. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Government of India. 1955. ‘Report of the States Reorganization Commission 1955’. Delhi: Manager of Publications, Government of India. Kumar, B. B. 1998. Small States Syndrome in India. Delhi: Concept Publishing House. Majeed, Akhtar. 2003. ‘The Changing Politics of States’ Reorganization’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 33 (4): 83–98. Masselos, Jim. 1987. ‘Introduction. Comity and Commonality: The Forging of a Congress Identity’, in Jim Masselos (ed.), Struggling and Ruling: The Indian National Congress 1885–1985. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.

Writings Department,

Mawdsley, Emma. 2002. ‘Redrawing the Body politic: Federalism, and the Creation of New States in India’, The Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 40 (3): 34–54. Mehta, Pratap Bhanu. 2009. ‘Sizeable Matters’, The Indian Express , Delhi, 16 December. Nag, Sajal. 1993. ‘Multiplication of Nations: Political Economy of SubNationalism in India’, Economic and Political Weekly , 28 (29/30): 1521–32. Pai, Sudha. 2000. State Politics in India: New Dimensions Party System, and Politics of Identity. Delhi: Shipra publications. Sarangi, Asha. 2006. ‘Ambedkar and the Linguistic States: A Case for Maharashtra’, Economic and Political Weekly , XLI (2): 151–58. ———. 2010. ‘Reorganisation: Then and Now’, Frontline, January, Chennai. Seal, Anil. 1971. The Emergence of Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Nineteenth Century. London: Cambridge University Press. Singh, Santosh. 2010. ‘At 11.03%, Bihar Growth rate only a step behind Gujarat’, The Indian Express, New Delhi, 4 January. Washbrook, David A. 1976. The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency, 1870–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Regionalism

Liberalization

Part I Historical and Political Context of Reorganisation

1 Nehru and the Reorganisation of States: Making of Political India Asha Sarangi Independence of India came with the difficult task of the ‘integration of states’, which required a careful and pragmatic political strategy on the part of national leaders combining cultural diversity with the unity of the country. As a mature political leader and the first prime minister of independent India, Nehru had to initiate the twin processes of state and nation formation in post-partitioned India. At the same time, demands for regional and territorial recognition of cultural identities on the part of various linguistic and social-ethnic communities and groups had begun to affect the broader process of state formation in various parts of the country. Nehru faced an acute moral dilemma of how to build a strong and durable state economically and politically, within the culturally plural and socially diversified social order, by cohabiting the ideology of political democracy and cultural secularity in a mutually sustainable manner. For this, he quite reluctantly conceded to the demand for the creation of Andhra state soon after independence. The Nehruvian model of statecraft embedded within the constitutional design of planned economy, cultural plurality and territorial integrity had its immediate effects in the succeeding decades of 1950s and 1960s when states were reorganised following the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission (henceforth SRC). In this essay, I focus on the political pragmatism and expediency with which Nehru worked to carry forward the long and complex process of the creation and formation of 14 new states by rearranging territorially the princely states, provinces, centrally administered territories and various scattered regional centres of power. In this context, it is important to keep in mind Nehru’s own dilemmas and anxieties over the ‘language question’ which had gained a certain degree of political legitimacy in the nationalist discourse since the 1920s onward. Furthermore, it is crucial to understand Nehru’s vision of a linguistically unified

political

Asha Sarangi

India as part of the state rationalisation exercise in the spheres of economy, education, administration, culture, law and so on. Perhaps one should ask as to what extent this kind of reorganisation of states initiated the political processes related to the creation of an expansive democratic–communicative public sphere where the Nehruvian consensual polity could mature and affect the subsequent working of a new political order. As a result of it, competing political discourses and strategic political practices began to take shape challenging the existing caste, class and language alliances. The reconfiguration of the alliances now had to be accommodated within an emerging regional consolidation of power derived from continuing assertion of regional centres of power and authority. It is important to understand the conceptual framework —

discursively and politically — within which Nehru tried to manage the burden of reorganisation soon after becoming the first prime minister of independent India. For this, I situate Nehru’s own thinking on this question philosophically and historically. In the subsequent sections of this essay, I take into account Nehru’s political engagement with the question of reorganisation of states and his vision of a democratic India. He spent a great deal of his time dealing with this subject for almost three decades in his active political life, both before and after independence. In this regard, we see Nehru engaging with the category of language not in terms of an instrumental communicative form but as a philosophical concept which provides an understanding about the multiple world-views and cultural habitus. His own upbringing in India and England deeply influenced his initial association and over this subject. After independence, it took him sometime to understand and subsequently act upon the given complex political and social dynamics surrounding the political, cultural and administrative restructuring of the Indian state as a political community. He knew that the territorial re-demarcation and political integration of India after independence would unfold the twin processes of nationalisation and regionalisation of identities based primarily on language, class, caste, religion and region in the states.

reflection

Nehru was aware of the multilingual social fabric of the country. He

partially understood the structural power relationship existing among different language communities in the country. For him, language embodies cultural representation endowed with meaning-system and a thick complex symbolic order. He once said that ‘language helps us to think, it is a semi-frozen thought, and it also helps us to

Nehru and the Reorganisation of States

exchange our thoughts’. On numerous occasions, Nehru expressed his thoughts on this subject in his writings and speeches. He strongly believed that language could be identical to culture, and often alluded to the complications arising out of translation of words in different languages. In this regard, he mildly ridiculed the colonial rulers who called Indian languages vernaculars. In fact, he wrote a long piece in Bombay Chronicle about the term vernacular as being associated with vulgar and unrefined or slave language which, he thought, even some Indians had accepted and started using it for placing Indian languages in their hierarchical relationship with English — the language of colonial masters. Nehru criticised those who played on Hindi–Urdu conflict and reminded them that: those who loved language as the embodiment of culture, of any thought caught in the network of words and phrases, of ideas crystallised, of fine shades of meaning, of music and rhythm that accompany it, of the fascinating history and association of its words, of the picture of life in all its phases, those to whom a language is dear because of all this and more, wondered at this vulgar argument and kept away from it (Gopal and Iyenger 2003: 495).

Nehru’s ancestors were the learned men of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit languages. Raj Kaul, his great-great grand father, who migrated around the year 1716 from Kashmir to Delhi at the invitation of the Mughal emperor, was a distinguished scholar. Even his father Motilal Nehru, who was educated at home until the age of 12, had learnt Persian and Arabic languages. Nehru appears to be more at ease with these languages than Hindi or Sanskrit. Being a Brahmin and learning these languages was associated with symbol of early Hindu–Muslim syncretic cultural traditions widely prevailing at that time. Nehru, educated at home until the age of 15, was taught Hindi and Sanskrit along with an intensive teaching of English language and training in the western education and mannerism. He gradually learnt Urdu and felt more at home in this language than Hindi or Sanskrit. His natural inclination towards Urdu was partially due to his father’s knowledge of Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic languages, and probably on account of his childhood care provider who knew Urdu very well. During his years of life spent in various prisons where he also learnt minimum Urdu, he kept himself engaged with a variety of readings mostly in the English language and very little in Hindi. Brown characterises him as someone who ‘was perhaps, above all, an intellectual in an imperial world, in a

way that none of them were’ (Brown 2006: 69–81). Even though Nehru, unlike many of his contemporaries, was not so well entrenched into the local fields of politics, but with ‘his fine command of the nuances of English and his ease with British administrators and politicians, he had also become a man of huge communication skills when faced with large audiences and when required to speak Hindi/Hindustani’. In his autobiography written during his ninth-term imprisonment in the Ahmednagar Fort, Nehru expresses his anxiety and hesitation to speak in Hindi and underlines the fact as to how he felt more with Urdu than with the Hindi or Sanskrit language. Nehru, at times, accounts for his own elitist position on the language issue as a result of his anglicised upbringing, particularly with regard to the learning of English and other languages. The values of cultural and secularism made him sensitive towards the understanding of multilingual traditions of India ever since he started learning Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and English at home. While learning languages, he thought about various aspects of a language such as translation, power of words, the future national language or lingua franca of India and the position of English in independent India. Keeping this intellectual universe of Nehru in mind helps us, to some extent, in understanding and assessing Nehru’s continuous involvement in language politics during the independence struggle and afterwards. As Judith Brown suggests that Nehru has been considered

comfortable

syncretism

an outsider to the Indian political world and unlike many of his his entry into the Indian national movement and politics was not routed through a conventional passage of local and regional networks and experiences. His westernized education along with his legal profession equipped and prepared him well to adjust with the political colleagues of his times. He carried on easily and comfortably with his contemporary western intellectuals and political leaders to an extent that ‘the departing British felt particularly that they could do business and least because, at so many levels, he spoke the same language and operated in the same way as they did’ (2006: 77).

contemporaries,

Robert King rightly suggests that ‘language always mattered a great deal to Nehru as a writer of books, as a former journalist, and as a letter writer of gargantuan proportions’. In his views, ‘Nehru used language with emotion, but he did not view language with emotion’ (ibid.: 22). Nehru was both a rationalist and a humanist. He was influenced by the western enlightenment and the spirit of scientific

temper. Parekh thinks that he failed to evolve a coherent and shared cultural and educational policy which required a kind of political substantiation. His national ideology, in Parekh’s views, was more suited to the westernised elites and lacked indigenous grounding and therefore, to some extent, it suffered from internal coherence. Nehru appears to be both a statist and a critical modernist. He struggled to combine a certain sense of morality into the domain of politics too. There was a sense of public morality and ethical politics in him that he wanted to envision in his quest for democratic and rational modern state.1 With the decreasing faith in the language of religion, ‘new, shared moral vocabularies and commitments had to be invented: and this could only be done through public, reasoned debate’ (Khilnani 2002: 4795). Khilnani thinks that Nehru exercised to some extent a sense of ‘reasoned morality’ by balancing out reason through an argument against instinctive and impulsive decision in his political career several times but most notably in his concerns for the political administration of the country, particularly in case of the creation of new states of the union. Like in other spheres where the discrimination and disadvantage of minorities worried Nehru, it was also in the domain of language, and particularly its politicisation since the 1930s, that upset him frequently. Furthermore, his reluctance to accept the demand for the creation of linguistic states soon after independence was indicative of his reservations about associating languages and cultures symbolically in a more exclusivist manner. In his views, language could remain a marker of distinctive cultural identity but should not necessarily become a fundamental basis for creating separate states. Similarly, Nehru’s careful consideration and retention of English for 15 years after 1950 was partially due to his fear about the linguistic break-up of the country with the rise of communalisation over language politics in the aftermath of the partition in 1947. Keeping English for the time being allayed fears of people belonging to the non-Hindi dominated states and earned a certain degree of democratic legitimacy for his leadership. He was never in favour of the Sanskritisation of Hindi or making Hindi as an exclusive national or official language. However, he was extremely concerned about linguistic minorities in the country, and therefore rejected any idea of an imposition of Hindi, English or any other language without the popular mandate accorded for it in due course of time. He, as Judith Brown rightly suggests, ‘found agitations on language issues distasteful and immature’ (2003: 284).

Nehru himself declared in parliament that ‘it was the over-enthusiasm of the leaders of the Hindi groups which came in the way of the spread of Hindi’ (Dasgupta 1970: 226). Nehru’s contribution to the state-formation processes immediately

after independence needs to be examined in the context of state security and stability in post-partitioned India. He was preoccupied with the internal reorganisation and coherence of India as a newly independent democratic nation–state, and thus the feasibility and durability of linguistic states was a matter of serious consideration for him and for several other nationalists. Nehru’s initial reluctance to give in to the demands for linguistic states was based on a number of political and administrative reasons. James Manor suggests that: [I]t is in some ways remarkable that he held out against this, since Congress had been using linguistic regions as the basis for its regional organisation units for fully 30 years. As a result, Congressmen from linguistic groups, that were rendered disadvantaged minorities by provincial borders inherited from British India, assumed that a revision of borders was only a matter of time and natural justice …. Nehru was also encouraged by the way in which States Reorganisation strengthened Congress in most regions. The party reaped the credit for the gains that accompanied this rationalisation of government. For example, most people now found that the language of administration and of law courts was (at least at subordinate level) their own language and not that of a neighbouring region to which British rulers had attached them a century and a half earlier. What he probably did not realise was that States Reorganisation also produced another sort of rationalisation that reinforced the power within Congress of locally dominant landowning groups. Each linguistic region in India tends to possess something like a single distinct caste system. … In general and over the medium term at least, States Reorganisation consolidated the hold of dominant landowning castes both in supra-local politics and in the villages (1990: 35–38).

Nehru’s initial hesitation in acceding to the demand for linguistic states should be understood within his own fears, anxieties and dilemmas over narrow sectarian and exclusive feelings using the language of cultural nationalism. Khilnani rightly tells us: After partition, Nehru feared that any redrawing of India’s internal boundaries along such lines would further endanger the country’s unity. He asserted as much in the early sessions of the Constituent Assembly. But over a period of several years, in the face of protests (often violent) as well as arguments, he came to revise his views on the matter. Nehru

often has been criticised for being dilatory and evasive on this subject: in fact, by temporising and by refusing to give in immediately to impassioned popular demands, by allowing positions to be stated and gradually revised, he enabled a more satisfactory solution to emerge — one that actually strengthened the union and that has endured remarkably well (Khilnani 2002).

Nehru’s preference, however reluctantly, for the formation of states was partially driven by rational criteria and was not based on emotional appeals or factors. He initially feared that the linguistic affinities could potentially turn chauvinistic. He did not emphasise much about the mother tongue education or Indian languages’ learning and curricula in the schools. This could be because he himself was far removed from Indian languages and had been a product of western liberal education in the English language. It was Gandhi who had earlier resisted the dominant imposition of English which he associated with the colonial mindset. Nehru was not too happy with the merger of Mumbai city into the state of Maharashtra, and did not take into confidence Ambedkar’s views on the linguistic states as the latter had specific ideas about the future of states and their reorganisation on the linguistic basis. When the SRC was constituted in 1953 to look into the demands for the linguistic states, Nehru categorically expressed his views in a small article published in Times of India of 23 April 1953 stating: ‘In a linguistic state, what would remain for the smaller communities to look to? Can they hope to be elected to the legislature? Can they hope to maintain a place in the state service?

linguistic

These questions and concerns on the part of Nehru regarding the

possibility of the creation of linguistic states kept bothering him for quite sometime. He, therefore, warned against the risks of languagebased communalism since communalisation on the basis of religion had already intensified by then. Nehru was aware of this possibility and hence hesitated to accept the demands for linguistic states. He wondered as he did in his memorandum submitted to the Linguistic Provinces Commission in 1948 that the ‘Constitution should provide that the official language of every province should be the same as the official language of the central government. It is only on that footing that I am prepared to accept the demand for Linguistic Provinces’ (Noorani 2002). Nehru did not see any inequality between Hindi and Urdu; instead he considered both of these languages having equal status, and suggested that Urdu be given greater encouragement as it was ‘essentially an Indian language’ (ibid. 2003).

Nehru dwells upon the language question in his Glimpses of World History, the book written for Indira — his daughter — during his days in the prison. In this book written in the form of letters to his daughter, Nehru talks about history of India and the world narrating the major events of the world history to her. While writing about the linguistic diversity of India, he seems to be in awe of India’s numerous languages and dialects and the historical vitality of literatures and languages. He seems to be concerned about their political protection and preservation, and writes to his daughter in the following manner: Perhaps you know that the National Congress, unlike the British Government, has divided India on the basis of language. This is far better, as it brings one kind of people, speaking one language and generally having similar customs, into one provincial area …. There can be no doubt that in future provincial divisions of India a great deal of attention will be paid to the language of the area (Nehru 2004).

Regarding the conflict over Hindi and Urdu that Nehru too witnessed during the decade of 1920–1930, he considers Hindustani as a viable solution and possibly an alternative to the language question turning communal, and hence suggests: Urdu is a variation of Hindi and word Hindustani is used to mean both Hindi and Urdu. Thus the principal languages of India are just ten—Hindustani, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telegu, Kanarese, Malayalam, Uriya and Assamese. Of these, Hindustani which is our mother tongue, spoken all over northern India — in the Punjab, United Provinces, Bihar, Central Provinces, Rajputana, Delhi and Central India …. Hindustani is understood in most parts of India. It is likely to become the common language of India. …The only way for a people to grow, for their children to learn, is through their own language (ibid.: 27).

Nehru’s speeches during the years of 1949–1964 reveal to us his initial fears, confusions and ambiguities over the future of linguistically reorganised states in independent India. He says that, ‘in India some kind of reorganisation of the provinces should take place to fit in more with the cultural, geographical and economic conditions of the people and with their desires’ (Government of India 1949: 36). Nehru did see the possibility of one language emerging as the

most powerful one in independent India but believed that ‘a ultimately grows from the people, its seldom that it can be imposed … the surest way of developing a natural all India language is not so much to pass resolutions and laws on the subject but to work to that end in other ways’ (ibid.). In this regard, he a political party such as the Congress to be able to work towards this goal of reconstituting provinces on the linguistic basis. He was not in a hurry to reconstitute different states linguistically. He conceded the demand for Andhra state a bit reluctantly with his worries about the city of Madras, and the future of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

language

considered

Nehru’s concerns during these critical years were predominantly

for unity and integrity of the country. He favoured a more consensual democratic and popular support base for the reorganisation of the states rather than adopting a top-down, state-driven and an imposed strategy for creation of new states. He had his own confusions about the prospects of having linguistically reorganised states in newly independent India when he said: It (linguistic provinces) would be dangerous at any time but it’s more so at a time when the world is on the verge of a crisis. One doesn’t know what tomorrow or the day after might bring for us to unsettle or uproot the whole of India on the basis of a theoretical approach or linguistic division seems to me an extraordinary unwise thing (Government of India 1954).

Nehru did not favour radical change in the boundaries of the provinces since the principle of linguistic demarcation of provinces was not acceptable as an exclusive principle of state reorganisation to him. He reiterated that, ‘If a particular demand is considered reasonable, you can give effect to it. But to say that you should give effect to a particular principle all over India has no meaning. … I don’t quite see why the political boundary should necessarily be a linguistic one (ibid.: 59). It was for this very reason that he did not favour Uttarakhand or a Sikh province. If a similar demand (the one like Andhra) is made in the case of Uttarakhand, I would strongly oppose it. I would also oppose a Sikh province. But claims like those of Andhra or Karnataka or Kerala or Maharashtra have my concurrence. … The only way to settle disputes about linguistic provinces is to consider them in a spirit of goodwill. A plebiscite shouldn’t necessarily solve everything (ibid.: 61–62).

About the question of determining the boundaries of these linguistic states, Nehru showed a great degree of ambiguity and uncertainty to some extent. I might straightaway say that I am not greatly interested where a particular state boundary is situated and I find it very difficult to get passionate or excited about it. … Infinitely more important is what happens on either side of the boundary, what happens within the state — more especially in the great multilingual or bilingual areas and what happens to people inside a particular state who may, or in any other sense, form a minority (Government of India 1958).

linguistically

We can see that Nehru did not favour the linguistic principle for the reorganisation of states and put his views strongly when he said that ‘may I say pointedly and precisely that I dislike that principle absolutely the way it has tended to go?’ (ibid.: 172). Speaking about the impossibility of demarcating rigid linguistic areas and regions from the existing multilingual areas, Nehru pointed out that ‘wherever you may draw your line, you do justice to one group and injustice to another’. He was not much concerned with boundaries but rather with two things primarily — the question of principles and the manner of approach to problems. It is in this regard that he considered Mumbai and Punjab as the two most important issues in the matter of reorganisation of states. He emphasised: It does not matter how you divide or sub-divide one state or two or three or four states. That is a matter which we could consider on administrative, economic, linguistic or other grounds but I attach the greatest importance to language though I refuse to associate it with a state (ibid.: 179).

necessarily

However, at the same time, Nehru weighed the dis/advantages of both unilingual and multilingual states. Unlike Ambedkar, he did not favour the principle of linguism in totality. For Nehru, on the other hand, an idea of language was central to the category of culture, and culture can be multilingual. He was reconciled to the idea of creating and adjusting territories of the states when he said: What does it matter if a patch of Bihar goes this way and a patch of Bengal or Orissa goes the other way? I can’t get excited about it provided always that they get fair treatment …. The Maharashtrians, Gujaratis and others are the people who have to reside there, and who am I to push

my opinion down their throats, more especially the Maharashtrians who have played such a vital role in India’s history and who have to play such a vital part in the future of India? ... ‘The division of India into four, five or six major groups regardless of language but always, I will repeat, giving the greatest importance to the languages in those areas … The importance of the development of a language and linguistic boundaries are not the same thing (ibid.: 180–93).

Nehru pointed out that various Indian languages would be used in the state administration and education in terms of integrating people into the developmental agenda of the Indian state. He was hopeful that the scientific and technical knowledge and vocabulary could be learnt and communicated in the Indian languages as easily as in the English language. He once remarked, ‘I am convinced that real mass progress in India can only be made through our own languages and not through a foreign language’ (Government of India 1958: 424).2 He continued to emphasise that it was not English but an Indian language that should become the principal medium of education in India which, he suggested, could be imparted either by Hindi or some other regional language. He made it clear that ‘Hindi must be given every encouragement to grow and be used for education and administrative purposes …. (And) English should be a compulsory second or third language’ (ibid.: 425). He even thought that knowing a foreign language would not harm the progress and growth of Indian languages. Regarding the numerical strength of a language, he said: Every language has an equal right to prevail; even if it is a minority language in the country provided it is spoken by a good number of people…It is the primary responsibility of the majority to satisfy the minority in every matter…It’s a most desirable custom to give statutory protection to minorities. It is sometimes right that you should do that to give encouragement, for example, to backward classes, but it is not good in the long run. It is the duty and responsibility of the majority community whether in the matter of language or religion to pay particular attention to what the minority wants and to win it over. The majority is strong enough to crush the minority which might not be protected. Therefore, whenever such a question arises, I am always in favour of the minority (ibid.: 177).

Similarly, regarding the Punjabi language and its conflict with Hindi, he said, ‘There is no question of its being at the expense of Hindi. Hindi is strong enough, wide enough and powerful enough in every

way to go ahead’ (ibid.: 181). From 1920s onwards, Nehru remained engaged with the language question and had interlocutors in Gandhi, Rajgopalachari, Abdul Haq and many other nationalists over the conflict between Hindi and Urdu, and over the acceptance or rejection of Hindustani language. The socialist Nehru seems to have learnt a few things from the linguistic reconstruction programmes undertaken in the former USSR immediately after the revolution. The new Russian state worked to establish written forms of various languages which were earlier only spoken and did not have fully established and developed orthographical rules as well as terminological systems. In this context, language planning was used for educational purposes by the Communist Party of Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin who urged the use of the mother tongue for purposes of education for the people of Russia on an urgent basis. In this regard, wide-ranging scientific and practical measures were taken to ensure the creation and realisation of alphabets for more than 50 national languages that had not previously been written down. Nehru too thought that reorganisation probably would establish the languages of education in these states in a more determinate manner and thus create a democratic public space for every one to be educated in the language of the state. The Nehruvian model of development ensured that his government gave grants for officially compiling the terminologies, translations and dictionaries of dominant regional languages. On 27 November 1947, in the Constituent Assembly, Nehru as a prime minister of the country accepted the principles underlying the demand for linguistic provinces. It was about 20 years ago in 1928 when the Nehru report had emphasised the desirability of creating linguistic provinces. Nehru’s consent for setting up the first Linguistic Provinces Commission known as the Dhar Commission on 17 June 1948, which submitted its report to the Government of India on 10 December 1948, once again reconfirmed the idea of linguistic provinces, linguistic areas and their boundaries with particular focus on states of Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and the city of Mumbai. The report stated the financial positions of the proposed provinces and their economic and administrative restructuring. By 1958, he seems to have come out of his anxieties on reorganisation and his fears of linguistic chauvinism begin to disappear. It became apparent to him that within each of the newly formed states, heterogeneous conflicts of caste, class, region

and culture would soon begin to affect the formation of larger political and cultural communities. The process of the reorganisation of states could be seen as a kind of state rationalisation exercise consolidating regional and local level alliances through a common vocabulary of administrative and political institutions and practices. This was made possible through numerous policies and programmes of state-building exercise using a common language of administration, education, law and the institutions. He cautioned that the reorganisation process should not be carried out without certain restraints. The years of state formation — 1947–1956 — were not just a long decade of development but also of political experiments, alliances, social unrest and cultural resurgence, and addressed a number of and somewhat messy problems related to the notions of territory, geography, language, region, culture and the emerging alliances among them at various levels. The SRC collected 1, 50, 250 documents from different parts of the country and considered factors like cost of change, unity and security of India; linguistic cultural bases of group and community identity; and financial viability of reorganising different regions and states which then existed. It finally arranged 28 states into 14 states, and integrated 543 princely states in the reorganised political order. The question of cultural homogeneity within dense social diversity failed to generate any sustainable consensus at this time. Issues like whether the reorganised multilingual states would be administratively strong and durable, and which language/s would become language/s of administration, education, economy, occupation and law in these existing multilingual states remained subject of intense debates and discussions. Over the issue of big versus small states, Nehru even said that ‘small states will have small minds’. These were Nehru’s years of tremendous fears, anxieties and dilemmas, which along with his indecisiveness, affected and overshadowed the formative years of the formation of states. Subsequent to the submission of the SRC report in 1956 and its partial implementation, another decade of events followed framing the language policy of the country. In 1959, Nehru made a statement in the Parliament in the following words, ‘I would have English as an alternative language as long as people require it, and I would leave the decision … to the non-Hindi knowing people.’ Nehru’s remark that all scheduled languages were to be the national languages of the country provided an agenda for initiating the official language policy for the country. Subsequent to critical events like the

complex

formation of Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960, and the language riots in Tamil Nadu in 1963, an Official Language Bill was placed in the Parliament. Nehru gave a passionate speech on the language issue while discussing this bill. It subsequently led to the passing of the Official Language Amendment Bill in 1965 which made English an associate official language of the country for an indefinite period. In 1962, the Emotional Integration Committee submitted its report recommending a comprehensive multilingual educational and social policy framework for developing sustainable emotional bond between the people and the Indian state. Nehru stressed the point that the real mass progress in India could only be made through their language and not through a foreign language. This was reflected in numerous initiatives that he took in institutionalising the larger language and cultural policy in independent India. It was in this context that the question of linguistic minorities and the preservation and protection of their languages was raised and thought over, keeping in mind the idea of democratic rights and representation of several linguistic-cultural minorities. The reports of the first Official Language Commission in 1956, and that of the Emotional Integration Committee in 1962, with the latter specifying provisions for multilingual school writing of school textbooks, formation of youth organisations, implementation of a three-language formula into the school curricula, were interpreted as safeguards against the communalisation of politics which had started manifesting itself in different parts of the country by then. The widespread language riots in Tamil Nadu in the mid-1960s agitated the minds of various language nationalists in the country. However, the subsequent retention of English after 1965 ensured that the linguistic hegemony of Hindi would not stand in the way of the democratisation of language politics in the years to follow. Nehru’s consent for the continuation of English language, non-Sanskritisation of Hindi and an insistence to include Urdu in the Eighth Schedule was a testimony of his favouring the historical linguistic plurality and diversity of the country.

education, language

The story of the reorganisation of states, as it unfolded, tells us

about the processes leading to the remaking of India as a political community. Nehru carefully thought over categories such as nation, state, community and identity in most of his writings. He was more concerned about establishing the interlinkages between cultural and political spaces of power. In his view, the dynamic political order of

reorganisation in post-partitioned India also needed to understand the relationship between political legitimation and collective of regional as well as national identities. Besides, the new political order had to navigate through the acute dilemma over the of these multiple identities in the bureaucratic administrative rationale of the state on the one hand, and the power of the politics and culture on the other. For him, the given linguistic diversity of India would certainly promote the unity of India provided a scheme of general mass education and the cultural development of people is envisioned and pursued properly (Gopal and Iyenger 2003: 495). Therefore, the reorganisation process had to remain within the Nehruvian model of statecraft along with constitutional design of planned economy, cultural plurality and political-territorial integrity of the country. He preferred to wait for the reorganisation of other states including that of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab. Reorganisation was a state-building exercise which would eventually design an idea of the Indian nation being a fully grown and organically involved entity within the culture, economy and society of the country. However, as Khilnani has reminded, Nehru’s delays and dilemmas on this matter and in his subsequent acceptance of the SRC’s recommendations were more due to the widespread passions raised over the language issue. He considered the question of language rights and responsibilities as a part of the protection of cultural rights of social communities. He seemed to subscribe to the view that language could remain a marker of distinctive cultural identity but not become a ground for creating a separate state. For Nehru, language belonged to the universe of thoughts, and therefore any political ordering and structuring would only do a great deal of harm to it. In his speech at Bangalore in October 1955, Nehru made an emotional appeal in the following manner:

representation enclosures

We should not become parochial, narrow minded, provincial, and caste-minded because we have a great mission to perform. Let us, the citizens of this Republic of India, stand up straight with straight backs and look up at the skies keeping our feet firmly planted on the ground, and bring about this synthesis, this integration of the Indian people. Political integration has already taken place to some extent, but what I am after is something much deeper than that — an emotional integration of the Indian people so that we might be welded into one, and made into one strong national unit, maintaining at the same time all our wonderful diversity (Government of India 1958: 173).

communal

Nehru not only favoured socialist planning but also a planned which involved more rational and bureaucratic structures and practices of phased growth and progress of the country. For him, language symbolised culture and a pattern of meanings, and cultural borders could be possibly imagined through linguistic borders with the latter having the potential of defining and limiting the political order of the state boundaries. It is therefore not surprising to see Nehru accepting the process of reorganisation of states as part of the state rationalisation — not to be considered simply as an administrative affair but having significant impact in the spheres of culture, economy, religion, education, law and administration. Stuart Hall (1997) reminds us that nations are ‘systems of cultural representations’, and we find how Nehru too locates a bond between language and history, language and culture and language and polity that needed to be understood along these terrains. It was this relationship of the political in the language that Nehru thought about and reflected upon seriously. The Nehruvian developmental state became an organised administrable state which had to settle with the plurality of rights, representations and identities. His support and acceptance of the SRC report within less than a decade after independence has to be understood within this logic of the developmental state. The SRC opened up the space for the politics of people, of the governed, whereby the state needed to legitimise itself through the domain of cultural and political identity. It was to ease and provide a certain degree of political consciousness for collective action with limited access to political bargaining and engineering on the part of the regional political elites and the national leadership at the centre. It is probably right to suggest that these years of Nehruvian suggest the possibility of creating a communicative public sphere of sovereign political subjects who would engage with the state over matters of identities, rights and community identity in independent India. Nehru’s efforts in this regard open up some kind of a dialogical space which could sort out the domains of conflicts and compromises in a given political context. The Nehruvian legacy in terms of the formation of states of India — transition and transformation from an imperial colony to an independent sovereign state — is about the statebuilding exercise. State and nation-building were political exercises requiring distinctive modes and modalities of political, economic,

development

politics

consensus

cultural and social processes with their close and related political and cultural linkages. Nehru looked at the former state of USSR to further think through this question. Both Russia and India in this case provided rich and conceptually nuanced understanding about the conflictual or consensual relationship between language, public sphere, civil society and state. For Nehru, the important question was to strike a balance between linguistic cultural plurality and political centrality in a secular, participative and democratic manner. For this, in 1955 he sent S. G. Barve, Secretary of the first Official Language Commission to the former USSR for understanding the language policy as a state reconstruction programme, and to place his views before the SRC before its recommendations were implemented in 1956. This could be achieved, in his views, by refashioning the scale of hierarchies of regions and languages in case of India and nationalities in Russia as the careful understanding of the language question in both of these diverse and complex multilingual countries in the world had already suggested ways to manage the affairs of education, administration, economy, law and politics. The state-building exercise includes setting up of various political

institutions and formal structures of the state on the one hand, and initiating the democratic political practices on the other. For this, political institutions need to be restructured within the cultural habitus of the social order to create critical spaces for new political public spheres and their subjects. The idea of a nation indicates an organic exercise which requires deepening and strengthening of bonds, trusts, loyalties, and a degree of ethical-political reckoning in the realms of rights, representation, recognition of freedom, dignity, human justice and equality, etc. The Indian state and its various constitutive units needed to create political institutions to guard and legitimate political processes and practices. Unlike the state, the nation was a discursive construct in Nehru’s views, and needed a certain kind of political institutional structure that would help in articulating a set of imaginaries with which it could be identified initially. An idea of nation as systems of cultural representations could be possible through linguistic reconstruction of the past and its history, culture, tradition and memory, etc. Identifiers such as language, culture, religion, region, caste and class facilitated this process of discursive evocation of the Indian nation. In this process, the twin processes of mythologising

and demythologising of the nation take place simultaneously. Such a discursive process also prescribes a certain degree of cultural through specific political practices. Nehru seems to be asking his fellow colleagues and countrymen to maintain a balance between traditional particularistic ethnic loyalties on the one hand and modern universalistic legal rational order on the other. Nehru wanted to build a democratic and cultural apparatus, having not just reorganised states but also their linguistic, political, administrative, territorial, economic and even psychological integration and consolidation.

inclusion

Notes 1. Sunil Khilnani considers Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru as belonging to the tradition of ‘public reason’ and as ‘men who tried to find the basis for auniversalist morality and politics’. All three of them wondered as ‘how to construe the relation between political power and the presence of multiple faiths’. See Khilnani (2002). 2. It is in this context that he called the English knowing system as the new caste system.

References Brown, Judith. 2003. Nehru: A Political Life. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and the British Empire: The Making of an “Outsider” in Indian Politics’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 29 (1): 69–81. Dasgupta, Jyotirindra. 1970. Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India . Berkeley: University of California Press. Gopal, S. and Uma Iyenger. ed. 2003. The Essential Writings of J. Nehru. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Government of India. 1949. Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches, vol. 1, September 1946–May 1949. Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. ———. 1954. Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches , vol. 2, 1949–1953. Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. ———. 1958. Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches, vol. 3, March 1953–August 1957. Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Hall, Stuart. ed. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage Publication.

Khilnani, Sunil. 2002. ‘Nehru’s Faith’, Economic and Political Weekly , 37 (48): 4793–99. King, Robert D. 1997. Nehru and the Language Politics of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Manor, James. 1990. ‘How and Why Liberal and Representative Politics Emerged in India’, in Political Studies, 38 (1): 20–38. Nehru, Jawaharlal. 2003. ‘The Question of Language’, in S. Gopal and Uma Iyenger (ed.), The Essential Writings of J. Nehru, pp. 495. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. ———. 2004. Glimpses of World History . Delhi: Penguin Books Ltd. Noorani, A. G. 2002. ‘Nehru and Linguistic States’, Frontline, 19 (16), 3–16 August, Chennai. ———. ed. 2003. The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

2 Rule, Governmental Rationality and Reorganisation of States Ranabir Samaddar To rule means to rule people which also means (in most of history) to rule a territory. But just like rule has to be appropriate to the nature of a particular people, similarly the nature of a territory also has to be appropriate. Or, and it is the same thing to say, that the rule must fit the people and the territory. In this sense ‘right size’ and ‘right people’ become critical factors in rule. To attempt a fit of right sizing and right peopling, states have and reduced, changed compositions of populations, expelled populations, invited populations, reordered rules of succession of a state, tried to achieve political and cultural homogenisation, accepted arbitration, imposed new controls, and managed territories through grant of various types of autonomous arrangements. For right peopling within the borders, the most effective instrument has been land control policy. Land acquisition, and as its ancillary strategy encouraging mass flight have been one of the most used policies of the state. Right peopling has also meant policies on minorities, immigration policy, personal laws, population policy, and here again a reordering of internal boundaries to accommodate right people or achieve a right-peopled arrangement of the national space. Right sizing often connects to right shaping in such context. A production of ‘ethnic’ majority needs movement of boundaries within the state; such a movement can cause instability to the external borders also. Ethnic boundaries may mean redrawing of linguistic, regional, and religious borders within the country — and all these have to result in redrawing of territorial boundaries of different types. In short, from the angle of the state, there is always a ‘right’ size. There can be nothing more material in politics than achieving this right size. And, at times, this process can be violent. Territory in this way appears as the kernel of the nation, because territory is the congealed form of the relations existing between

expanded

Rule, Governmental Rationality and Reorganisation of States

resources, available labour mass, borders, the numerical strength of the population and its composition. If the desire to achieve fit people and territory produces nation, making the size right becomes a matter of government. All nations slide into governmental rationalities, and territory is the clue to governmental imperative of right sizing, right peopling, and right shaping. It is only when we understand this process that we shall be able to understand why so much violence is associated with state formation, which always includes state reorganisation (of the internal space) and why partition (in various forms) and the reproduction of partition as a method (of reorganisation) appears as the mark of a nation coming into age.

between

In order to understand why partition as a method reproduced

itself, we have to realise that achieving ‘right size’, ‘right people’ and ‘right shape’ of the state are permanent governmental obligations to find out and achieve. These compulsions form the kernel of rationalities.1 The obligation of a national administration is to govern rationally — meaning achieving right-sized and rightpeopled territory — which makes possible for the government to devise various ways of division and union, violent and less violent, and continuously pursue the ideal of ‘right shape’. Built on the mechanism of finding appropriate solutions to the of difference, the state divests itself, not always dramatically, indeed many a time gradually, of objects, beings and spaces identified with federality, dialogue and democracy. The function of finding the right size, right people and right shape becomes a form of transgression of the space that the idea of the nation had created in the first place. The idea of right size, right people and right shape therefore performs two simultaneous functions — (a) it prescribes the sole manner, the governmental manner, of discovering the political sacred (the elect idea of a fit between territory and the people), the particular form of politics, which will henceforth rule and be worshipped; (b) it removes at the same time all objects and spaces that do not belong to that sacred sphere, or at least drives them underground. In such a milieu of governmental rationality, as I argue elsewhere,2 divisions of space mark politics with territorialities of various kinds and produce as the other of the national spaces the hated figure of the migrant. If we are interested in the materiality of politics, indeed its brutal physical content, then we must then study events of divisions of space and creation of new territories from all permissible angles. Thus for instance, decolonisation was not only the end of old colonialism and

governmental

governmental problem

Ranabir Samaddar

emergence of independent states with given territories and given populations over which battles had to be fought, but a meeting of several dimensions and several phenomena, and relational games resulting from that. It should be clear by now that I am pushing for a thoroughly relational understanding of the phenomenon of territoriality. To chronicle how governmental rationality obliges an to repeatedly re-shape the territory it administers in search of the ‘fit’, probably the best point would be to begin with the career of the Bengal Presidency. The establishment of the Presidency was a matter of an aftermath of conquest. But the moment the imperatives of rule appeared, the fortunes of Presidency, an administrative unit, started taking unpredictable turns — a history at the heart of which lies the event of the first Bengal Partition of 1905 that lasted till 1911. The Presidency of Fort William through which British colonial rule had established itself primarily had quickly become in no time a huge single administrative unit — from river Sutlej in the north-west to Assam in the north-east and the Arakan Hills in the south-east. With an enormous mass of population inhabiting this area, without any effective central administration, local insurgencies and other disturbances often rearing their heads, and local cultural-political identities clamouring for recognition, the Charter Act of 1833 created a separate Presidency, the Agra Presidency, later renamed as the Northwestern Provinces. Yet the Bengal Presidency remained huge and ungovernable. A separate secretariat was created for Bengal in 1843. In 1853, local government was taken away from the office of the Governor General and a Lieutenant Governor was appointed for Bengal. Yet, calamities like the Famine of 1866, and the peasant mutinies between 1845 and 1875 proved the inadequacy of the remedy of 1853 for toning up the administration of Bengal. Arakan was separated from Bengal in 1862, again for better administration, and was included in the newly created Chief Commissionership of Burma. And then in 1874 the districts of Cachar, Sylhet, Goalpara and the Garo Hills were separated from Bengal and put in Assam that became a Chief Commissioner’s province. A fixed frontier policy in respect of Arakan, Chittagong, Cachar and Lushai Hills was formulated. But Assam remained inconvenienced by the lack of trained administrative personnel, and the Chin-Lushai Conference of 1892 in the background of annexation of the Lushai Hills decided to lessen further the existing administrative burden on Bengal by the

administration

transfer of Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts from Bengal to Assam. The construction of the Assam–Bengal Railway was complete. It was suggested that even Dhaka and Mymensing divisions be also transferred. All these provided the backdrop of Lord Curzon’s decision for sweeping readjustment of territorial boundaries in eastern and the north-eastern parts of British India. His original scheme proposed inclusion of Chittagong Division, Dhaka, Mymensing, Faridpur, Bakargunj, Pabna, Bogra, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Jalpaiguri and Malda in Assam, which was to be now a new province. Subsequently amended, Curzon’s final proposal of partition of Bengal in 1905 was an amalgam of reasons of administrative expediency, communal considerations, of political control over the rising nationalist sentiments in Bengal, recognition of linguistic communities and a new frontier policy to the north-east. Initially both Hindus and Muslims opposed partition of Bengal, but later, organised Muslim opinion changed its mind. Meanwhile, Assam acquired its distinct political identity within British set-up, and Bihar and Orissa became separate units. By the time when partition was revoked, it was found by the Bengal nationalists that the most important political-administrative arrangement in British Empire in India had been substantially restructured. The capital had been transferred from Calcutta to Delhi, and one could see the first hints of a subsequent state reorganisation of independent India. The first partition had laid the blueprint for the second one — at least in the East. In this context, we can recall the instance of Hyderabad. We can

recall how the state of Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1956 after the integration of the former ‘princely state of Hyderabad’ into the Indian Union (1948), and its subsequent merger with the Andhra region. The story goes that on the basis of agrarian radicalism and the establishment of the nationality principle (Telugu language), the state was established. Yet today the modalities of the integration of the sub-regions (Andhra and Telengana) into a region and the region’s integration with the Indian Union, which were marked by specific historical circumstances since the time of the colonial rule till date, have now suddenly become a matter of controversy. As we know, the regime of the Nizam had prevented the emergence of distinct political subjects and the political articulation of cultural and other differences in the state of Hyderabad, while in the Andhra region British rule occasioned the development of national political parties based on the criteria of social, linguistic or religious representation.

In 1948, the integration of the ‘princely state’ into the Indian Union enjoyed considerable popular support; but this was not the only mark of the time. A very strong peasant movement led by the Communists against the feudal system also marked the time of de-colonisation — a struggle that was called off only in 1951. The central government chose to implement its integration policy by resorting to force. The two sub-regions were merged; yet the complexities did not vanish. On the other hand, they raised their heads in less than 40 years calling into question the distinct territorial solution achieved by the Indian government on the issue of right size and right people. This is the point where we should find more light to make sense of the process whereby constitutional rule, and not all-out wars of all against all or aggression from an outside invader would lead to cataclysmic changes in the internal territorial shape of the country. After all, the period of operation of the Montague-Chelmsford was also the period when political interests consolidated, and ideas of autonomy, democracy, self-rule and constitutionalism crystallised and came up against any idea of high nationalism. With a new system of rule through negotiation of deputations, petitions, protests, disobediences, limited franchise, provincial elections and limited representative institutions — please note, all governmental innovations — the country was to be governed by a set of new territorial-popular units. And though this system satisfied neither the constitutionalists, nor the nationalists, not to speak of the Left, yet the territorial frame of rule had been cast. We have to remember that this was the classic bind — the deadlock — in which the moment of partition was to appear. Meanwhile, internal boundary making continued as a process. Constitutionalists recognised social and cultural boundaries and attempted to negotiate them with constitutional modes, which included territorial rationalities; the republicans however disdained such attempts, because in their mind the nation as the elect-body with differentiating lines to it from others could not brook any other differentiating line within. Thus it was not surprisingly Jinnah who put the issue of the right size and right shaping squarely in the nationalist agenda, when he while invoking the right of the Muslims to self-determination, said in his presidential address in Lahore in 1940:

constitution

militant

distinguish Babu Rajendra Prasad ... only a few days ago said, ‘Oh, what more do the Musalmans want?’ I will read you his words. Referring to the

minority question, he says: ‘If British would concede our right of selfdetermination surely all these differences should disappear.’ How will our differences disappear? The word ‘nationalist’ has now become the play of conjurers in politics. The problem of India is not of an inter-communal but manifestly of an international character, and must be treated as such. So long as this basic and fundamental truth is not realised, any constitution that may be built will result in disaster and will prove harmful not only to the Musalmans, but also to the British and Hindus. Musalmans are not a minority ... Musalmans are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State (Hassan 1993: 44–58).

That is the point. ‘They must have their homelands, own territory, and their own State’. Have we enough understood the significance of the word ‘homeland’ when discussing states reorganisation? The imperative to achieve the fit that I am speaking of here, and to govern various differences on the basis of this fit makes territoriality absolute. As recent Indian political history shows, conditions of representative institutions and system reinforce the trend of right sizing and right peopling. Or, to put the question from another angle, till state is the locus of self-determination, can the ‘territory people’ combine be the site on which complex issues of autonomy, right of nationalities, the global norms of self-determination and political respect of differences be judged? Or, to put it in even another way, till rationality determines the ‘size’, and law is the only way to achieve that, can we speak of a dialogic polity capable of addressing differences and injustice? In brief, this is the sort of bind, a situation of closure, in which continuous reorganisation on the basis of partition appears as the act of destiny.

governmental

Right peopling of course did not end with the Great Partition, and

as I have indicated was not the beginning also. Other identities with their ‘homelands’ and ‘claims’ to homelands emerged soon. The States Reorganisation Act was the vindication of the linguistic principle of nationality on the one hand, and an admission that the governmental problem of right shaping the territory was perennial on the other. It is interesting to note how this has been best admitted by the state

itself. The Union Home Ministry’s own chronicle puts the matter of resizing, right peopling and the right shaping in the light of the perennial concern for governmental rationality. According to this,

the revolt of the soldiers in 1857–1858 had far reaching result in the sense that administration had to be now direct, and therefore had to pass from the East India Company to the Crown. This was the precursor of the reorganisation of the British Indian Army, and the British claim of the Doctrine of Paramountcyfor the Princely States. In 1861 came the Indian Councils Act, the Indian High Courts Act and the first emergence of the Indian Penal Code soon to be formalised. The Delhi Durbar was held in 1877. By the second decade of the next century, provincial autonomy had become a real issue as borne out by the Montague-Chelmsford Report. In 1921, the Moplah revolt marked the Malabar region with distinctiveness that of course took several more decades to achieve formal recognition in forms of separate districts. And even though the Second Non-Cooperation Movement was launched, the model of rule had been surely put in place by the colonial government for independent India to follow. By 1935, the final seal of a territorial design that would combine right size and the right people was ready. This was the Government of India Act — Provincial Autonomy. Whatever protests were later organised and whatever Missions came later to pacify the nationalist the consensus had been firmly laid, a nationally ruled country on the basis of states that would by the words of the Constitution would form the Union, that is India (Article 1). It was this vision that blocked any other alternative vision at that time, be it Rehmat Ali’s vision of Pakistan and other lands, or Gorkhastan, or any other land in any other form.3 By 1956, there was another turn to the story of finding the ‘fit’ and ensuring the governmental legitimacy of this fit. Article 1 (1) of the Indian constitution says, ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of States’. On 26 January 1950, India was proclaimed to be a republic, not by the President of free sovereign India, but by the last British Governor General C. Rajagopalachari. In 1956 many states became union territories, and lost the right of representation in the presidential elections, and to that extent, in the Parliament of the Republic. When the Republic was born, it consisted of 27 states as specified in Parts A, B and C of the First Schedule and the Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands specified in Part D of the same Schedule. In general, the 9 states of Part A comprised former British provinces, the 8 states of Part B comprised the former Indian states (516 out of 522), which had acceded to the Indian Union, and the 10 states of Part C category were the former Chief Commissioner’s

leadership,

provinces like Delhi and some small Indian states. Yet, only the state of Jammu and Kashmir (Part B), by virtue of Article 370 could claim a federal relation with the Union, which otherwise became fully empowered to give birth to or abolish any state in the union. Cutting and chopping had immediately begun after 1950 that would end only in 1956. The First Schedule was amended and Coochbehar State was abolished and merged in the state of West Bengal. The death of Potti Shri Ramulu, on fast to secure the state of Andhra Pradesh, hastened the establishment of the States Reorganisation Commission. The states were reorganised under the states Reorganisation Act, 1956, whereby Part B states, except Jammu and Kashmir, and 6 of the Part C states were merged into other nearby states or reconstituted and 1 new state, Kerala was formed. Three states were formed in the Hindispeaking area — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and the Madhya Pradesh to subsequently multiply into 3 states more — Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The Bombay state so brought about was bilingual composed of Marathi-and Gujarati-speaking people. The state was split in 1960 to form the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. In 1966, the first expression of the limits to the governmental exercise of 1956 was experienced while reorganising Punjab, because Chandigarh was to go neither to Punjab nor to Haryana and was therefore made a Union Territory. In 1971 came the reorganisation of the north-east. In 1975, Sikkim was merged in the Union. Yet, can we say that the story of reorganising and thereby giving the right shaping the Union has concluded by and large? The trouble with this line of thinking, which is dominant, is because according to this line of argument states reorganisation in India mainly proceeded on the basis of language. Yet if we examine closely, this too was a case of governmentality whereby language becoming a tool of administration, negotiation and governing, rather than wider communications and inter-cultural translation including governmental needs. Thus language per se was only half the criterion; mostly where mass movements were strong in favour of linguistic state and had a long past going back to the colonial period, linguistic statehood was granted. Rest were of rationalising the rule. The constitution as we know is vague in defining the criterion of statehood, does not say what qualifies a language to be a ‘national language’, ‘official language’ and in either one from officially adopted regional languages. The states can adopt their own language of administration and educational instruction from among the officially recognised languages, that is

matters distinguishing

the Scheduled Languages. Now of course with reinforcement of the Official Languages Act of 1963, Hindi can be imposed on unwilling states by various means, and the rationale for changing and chopping slices of territories is over in some respects. Before independence in 1947, the Congress was committed to redrawing state boundaries to correspond with linguistics. But then when the States Reorganisation Commission issued its report in 1955, and the government requested the public to offer comments, it produced a flood of petitions. The violence that broke out in the state of Assam in the early 1980s reflected the continuing complexities of linguistic and territorial politics in the country. As I describe in an essay on migration, nationhood and the problems of rule, Assam claimed that by the 1931 census not only she had lost a hefty portion of her land to outsiders, but the Assamese had become a disadvantaged minority in their traditional homeland. They represented less than 33 per cent of the total population of Assam, and the Muslim immigrants accounted for roughly 25 per cent of the population. Assamese–Bengal riots started in 1950, and it is claimed that in the 1951 census many Bengalis listed Assamese as their mother tongue in an effort to placate the Assamese. Today a hundred voices are up for reshaping Assam — of Assamese Muslims, Bengali Muslims, Assamese Hindus, Bengali Hindus, Plain Tribes, Hill Tribes and the Nagas. The search goes on for right shape, right population and the right size. Meanwhile regional languages have grown strong, and are now

used throughout their respective states for most levels of business and social intercourse. Each is associated with a body of literature, more important with power. In each state, the minority languages are at a disadvantage. Governments now commission teaching material, prose compositions, grammars and textbooks, and ensure wide dissemination of dictionaries to ensure that rule becomes effective in conditions of everyday speech. Democratisation of rule has meant a relative end to bilinguality and diglossia, though the governmental form of linguistic democracy must not make us forget that the standard regional language may be the household tongue of only a small group of educated inhabitants of the region’s major urban centres, which exercise politico-economic hegemony in a region, and not by village women, dalits, or other low caste people. The new hegemonies cannot suppress the fact also that only around 4 per cent of the population can speak in both English and an Indian language, that there are linguistic minorities who do not speak the state official

administration,

language as their mother tongue, and that many people belonging to the indigenous communities have to be bilingual to survive. Rural–urban migrants are frequently bilingual. Yet, it is not this linguistic plurality that has become the mark of democracy, but the new hegemonies of few languages with access to power and producing power from their own social configuration through radio, television and the print media. The more the standardisation now, for all these reasons, the more are the differences. Initially, the rulers had thought that reorganisation was a matter of

first, the southern part, then the western and the northwestern parts, and finally the frontier region in the north-east. Either management of a macro-capital centre like Mumbai, or curbing insurgency as in the north-east, provided the immediate occasion. While in all these the governmental tactic of reshaping the territory on the whole was successful, it faced three problems — first, linguistic division at times became close to religious divisions (Punjab–Haryana); second, the Hindi heartland in the north had remained relatively immune from any reshaping; and third, the North-Eastern Areas Reorganisation Act, 1971, which reconstituted the north-east into a number of states, but could not reorganise the area satisfactorily, as the Act became the precursor to several demands for distinct tribal ‘homelands’. By 1986, the conferment of statehood on some of these homelands had been completed. Of all these, reorganisation of the Hindi–Hindu heartland proved most difficult, because nationalist strategies of rule were partly founded on the idea that the stability of geopolitical formations in the heartland would be essential to preserve the unity of the Indian ‘Union’. Almost four decades into the prosperity of the Green Revolution and the growth of the macro-capital regions such as Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, the reorganisation has taken a different route. Right size, right people and right shape do not only depend on religion, language, security, nature of borders and boundaries, and history, but very directly on growth of capital. Capital cities demand their own regions, prosperous agricultural regions like the western districts of Uttar Pradesh demand separate state, a Harit Pradesh; similarly other regions have begun dusting up the historic clothing; and growth of capital regions and cities and increase in disparities can now spark demands for Vindhyachal in Madhya Pradesh, Telangana in Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Gorkhaland in West Bengal, and why not once again in Assam — this time Bodoland. To take the case

of Vidarbha, the origin of the movement for Maha Vidarbha goes as far back as 1905. At that time, the demand was for the separation of Marathi population from the Hindi-speaking areas. Later the area was merged into Maharashtra. But the growth of Mumbai as a capital region soon instilled the fear that Nagpur and with it the entire Vidarbha region would be overwhelmed by the Mumbai city — a fear that came true. Now communalism has complicated the picture. Vidarbha requires its own land and tenancy laws, currently modelled on the lines of Maharashtra, and a unification of the Marathi-speaking districts of Madhya Pradesh. If and when Vidarbha is constituted as a separate state, it will be the biggest cotton growing area in the country, making it agriculturally prosperous and viable as an investment site. Thus we can see that the formation of linguistic states can only be a limited solution to the necessity of fitting size with people. The problem is not even whether small or large states are good. Apart from linguistic minorities languishing everywhere, access to resources makes the shape and size question politically significant. In view of the common water disputes, say between Karnataka and arid Tamil Nadu over the share of Cauvery water, or sharing of waters by Punjab with Haryana and Rajasthan, or between UP and Delhi, or other resource wars as in the north-east, the triad of capital, resource, and democracy makes governmentality in matters of size and shape a distinct feature of political materiality. Probably the interaction of capital and the extra-capital spaces had always been the main factor in the colonial time in the search for the right size and shape of units. But if this were so, this is now most with growth of capital once again provoking the reorganisation of space. Political actors and the political class in general are at a loss as to how to approach the governmental imperatives of reorganising space at regular intervals, which at times cause loss of legitimacy, at times public anger or euphoria, but always create a sense of uncertainty and the disturbing sense of a task not finally concluded. Why should the political class accept the governmental rationality — on grounds of administrative efficiency and democratisation, or on grounds of linguistic and cultural democracy, or devolution of powers, or the need to satisfy ethnic particularities? There is no definite answer. But one thing is certain — whatever may be the requirements of democracy, the current phase of reshaping and resizing seem to respond to the demands of capital as well, and capital and democracy seem to be well. That capital is now the critical factor in the drive for

postcolonial

evident

coexisting

reorganisation is borne out by the significance of resource in the scramble for territory and the territorial conflicts. Let us take the case of water sharing. The instance of resource

sharing shows why governmental rationality can never offer a solution. In the north and the east, the Indus, Ganga and the Brahmaputra basins have their sources in the glaciers of the Himalayas. In the central part, the Narmada basin is drained from the Vindhyas and the basins of the south, the Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery originate on the eastern slopes of the Western Ghat ranges. The growth of engineering and agricultural technology in the colonial period led to construction of dams in India mainly to irrigate drought-affected areas, situated in the upland areas of the basin. But gradually this meant that the upper riparian areas became intolerant of water demands of the lower riparian areas. The British colonial period had witnessed serious trans-boundary conflicts on the issue of water amongst provinces in British India on the one hand and between British Indian provinces and Indian states on the other. Important among these conflicts related to the basins of the rivers Indus, Cauvery and Periyar.

sustainable

Even though the Republic of India was to be a federation, the

constitution devised two different regimes to control water disputes. The

first one enables the centre to regulate or develop the trans-boundary waters under Entry 56 of the Union List. The second regime allocations of trans-boundary waters amongst the riparian states by permitting each riparian state, by reference to Entry 17 of the State List, to develop trans-boundary waters within its territory, subject to a decision of the high-level constitutional tribunal (Katarki 2003). The Parliament, in 1956, passed the River Boards Act, under Entry 56 of the Union List, to regulate or develop the trans-boundary waters by adopting an approach of integrated management. The Act provided for an establishment of a river board consisting of representatives of all riparian states to advise the ‘regulation or development’ of transboundary waters. Whenever dispute or differences would arise between the riparian states, Section 22 of the Act envisaged settlement of the same by an arbitrator appointed by the Chief Justice of India. However, the provision remained dead, as the Union Government never pressed it into service. ‘Thus, equitable utilisation of trans-boundary waters by an approach of integrated management is a failed initiative in India’ (ibid.). Now, due to the failed initiative of the central government, each riparian state has been left free to use the trans-boundary waters passing through its territory. Reorganisation of States has given rise

contemplates

to trans-boundary water conflicts. The Union Government, in of its powers under the Inter-State Water Disputes Act, 1956, constituted tribunals for adjudication of disputes in the sharing of trans-boundary waters of the Krishna, Narmada, Godavari, Ravi and Beas and Cauvery. On the other hand, the emergence of consciousness in the last two decades has ruled out any easy governmental solution on the issue of water, and has brought to the fore the principle of sustainable development as part of the rule of equitable apportionment in the allocation of allocating trans-boundary waters in the country. Today if one were to read the Constitutional Amendment Bill for the reorganisation of states, one would see three anxieties dominating the governmental rationality. First were questions of size and the readjustment of boundaries and exchange of territorial enclaves; second, the territorial jurisdiction of the High Courts, and the drawing of electoral constituencies. Resource was not an issue that vexed the Reorganisation Commission’s mind. Yet as we know today, these territorial units known as the states with the rich sections of population in command are pulling their strength together for the coming resource war in the context of a globalisation-induced capitalist development. Territory has become a key factor in the coming war of capital. The question is, if capital produces its specific rationale for governance, can we imagine an alternative rationality that is dialogic, therefore less hierarchical and more cooperative, and allows innovation in the organising principles and structure of organising the territory — in short a rationale for a dialogic structure which is at the same time federal and direct? Can we have mechanisms that reflect the popular urge for immediate democracy, improved levels of civic competence, and democratic legitimacy of administrative decisions often passed on to the citizenry as political decision? In other words, how can we rescue federalism and other dialogic processes from the politics of integration? I think that is where we have to examine deeply the limits and imperatives of a national framework of territorial organisation (one of whose variant is federalisation), find out its limits, and appreciate the potentialities of federalism to grow once it is ridden of its national framework, at least in an absolute sense. In short, any dialogic structure of federalising the ‘national’ space must admit the possibility of trans-border federalisation of relations (called in vulgar language ‘sub-regional cooperation’), which indicates trans-national and inter-cultural connectivity. It is time to tell that the American (USA) model of federalism was based on exclusions; a post-colonial

exercise environmental

minute

design of federalism cannot follow that model owing to hundred and one reasons and instances, which I have alluded to in the preceding pages. We must tell that the plain reason for the rejection of either North American or the Swiss model is that post-colonial federalism requires a fluid notion of space, time and community instead of requiring ethically homogenous or cleaned territories. It is important to explain this point to at least some extent. Indian federalism was never a settled principle of organisation of the national territory. In the colonial time whereas the colonial administration was unabashedly centralist, both Congress and the Muslim League had ambivalent and fluctuating attitude towards federalism; the praja (tenant) movements in native princedoms had strong elements of autonomy, democracy and republicanism, which were initially reflected, albeit in a perverted way, in the grouping of states; and leaders were candid enough to admit that the Indian system the Constituent Assembly had given birth to was flexible enough to serve both centralist and federal needs. The history of organisation of territory in the last 60 years that I have briefly recounted earlier speaks of the way the governmental logic has developed in these years. We have to add to this the developments in the form of the Panchayati Raj (Local or village self-government) and the provisions of the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, and Article 371 in particular, and we shall arrive at a more contentious scenario. States reorganisation has been only a part of this broader scenario of territorial reorganisation for rule and governance. Its implications can be grasped only when put along with other techniques of reorganisation. Yet one has to understand that these techniques and the broad technology of reorganisation of territory in a system of hierarchy and differential inclusion in order to achieve a rational and satisfactory state of rule are not pure expressions of govern-mentality, as if ‘an unfolding of governmental rationality’, but are by themselves signals of contested sites, expressions of popular demands for immediate democracy, participation in political decisionmaking, autonomy in public political–social life and flexible ways of making and unmaking boundaries. Thus the affinity between Tamil Nadu and sections of population in Sri Lanka, or the peoples on both sides of the erstwhile Punjab, or Bengal, or Jammu and Kashmir, or among the population groups living on the borders between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, or Coochbehar and southern Bhutan is the same expression of federal instinct as the one which we officially take to be

Historically,

the principle of states organisation of the country. India’s north-east shows the need for creative and dialogic federalism in order to enhance democracy’s capacity to accept claim making as its own inherent part. It seems clear by now that by the notion of innovative federalism, we shall have to look for plural ways and structures of federalising. Thus if in sports or even organisation of border security we can have alter-native arrangements of units, why can we not have plurality in other areas of our social and political life? It seems to me in this context that the debate on legal pluralism has to be deepened. A paradoxical process, known as hyper-governance,4 marks the

management of the process of organisation of territory in India today, and offsets to a significant extent the benefits that a rule can draw from the function of rationally organising the territory. Deployment of paramilitary and military forces and a ‘securitised’ style of governance mark the administration of territory. This situation carries the signs of both colonial model of sovereignty and the post-colonial style of governance. The combination of these two makes even purely ‘social’ things such as rural health, education, or controlling HIV diseases a matter of centralised and monitored governance. The national is thus becoming hyper-governance, and is thus slipping fast into the model of transnational governance, which follows the logic of the differentially inclusive and thus of a graded universe of the empire, eternally requiring exceptional methods of intervention, the essence of hyper-governance. Thus social governance too has to fit the ways of hierarchy and a differentially ordered attention of the ruler to the issues of societies on the margin. In other words, each issue seems to signal a situation where it appears that the ‘normal’ form of administration will be unworkable, and we shall need hyperactive and hyper-attentive forms of supervision, monitoring, management and control. Indeed, control will come from the techniques of hyper-governance.

governance

Let me now reorganise my argument in this essay as I conclude. I

have tried to argue that states reorganisation in India, which we have as a story of rational governance, is also a story of conflict-ridden process of territorial reorganisation of rule. The conflict that marks the reorganisation of territory as a rational way of rule is but another name of the continuing war over resources, territory and population. Therefore we have here the political situation of peace, but one that hides the social war over territory. Facing death, Foucault declared that ‘if God grants me life, after madness, illness, crime, sexuality, the

received

last thing that I would like to study would be the problem of war and the institution of war in what one could call the military dimension of society’ (Focault 1996). It is this military dimension of society that leaves its mark on the process of what apparently is non-military, that is to say the civilian dimension of society — administration, bureaucracy, decentral-isation of powers, organisation of territory, etc. We shall have to undertake further research to find out how this task of organising the territory has carried the mark of a military organisation of territory and soldiers. Already for counter-insurgency operations we have one grouping of states, for anti-terrorist operations we have on the horizon another sort of groupings; in this way we have several groupings — almost like organising an army — for control of travelling diseases, illegal immigration, etc. These groupings of states are done no longer on any cultural basis, such as linguistic, but on the basis of security and business considerations. Exactly like then having disciplinary policies for delinquents, rogues, criminals and outcasts, we have in modern post-colonial India policies for backward, un-civil, wayward and turbulent states (Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand as opposed to enlightened and investment-friendly states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, or Tamil Nadu). States are being grouped on considerations such as this. This strategy of grouping, clearly a military strategy, has the power to effect technical mutations. We can thus witness the appearance of a certain kind of illegal or wild zone (once again, the political class speaks of Bihar as being a state of illegalities) to be disciplined by a federal system that is at the same time a system of incarceration (Lenin spoke of ‘prison-house of nationalities’). The dark zones are now increasingly overlapping (almost a unity of illegalities) — zones of diseases, Muslim-infested, terrorist-stricken, underdeveloped, uneducated, and populated by vagabonds, also zones marked by thousand and one kinds of deaths. Reorganisation of territory remains therefore a permanent agenda of rule, a matter of rational governance. But since territory appears as the social body of the nation, the

process of cutting the body, piecing it together back, in other words the reorganisation of the body, rarely becomes entirely peaceful. We have therefore two ethics opposed to each other marking the process — the warlike metaphors and the dialogic marks. I have recounted the warlike metaphors in this way of governing, expressed through disciplinary techniques of enclosure, partitioning, ranking, serialisation, spatial control of troops and finally regimentation. It is as if the

government is suggesting through the reorganisation that this is the correct use of the body; to refer to Michel Foucault once more, this social body like the individual body has to be ‘docile body’ in order to be disciplined (Focault 1991). Can we doubt then that through the continuing process of states

reorganisation in the last 60 years we have witnessed a new process of organising power relations, whose object is to find the ‘final’, ‘the most appropriate’ natural body of the society, which will be the bearer of all specific operations related to territory and population? Can we not pose the question: Is this natural body of the nation ‘natural’ because it will meet specific requirements, needs and demands, which, in turn, will suggest a set of parameters of disciplinary power? It is in this perspective that I endorse the idea of a dialogic federalism that permits plural ways of organising the space of a political society; it contrasts with the disciplinary way in which territorial reorganisation of India has worked till date.

Notes 1. On the relation of partition as a method induced by governmental rationality, see Samaddar (2007a). 2. I have discussed this theme in greater details in Samaddar (2007b). 3. For the straight governmental narrative of the historic background of the formation of states, see http://mha.nic.in/his3.htm (accessed 26 June 2007). 4. On the idea of hyper-governance, see Bhatt (2007: 1073–93).

References Bhatt, Chetan. 2007. ‘Frontlines and Interstices in the Global War on Terror’, Development and Change, 38 (6): 1073–93. Foucault, Michel. 1991. Discipline and Punish — The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, pp. 135–69. London: Penguin Books. ———. 1996. ‘ What Our Present Is’, in Michel Foucault and Sylvère Lotringer (eds), Foucault Live: Interviews 1961–1984 (Interview by André Berton), trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston, pp. 415. New York: Semiotext(e). Hasan, Mushirul. ed. 1993. India’s Partition — Process, Strategy and Mobilisation. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Katarki, Mohan V. 2003. ‘Equitable Management and Allocation of Transboundary Waters in India’, SCC (Jour) 29 (2). Samaddar, Ranabir. 2007a (2005). ‘The Undefined Acts of Partition and Dialogue’, in Stefano Bianchini, Sanjay Chaturvedi, Rada Ivekovic and Ranabir Samaddar (eds), Partitions Compared – Reshaping States, Reshaping Minds, pp. 92–124. Delhi: Foundation Books. ———. 2007b. The Materiality of Politics, vol. 1. Delhi: Anthem Press.

Part II Reorganising the Hindi Heartland

3 ‘Making of a Political Community’: MaThe Pof 1 radheysah Congress Party and the Integration Sudha Pai The States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in 1956 created four large Hindi-speaking states based on the linguistic principle in the northern plains namely, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar. Standing in the Gangetic plains none of them had a distinct regional identity unlike states in the south such as Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh based on a common history, language and culture. The latter states constitute some of the ‘perennial nuclear regions’ of India that have remained through history giving them a distinct identity (see Spate and Learmouth 1967). They had also experienced strong language movements, a cultural renaissance and non-Brahmin movements during the colonial period giving them a distinct Dravidian identity as well. In contrast, the four Hindi speaking states in north India, although created on the basis of language, were administrative artifacts created by the British when they conquered these areas for purposes of governance. Smaller ‘janapadas’ or cultural sub-regions remained beneath the overarching administrative and political structures created by colonial rule. A number of studies have pointed out that despite a long period of rule by the British and establishment of rules and institutions of governance, they had not acquired a common identity by independence.2 Among them MP, a large state standing in the middle of the

subcontinent, provides perhaps the best example of a state in the Hindi

heartland without a distinct regional identity of its own. Carved out of the erstwhile Central Provinces (CPs) — an administrative artifact put together by the British colonial authorities out of a conglomerate of disparate regions with little in common. It also had a high percentage of immigrants from neighbouring states who spoke distinct dialects,

Sudha Pai

a large tribal population and a number of important princely states such as Gwalior and Bhopal standing outside the colonial structure. During the 1950s, many apprehensions were voiced about the in which divergent regions were strung together to create the new state of MP in 1956. In fact, the task of the SRC in the case of MP was of ‘reconciling the irreconcilables’. Various claims and and representations were made before the SRC in 1953–1954: for the separation of the eight Marathi speaking southern districts and creation of separate states of Bundelkhand, Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh out of the remaining districts and princely states. Thus, a major problem faced by states such as MP, created out of disparate regions lacking a common identity that could hold them together, was that of ‘political integration’.

manner counterclaims

The late 1950s, when India was attempting reorganisation of its

constituent units, witnessed the formation of a large number of new states emerging from colonialism that also experienced the problem of political integration though the context was different. Although initially scholars stressed upon the social determinants of the process such as cultural orientations, interest-group pressures and levels of economic development (Apter 1965; Almond and Verba 1963; Geertz 1963; Finkle and Gable 1971; Bendix 1977). Realisation that ‘dislocations’ arise in the process of nation building led to emphasis upon the need for ‘political stability, integration and order’ (Huntington 1968). Integration was defined as ‘the amalgamation of disparate social, economic, religious, ethnic and geographical elements into a single nation-state’ (Laplombara and Weiner 1966: 413). Many models of integration that would hold the new states together were proposed and discussed in the academic literature such as ‘Guided Democracy’ in Indonesia, ‘Presidentialism’ in Africa and various forms of ‘Authoritarianism’ in Latin America (Pye 1958; Wallerstein 1961; O’Donnell 1973). More pertinent to our purpose, the single party system within a democratic structure in Africa and Asia was identified as the ‘party of integration’ which was expected to manage conflict, provide legitimacy, generate consensus and encourage national integration during a crucial period of nation-building (see LaPalombara and Weiner 1966).

political

At independence, India did not fit ‘neatly’ into either the

modernisation or Neo-Marxist frameworks employed to understand the

working of social and political processes in the developing world (see discussion in Kohli 1987). Here, in contrast, the presence of a third variable — democracy, gave India the advantage of a democratic

'Making of a Political Community"

state structure and political processes arising out of a long national movement and the new constitution that provided stability, democracy and introduced economic development. The single dominant Congress system, working within this larger democratic framework, was the vehicle expected to intervene and penetrate into society and created political integration at the central level and within the states created at independence. Thus in India political integration, which was viewed as establishing unity in diversity among different regions and cultures in a polity of continental size, was to be achieved through an ‘accommodative model’ of democratic politics. Based on this framework, this study proposes that in states such as MP formed by the unification of disparate cultural and historical regions lacking a common regional identity such as Andhra, Bengal or Madras, it was ‘democratic political forces’ — particularly the Congress party which had a dominant presence — that was expected to create an overarching ‘common political community’ that while not erasing the smaller cultural identities, would hold the state together imparting it a composite character and identity. Such a model is of relevance for the other states of the Hindi heartland, particularly UP, which has experienced the separation of Uttarakhand and is facing demands for trifurcation of the remaining state.

sub-regional

Academic writings in the immediate post-independence period

were divided over whether this was possible in the case of MP. Mayne Wilcox writing in the 1960s held: MP was formed because there seemed to be nothing else to do with its constituent parts …. the state was not created on the basis of an indigenous demand and its constituent units in fact possessed almost no political affinity …. the parts of the state are greater than the sum (1968: 128, 132).

Each of these organised subordinate entities were ‘semi-independent’; substantive interests and strongly embedded regional identities formed an important part of the historical legacies of each region. Therefore, Wilcox argued, the dominant characteristic of local politics was such that ‘no coherent political community with well-worn practices and an intrinsic “spirit of the house”’ had yet emerged. Yet he agreed that each constituent part had branches of the Congress party that became the building blocks of statewide party organisation, which being in character offered little resistance to penetration by exogenous political trends (ibid.). Subrata Mitra writing much later held that despite being an artificial amalgam of hitherto separate territories, MP

composite

was also subject to two ‘powerful integrating influences arising out of the integrative role of competitive politics’: the organisation of the Congress party, which was the ‘most important common institution in the state’ and the increasing penetration of the local political arena by all-India forces binding it together (Mitra 1990: 174). On the other hand, Morris-Jones and Das Gupta in the mid-1960s

argued that while the distinct units out of which MP was formed give it a ‘heterogeneous character’, this should not be exaggerated (1968: 178). Most states in India after reorganisation consisted of sub-units (usually two or three) whose integration remained a major of the state political leadership. This they pointed out is true not only of states in which princely states were integrated as in MP, Orissa, Mysore, Gujarat, Andhra, but also others which have been units for a long period such as UP and Bihar. The problem of national faced by central leaders was matched by problems of ‘statewide integration’ in the states. Further they argued that the extent to which each of the three divisions of MP — Mahakoshal, Madhya Bharat (MB) and Vindhya Pradesh (VP) — is a politically uniform and coherent entity should not be exaggerated. The pattern of Congress support in Mahakoshal was certainly greater and the range much greater than in MB and VP. But if other parties’ share of votes were examined, the same picture of variation within these regions would emerge (ibid.).

preoccupation

integration

Based on this framework, against the backdrop of the lengthy and

difficult process of the formation of the state of MP by the SRC in 1955, an attempt is made to analyse the ‘integrative’ role played by the Congress party in MP in the post-independence period. It is argued that the Congress as a strong movement in the colonial period and a single-dominant party after independence with a presence in every region of the state had the ‘potential’ to integrate the sub-regions. In the immediate post-independence period, there were signs of the Congress emerging as an ‘integrative party’ that could hold the state together and bind all its sub-regions. However, this process of integration was ‘slow’ and remained at best ‘partial’ as evidenced from the creation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh in 2000. Regular demands for a separate state of Chhattisgarh began as early as 1978 by leaders from different parties including important Congressmen and were not accompanied by strong mass movements at the grass roots. Demands were also raised for a separate state consisting of the former Madhya Bharat region, for the formation of a Bundelkhand state by carving out some areas of UP and MP, etc. Such periodic

political

demands for the re-division of the state underlines how the artificial integration of Mahakoshal, MB, VP and Chhattisgarh has not led to real emotional unity among the political leaders of the three regions. In short, regionalism still determines the political culture of MP. The slower integration of the state is also an important reason for the slow economic growth of the state and the existence of backward regions within it.3 Two factors have been responsible for the slow and partial

integration of MP: endemic region-based factionalism and the very early

establishment of a two-party system. While factionalism is a feature of the Congress party in many states, in MP factions along regional lines since the colonial period give it a loose and decentralised character, which the state and central leadership — that constantly intervenes playing a disruptive role — could not control. There have been periods when various factional leaders have come together to meet the of the opposition within a two-party system — but these have been few. The lack of a strong challenge ‘from below’ as in UP and Bihar has allowed factionalism, essentially a struggle between the upper caste/class leaders of the party for power and patronage, to continue unabated. Second, the period of single party dominance in MP was brief and the early development of a two-party system further divided the sub-regions. While in the immediate post-independence period factionalism was contained, after the mid-1960s it helped the rise of the Jan Sangh and the Congress failed to spread from its well established strongholds. The carving out of distinct regional bases by both parties within a two-party system further acerbated the regional character of politics in the state.

challenge

Both factionalism and bipartisan politics in the state did not allow

full integration of all the regions and contributed to the formation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh in 2000. However, it was during the 1990s that the demand for a separate state assumed momentum. The collapse of the single party system and emergence of coalitional governments at the centre created tremendous competition between the two principal parties, both at the centre and in the states. In MP, where there are no third parties capable of capturing power, the Congress and the BJP became two strong contenders seen in the neat regional division of votes/seats in the 1990s. It was the compulsions of democratic electoral politics in the highly competitive system that emerged in the 1990s that was responsible for the formation of Chhattisgarh, rather than demands from the grass roots. Based on this

analysis, this chapter draws some lessons from the MP experience that are of relevance to the states in the Hindi heartland. Processes of State Formation: A Background The difficulties faced by the Congress party in the post-independence period in integrating the various regions of MP into a composite state can be understood if we examine the complex and protracted process of state formation in the 1950s. Established on 22 December 1953, the SRC was expected to make recommendations to the Government of India not later than June 1955, though this was later extended to September 1955. Its terms of reference were broadly stated: it was expected to examine ‘objectively and dispassionately’ the question of the reorganisation of the states of the Indian Union taking into consideration the historical background, the existing situation and other relevant factors ‘so that the welfare of the people of each constituent unit as well as the nation as a whole is promoted’ (SRC 1955: i). However, due to political demands, the Commission gave importance to two main factors, namely language and size together with efficiency. In MP, state formation was a two-stage process. The princely states in the former CPs had to be integrated into the Indian Union. This exercise was undertaken by the States Department set up in the central government between 1947 and 1951 under Sardar Patel.4 Following this, the SRC had the task of carving out the new state of MP out of the regions constituting the erstwhile CPs and the former princely states. Both these processes are dealt with in this chapter and provide a backdrop to the attempt by the Congress party to integrate the diverse parts of the newly formed state discussed in the next section. Integrating the Princely States

The States Department under Sardar Patel and V. P. Menon proceeded to form unions of the princely states prior to integrating them into the neighbouring states to form large viable states. The area that eventually came to constitute the new state of MP in 1956 consisted of four major regions, three of which were unions of princely states that were joined to the Hindi-speaking region of the erstwhile CPs.5 A White Paper on the measures taken to bring the 20 states in Central India, including the major states of Gwalior and Indore, points out that it was difficult as ‘the United States of Gwalior, Indore and Malwa constitute the largest of the Unions of States, so far formed’. It justified

this Union by arguing, that ‘linguistically, culturally and historically and economically they form a complete block’ (ibid.). Many former rulers resisted the formation of unions and wanted

to retain their sovereignty. The most difficult case was that of Bhopal where the Nawab demanding a ‘third’ India consisting of the Princely States, announced the formation of an interim government in April 1947 (Verma 1984: 109). However, once many of the princes decided to join the Constituent Assembly, he signed the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union. More important was the issue whether Bhopal should join the MB Union or MP or remain a separate state. It led to an agitation in Bhopal in which the Praja Mandal and the Congress that were almost identical bodies, split on the issue. However, the people of Bhopal in large numbers were keen to join either MB or MP, as it would mean removal of the feudal and autocratic system that had kept the state economically backward (ibid.: 131). In December 1948 at the Gwalior session of the MB Congress PCC, a resolution was adopted for the integration of the Bhopal state with MP. This led to many leaders of the Bhopal Congress present to pass a resolution against this stand and to question the right of the MB PCC to interfere in political matters, that it argued, rested with the central government. Finally the central government decided in January 1949 to make Bhopal a Chief Commissioner’s province and a Part ‘C’ state and consequent on the reorganisation of the states, it was merged with the MB Union and finally with the new state of MP (ibid.: 162). In contrast, forming the MB union of 25 states was comparatively

easier despite the traditional hostility between the two large states of Gwalior and Indore. Initially the idea of two unions — one around Gwalior and the other around Indore — was mooted, but finally after many rounds of negotiations it was possible to establish a single one. This was possible due to the cooperation by the ruler of Gwalior who in May 1947 was the first ruler of one of the major states in the country to agree to integration into a union. The Indore ruler on the other hand tried initially to join the ‘Third Force’ attempted by the Nizam of Hyderabad and Nawab of Bhopal but ultimately acceded and cooperated in all matters (Menon 1956: 223–25). Eventually the Union was inaugurated in Gwalior on 28 May 1948 and became full party to the constitution in January 1950. In the case of the 15 Chhattisgarh states there were conflicting claims. The princely rulers in Orissa and Chhattisgarh initially formed a union

in August 1947 that the central government refused to recognise, but Bastar, the largest state, had kept out of it. A suggestion considered was to dissolve the union and form two — of the Orissan states and the Chhattisgarhi states. But after much consideration it was felt that the latter was a Hindi speaking area and it was merged with the Central Provinces in December 1947 (ibid.: 158–59). The governance of the Chhattisgarhi states was delegated to the government of MP (ibid.: 172). VP was formed out of a union of princely states consisting of the

two major states of Baghelkhand and Bundelkhand and 33 smaller states. Various alternative demands were raised with regard to these states, the two most important being their merger with either the United Provinces or the CPs (ibid.: 212). The States Department argued that the United Provinces was already large and the districts of Bundelkhand with which they would be merged were themselves very backward and further additions would only cause poor Similarly the CPs had just become enlarged with the addition of the Chhattisgarh states. The creation of a separate union of states other than Rewa was also considered and rejected as such a union would not possess the requisite resources. Thus, the only feasible it was felt was to create a union of all the states as they were backward, had little leadership and politically unstable. The process of creating the Vindhya Union, which began in April 1948, was a tortuous one with the central government facing much opposition and hostility. Due to the two major states refusing to work together, in April 1949 it was made into a centrally administered area on 1 January 1950. For the interim period, VP was put under the Government of India, Part C States Act of 1951 (ibid.: 216–18).

administration.

proposition

The SRC: Reconciling Territorial Claims and Counter-claims

Once the process of integration of the Princely States was over, the SRC began its work of deciding on the scope and boundaries of the proposed state of MP. The Commission decided to invite members of the public and public associations to put their views before it in writing by 24 April 1954 (SRC 1955: ii). While MP did not experience strong movements for reorganisation of the state as in the case of states such as Andhra Pradesh, Madras or Maharashtra, a number of conflicting claims and representations were made before the Commission. Most of these proposals were presented by Congressmen, who were divided over how the state should be constituted.

The major demand faced by the Commission was for the separation of the eight Hindi-speaking districts in the northern part of the CPs from the southern Marathi-speaking districts to form a large Hindi speaking central Indian state. The demand had been raised during the colonial period by political leaders from the Congress party from both the southern and northern districts. The demand for a separate southern state of Maha Vidharbha, on the other hand, had been voiced as early as 1905 soon after the formation of the CPs and was based on language. The demand for a Hindi-speaking state by political leaders in the northern districts began in 1938 and was a product largely of political developments in the colonial period. The British colonial government decided to unite in 1861 the four disparate territories of Nagpur, Saugar and Nerbudda in central India and Berar in 1903 to form the CPs with little regard for their social and economic affinities (Baker 1979: 8). Prior to its unification, the region had been governed by many powers including the Moghuls and Marathas and its different parts had fallen into colonial hands at different points of time. The Saugar and Nerbudda territories were administered by different authorities at different times: in 1834 they were merged with the newly formed Agra province; in 1852 they were restored to the North-Western Provinces but after the revolt of 1857 they were separated and put under a Lieutenant– Governor as the Central Provinces. The Nagpur area was annexed in 1854 when the ruler died without an heir and after the revolt of 1857, it was added to the Central Provinces. Administrative and political necessity led to the unification of these regions into one compact province. However, many British officers believed that the merger of the territories was beneficial and in time, feelings of unity would develop. Colonel Elliot argued in 1861: ‘It is the very heart of India. It forms the confines as it were of the four Presidencies; from each of them it is equidistant’ (Khan 1988: 16). But there were differences from the very beginning, which remained throughout the colonial period and did not allow for the gradual formation of a compact province despite the establishment of branches of the Indian National Congress (INC) in every region. The population of the province was divided into two linguistic communities: those in the north spoke Hindi or its dialect Chhattisgarhi, and the other in the south Marathi and had differences in caste complexion, social customs and identity (Baker 1979: 2). The population of both regions was descended largely from those who conquered or entered into the

geographical,

area from the north and south. Even among them, there were cultural differences due to the area they came from. In the south after 1743, the Bhonslas created the state of Nagpur and settled a large Marathi population making it a predominantly Marathi speaking area. These developments transformed the society in the plains as the tribals withdrew into the hills and the language of the invaders — Marathi — replaced that of the original population (Baker: 11). While historical and cultural factors were deeply ingrained,

political developments gave them a more concrete character. The southern

districts, particularly Nagpur, due to their proximity to the Bombay Presidency quite early came under the influence of the non-Brahmin and later the Mahar movements and right wing organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha. These movements created an increasing political ferment in the districts which was lacking in the northern Hindi region. In the latter region due to their conservative and feudal social milieu, socioeconomic development and consequently nationalist activity were slower and no movements based on identity arose. Instead the northern Hindi districts were from the 1920s drawn into the vortex of the national movement led by the Congress in the socially Hindi heartland region, particularly in Allahabad and Varanasi. Moreover, the politicians in the Hindi area had no sense of history as in the case of the south where the name of Shivaji or the Bhonsla kings evoked memories of being a ruling class and led to nationalist feelings. In the north, it was not until 1930 that such a sense of nationalism arose when the shadowy Dakshin Koshal or Mahakoshal idea was revived to serve as a focus for nationalist aspirations (ibid.).

southern education,

conservative

The divide became stronger following the victory of the Congress

party in the 1937 provincial elections when leaders from both regions had to form composite ministries and work together. A power struggle ensued between Dr Khare, a Marathi politician, and leaders from the Hindi region, mainly D. P. Mishra and Ravi Shankar Shukla, which set the stage for the ‘final transfer’ of the leadership of the provincial Congress from Marathi to Hindi political leaders (Baker 1979). The Hindi leaders won, leading to the Marathi leaders demanding a state. Consequently two major representations before the SRC were for the formation of Maha Vidharbha and a Samyukta Maharashtra state separate from the CPs. The latter movement was strong and led to the Nagpur Pact of September 1953 among prominent Congressmen that aimed at uniting under one state the Marathi speaking areas of

separate

the states of Bombay, Hyderabad and Madhya Pradesh (for details, see Mukerji and Ramaswamy 1955: 15). The SRC quite early conceded the demand of dividing the CPs as it was not mutually conflicting and the people of the Hindi speaking areas seemed reconciled to it. Moreover, in the Marathi speaking areas, the demand had ‘gathered such momentum that maintenance of the status quo will involve an increasingly severe strain on the political life and the administrative machinery of the state’ (SRC 1955: 123). Thus, while language was the principle on which the new state of MP was formed, political among Congressmen were an important contributory factor. Despite the removal of the Marathi districts, a number of conflicting demands were made to the SRC regarding the remaining Hindi regions of the erstwhile CPs. These ranged from the consolidation of all of them with the former princely states into one large state, forming various smaller states, to the maintenance of the status quo on the other. While demands for retaining various smaller regions were voiced by local Congress leaders, the Mahakoshal Pradeshik Congress Committee suggested the formation of a single state consisting of the Hindi speaking areas of the former CPs together with the former princely states in the Malwa portion of Madhya Bharat and the whole of Vindhya Pradesh and Bhopal (ibid.: 126). The demand for a state of Chhattisgarh was raised in the Nagpur Assembly of the then state of Madhya Bharat. As against this suggestion, other numerous claims and were put forward about the extent of the new proposed state of MP:

divisions speaking

separate counter-claims

Supporters of Maha Vidharbha wanted the boundaries of Mahakoshal to be so drawn as to exclude the following areas the Marathi speaking areas of Nimar, Betul, Chhindwara, Balaghat and Bastar districts; The northern districts of Madhya Bharat namely Bhind, Morena, Gird (Gwalior) and Shivpuri, it was argued, cannot be included in the proposed state of MP as they do not form part of Malwa; Mandsaur district, which is surrounded by Rajasthan for the most part, parts of Rajgarh and Guna district were claimed by the of the state of Rajasthan. Conversely Sironj sub-division of Kotah district, which is an enclave in Madhya Bharat, should be included in the new state of MP. —

proponents

The proponents of Vishal Andhra laid claim to the southern half of Bastar district below the river Indravathi, which is part of Chhattisgarh; a portion of this district was also claimed by the Utkal Sammilani demanding a state of Orissa (ibid.: 129-30). There were also demands for a separate state of Chhattisgarh, many of which emanated from Congressmen from the region.

After considering various alternatives, the Commission decided in favour of forming a large Hindi speaking state of MP standing in the middle of the Indian plateau. It was felt that the former princely states could not form economically viable states on their own; nor was the break up of the better-developed core Mahakoshal region desirable. Further, the addition of the fertile Chhattisgarh agricultural plain would help create a viable state. The removal of the northern districts was not considered feasible on economic and administrative grounds. The law and order situation in the Chambal and the construction of the Matatila dam on the Betwa, which was meant to serve the entire northern part of MP, made it necessary to amalgamate it with the rest of the state. Therefore the proposal for a separate state of Bundelkhand including parts of UP and MP was not practicable. Regarding transfer of districts to Rajasthan, it was felt that these areas had long been administered as part of the CPs and as public opinion had not expressed itself in favour of change, the Commission was in favour of keeping Malwa within the new state. The Commission also felt that the linguistic claims to Bastar by both Andhra and Orissa were unfounded and though the area is bilingual, it is local indigenous languages such as Gondi and Halbi along with Hindi, which are spoken in the region (ibid.). Thus the Hindi speaking portion of the CPs and the previously amalgamated Hindi speaking states of Chhattisgarh formed the core around which the new state of MP was established. MP was as Part ‘A’ state bracketing it with other major states of India. Formed in November 1956, the new state came to have:

classified 14 districts of residuary MP that were the Hindi of the former CPs.

speaking region

The whole of Bhopal. The whole of Vindhya Pradesh. The whole of Madhya Bharat except the Sunel enclave of Mandsaur district. The Sironj sub-division of Kotah district of Rajasthan.

Thus creating the state of MP was a difficult task and full political, economic and emotional integration of the population would take a long time. The bulk of the proposed state was made up of ex-princely states, with autocratic rulers separated from the national movement and the mainstream of the socio-political life of the country; it was only in some of the larger states such as Gwalior, Indore and Bhopal that praja mandals had been formed. In the new state, out of 43 districts about 32 were composed either wholly or partially of princely states. The Commission, while recommending the formation of the state, held that the ‘essential unity’ of the central Indian region was based on the common usage of Hindi and its administrative organisation was justified on the basis of economic size and efficiency (SRC 1955: 126). Some commentators have held that the Hindi speaking region had a long history of democratic institutions functioning, its revenues were high and the traditions of administration were firmly established so much so that its officers included some of the outstanding of India (Verma 1984: 129). But the new state was created solely on the basis of language out of various territories that were at unequal stages of social, economic and political growth (Chandidas 1967: 1503). As a commentator pointed out:

administrators almost MP was born in error: it was a sprawling, incoherent and inefficient administrative unit sought to be made coherent by the magic touch of language …. The truth is that the SRC was unable to face squarely the administrative complexity of far-flung territories in very different degrees of administrative control. The Commission was wholly with political pressures, and MP was carved out of Central India, Madhya Bharat and Orissa to produce a surface cohesion, both historically, politically, without substance.6

preoccupied

Equally important, most of the proposals for the division of the state had been presented by Congressmen, which shows that the party, despite a strong presence in the province, was divided over how the various regions of the former CPs and princely states were to be reorganised. This divisive legacy contributed to factionalism and impacted on the ability of the Congress as a dominant party to integrate the state in the post-independence period. It is against this background that we move towards an examination of the integrative role of the Congress party in MP and the extent to which this succeeded in the post-independence period.

The Congress Party and the Politics of Integration in MP As the party of integration, the Congress at independence had two closely related challenges.7 The first was to bring regional elites within the party together and establish a united organisation by controlling factionalism. Second, to be able to do this, the party from its core area of Mahakoshal — in which it had established itself as a strong political force by the end of the colonial period — had to penetrate and bring the rest of the province under its control. Neither of these were easy tasks. Political leaders had to undertake ‘brokering’ of competitive demands for regional development by competing groups and interests without alienating any group. The role played by the Congress party is examined by analysing two interrelated developments: electoral politics in order to trace the ‘geographical spread’ of the Congress party in the different regions of the state; and the attempts by the party leadership through ‘balancing and brokering’ (Wilcox 1968). To manage factionalism and integrate all the various regional units of the Congress party into a strong single dominant party. An important reason for the persistence of factionalism in MP has

been its feudal and conservative society and absence of movements ‘from below’ by disadvantaged sections such as dalits and tribals that have questioned the position of the upper castes in recent years as in UP and Bihar. Also, due to the lack of a large middle caste across the state such as Jats or Yadavs, there has been little pressure to the middle or lower castes or form ‘downward alliances’ as in Bihar. Consequently, factional struggles have been mainly between the Brahmins and Banias or more recently the Rajputs for positions and patronage. The few dalit, tribal or Other Backward Castes (OBC) leaders who are found within the party are due to cooptation rather than upward mobility in the party.

accommodate

Initially in the early 1950s, the Congress party was able to control

factionalism and establish itself electorally as a dominant party over some important regions. This was because the new state had just been formed and factions had not yet been able to regroup themselves. It was also due to the leadership of Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla who had the stature to hold the party together and who ‘thought of the state as a whole’ (Purohit 1975: 224). In fact, there was no movement for a separate Chhattisgarh state in the 1950s because he was from that region and was keen to unite the state. Heading one of the most

powerful factions in the former CPs, he had built up a strong base in Raipur where he had been active in the national movement as an leader of the Hindi Congress (Ali 1970). He played a role in the formation of the state and was selected as its first Chief Minister once the Marathi speaking districts were removed. Moreover, the Congress was able to absorb a number of small regional parties — many small parties disappeared after reorganisation, and opposition parties were not yet well organised. The 1950s therefore were a phase of ‘structural consolidation’ when the Congress was able to establish itself as a single dominant party in the state. It performed well in the both the 1952 and 1957 state elections gaining more than half the seats and almost 50 per cent of the votes cast. The year 1957 was the ‘high watermark of the Congress in MP’ which it could not reach in the elections that followed (Purohit 1975: 205).

important

During this phase, the Congress was able to perform well in

Mahakoshal obtaining over 80 per cent of the seats in the first two elections and was able to penetrate into a number of regions. In Mahakoshal, the party remained unchallenged in subsequent due to a strong organisation and trained cadres even during periods of weakness when it performed badly elsewhere in the state. Despite the rise of the Jan Sangh as a strong opposition party from the mid-1960s, it was not able to make inroads into this region and retained its dominance here even after the rise of a two-party system. Similarly in the Vindhya region, neither parties of the Left nor the Right were able to establish themselves despite strong agrarian mobilisation by them in the late colonial period. The Socialists and the Left parties were too small, unorganised and did not form alliances leading to division of votes which helped the Congress; by 1967, most of these parties had disappeared. Despite the region having a large number of upper castes, as right wing forces had not penetrated here in the colonial period, the Jan Sangh also failed to put down roots in the region and disappeared from the region by the mid-1960s.

assembly elections

It was the MB and Bhopal regions that posed the strongest challenge

to the inroads of the Congress party, as it did not have a base here in the colonial period. It performed well initially in the 1952 and 1957 elections as the Jan Sangh and other parties were still weak and not well organised and it was the strongest region after Mahakoshal. But by 1967, the Jan Sangh had made inroads into the region and due to the Gwalior ruling family supporting it the Congress could not establish itself here. However, in Bhopal, the Congress performed better and

was able to retain a base. Thus between 1952 and 1962, the Congress was able to maintain its dominance in Mahakoshal, gain control over Bhopal and the Vindhya region and gain a foothold in MB where it shared space with the Jan Sangh. This helped the Congress state leadership control factionalism as viable coalitions within the state after independence depended upon the cooperation of Mahakoshal (Jabalpur or Chhattisgarh) and MB, and rivalry between these two shaped success in elections in the state for the Congress party.

regions

Post-1956: Politics of Factionalism It was the death of Ravi Shankar Shukla in late 1956 that plunged the party into a crisis. There was an increase in factionalism and the rise of the ‘locals’ in each region dividing the party (Wilcox 1968). By the late 1950s, four major groups were in conflict with each other. The first were the four factions led by Congress leaders of the regions that had been brought together to create MP — the Taktmal Jain and the Kanhaiyalal Khadiwala group in Indore, the Shankar Dayal Sharma group in Bhopal, a group led by Shambu Nath Shukla and Captain Awadesh Singh in VP; groups led by Ravi Shankar Shukla and Seth Govind Das in Mahakoshal and numerous groups in Chhattisgarh — an important factor there being the Brahmin–Bania conflict. There was no strong group in Gwalior — a region that had been outside the influence of Congress in the colonial period (ibid.: 156). The second group consisted of the business community composed of indigenous and ‘outsider’ groups, namely Gujarati and Marwari capitalists, who had links with party factions. The third group was the central Congress leadership that constantly intervened imposing chief ministers on the state, ostensibly to control factionalism but also to maintain its hold on state politics. Finally, outside the party were the former princes, tribal leaders and other ‘petty kings’ who were important. Especially at times when the Congress was in crisis due to a narrow majority in the legislature (ibid.: 148). Due to the eruption of factional rivalries, the central Congress

leadership intervened and appointed an ‘outsider’ Dr K. N. Katju, a Kashmiri Brahmin, who though born in MP usually resided in Allahabad, as Chief Minister (CM) on 31 January 1957 (Purohit 1975: 202). In fact, almost every successive CM after Shukla has been a nominee of the central leadership and identified with a particular region — K. N. Katju with Allahabad, D. P. Mishra with Mahakoshal, S. C. Shukla with Chhattisgarh, P. C. Sethi with MB and Arjun Singh with

VP, etc. — and most had links with the former princely rulers. Because of the need for regional support, each CM had to resort to arithmetic of regional politics and of winning followers from other regions to be able to keep his own position. Factional rivalries were most marked just prior to an election on issues such as distribution of tickets leading to a ‘marked relationship between the degree of homogeneity in the party and the election results’ (Chandidas 1967: 1509). Katju as an ‘outsider’ was expected to be above regional

parochialism and hold together a party that was at best a ‘coalition of interests’

(Wilcox 1968: 148). However, the decision was unpopular and its impact was reflected in the 1962 election when the party fell short of a majority, winning only 142 out of 288 seats. Even the CM was defeated in the election by an insignificant Jan Sangh leader. The Jan Sangh gained in the MB region, in Vindhya Pradesh the Congress gained less seats and in Mahakoshal the party gained less than 60 per cent of the winning candidates (ibid.: 147). An in-house enquiry indicated that the poor performance and Katju’s defeat was due to ‘internal sabotage’ by factions unhappy with the imposition by the central leadership of an outsider as CM (Purohit 1975: 203; Chandidas 1967: 1507). The Commission investigated charges that the Deshlehra group had sabotaged the electoral efforts of the candidates from the governmental wing (Wilcox 1968: 153). It was only by bringing independents and dissident members back into the party that a Congress government could be formed with 153 members that gave it a bare majority. But it was a weak government that could not take significant policy decisions, build up a strong party organisation or control factionalism.

Inquiry

Due to the electoral debacle in 1962 arising out of internal

factionalism, the central leadership intervened and made use of the Kamaraj

Plan to change the leadership in both the governmental and the organisational wings of the party. Despite the fact that Mandloi had been elected the leader of the assembly and made the CM after the 1962 elections, the central leadership replaced him with D. P. Mishra as CM on 2 October 1963, against the wishes of his supporters. Although once expelled from the party for fighting an election on a Praja Socialist Party (PSP) ticket, a nominee of Indira Gandhi, Mishra was reinstated as he was seen as the ‘Iron Man’ of the party. Dissidents, unhappy at the imposition of an outsider, even put forward a principle of rotation under which Chief Ministers would in turn be appointed from the two principal regions: since the first had been from Mahakoshal, the next should be from MB. However, the central leadership felt it had to intervene as factionalism was weakening the party.

Mishra was able to reunite the regional sub-systems and bring most of the Congress organisation under his control. It was felt that his tenure marked the beginning of political and administrative stability8 in MP reflected in the victory of the Congress party in the 1967 elections. He brought in about 30 MLAs from the PSP into the party, which strengthened his position in the legislature. But his position also stemmed from the backing of the Brahmin lobby, the disappearance of the Khadiwala faction from state politics due to his indictment in a case by the Indore High Court, the Kamaraj Plan and the backing of the central government. Despite his strong image, Mishra had to appoint ministers from all regions in the state in proportion to their strength in the party in 1964: eight from Mahakoshal, five from MB, four from VP and one from Bhopal. Regional considerations also underlay all public policy decisions taken by the cabinet. However, Mishra brought a style of functioning often described as

‘dictatorial, intolerant and vindictive’ that was new to MP.9 As CM, he attempted to create a strong, united and homogenous Congress party as well as strengthen his own position, which increased factional rivalry at the local level. As a commentator observed: ‘In these three years the Chief Minister (D. P. Mishra) has built an invincible position for himself within the Congress. He has also tried, not unsuccessfully, to break the back of at least the Socialist parties …. To strengthen his own position, he has systematically captured the Congress organisation by steadily and uncompromisingly eliminating rivals from both the government and the party; the reason he gave being that good administration — which he has undoubtedly given — needs homogeneity (Sharma quoted in Chandidas 1967: 1514).

Such a style of functioning could not succeed in a party made up of many groups among whom bargaining and negotiation was the norm. Prior to the 1967 assembly elections, Mishra refused to give tickets to many dissidents. Unhappy at their supporters being denied tickets in the 1967 assembly elections, a number of leaders of the Jain and Deshlera group resigned in November 1966 and formed the rival Jan Congress group. The regional pattern was quite clear: assisted by some leaders from the Chhattisgarh region, it was leaders from MB who raised the banner of revolt against the dictatorial methods of Mishra. The Jan Congress entered into a pre-election alliance with the Jan Sangh, SSP and the Maharani of Gwalior — who unhappy at Mishra not providing her a say in ticket distribution in the assembly polls in

the Gwalior region — decided not to contest on a Congress ticket to the Lok Sabha and set up her own candidates against the Congress in the former MB region comprising 10 districts. All attempts at reconciliation between her and Mishra by Congress leaders failed and the Congress could not gain a single seat from the Gwalior region in 1967. However, while the Rajamata factor was important, the defeat was also due to the failure of the Congress to build up a base in this region (Chandidas 1967: 1509). An indication of the discipline that Mishra was able to impose on the party is that despite the defections, the Congress won a majority gaining 56.4 per cent of the seats (Ahmed and Singh 1976: 169). The Jan Congress continued its collaboration with opposition after the election and brought down the government of Mishra formed after the election on 28 July 1967, which lasted only 143 days. The defectors left the Congress led by Govind Narain Singh because Mishra did not include a single person who had defected from the party, as he believed that his role was to maintain probity in public life. Govind Narain Singh and other defectors formed the government with the Jan Sangh and the Congress had to sit in the opposition from August 1967 to March 1969 (Purohit 1975: 208).

parties

Unlike in many other states, in the 1967 assembly elections the

Congress party gained 167 seats and was able to gain a majority its performance over the 1962 elections. Mishra was able to see that there was no sabotage in the election by dissidents as in 1962 (Chandidas 1967: 1503). The Jan Sangh gained 78 seats and 28.3 per cent of the vote. However, the emerging structure of bipartisanship in the state is clearly seen in the 1967 elections. The Jan Sangh had managed to improve its position from a mere six seats in 1952 to 78 in 1967, and vote share from 3.6 per cent in 1952 to over 28 per cent. In fact, the two parties between them were able to gain 40.7 per cent and 28.3 per cent, i.e., almost 70 per cent of the total votes cast. Apart from independents, no other party was able to get more than 5 per cent of the votes. Moreover, in terms of seat percentage, which is a better measure than the number of seats — the Congress and the Jan Sangh in 1967 between them gained 56.42 per cent and 26.01 per cent respectively, i.e., 80 per cent of the total seats.

improving

Factionalism within a Two-party Competitive System

Consequently, the relationship between the Congress and the Jan Sangh from 1967 onwards was not that of the one-party dominance

model which posits a ‘party of consensus’ and ‘parties of pressure’ in which one characteristic which prevents the latter from becoming an alternative to the former is that they gain in strength when the party loses and vice versa (Ahmed and Singh 1976: 172). The Jan Sangh, unlike the other parties, was able to develop a fairly substantial firm support base, markedly autonomous of the changes in the support for the Congress (ibid.). In 1967, the regional divide between the Congress and the Jan Sangh within an emerging two-party system also becomes quite clear. The success of the Congress was primarily due to the support it received from its traditional stronghold of Mahakoshal from where it gained 111 seats, which was 72.08 per cent of the total seats. Next was the Vindhya region where it gained 30 seats, but which constituted 75 per cent of the seats in the region. A study shows that the Congress did well in the Mahakoshal and Chhattisgarh divisions of Bilaspur, Raipur and Jabalpur and from the Vindhya region of Rewa. In Bilaspur, the Congress could gain as much as 50.28 per cent of the votes while in Jabalpur it gained 46.05 per cent and in Raipur 38.89 per cent. In Rewa, it could obtain over 46 per cent. On the other hand, the Congress performed poorly in the divisions of Bhopal, Gwalior and Indore, getting as low as 18.95 per cent in Gwalior (Purohit 1975: 205). In these regions, the Jan Sangh performed well. In MB and Bhopal, it gained 54 seats, which constituted 52.94 per cent of the total seats in the region; in contrast, in Vindhya region, it got only one seat and hardly 2.50 per cent of the seats. Purohit points out that out of 36 seats in the Bhopal division, Congress could secure only 12 while the Jan Sangh gained 21 seats; out of 31 seats in the Gwalior division the Congress could not secure a single seat while the Jan Sangh and its allies could gain 30 seats; in Indore out of 54 seats the Congress could gain 23 seats while the Jan Sangh got 25 seats. In terms of vote share also, the share of the Congress fell to only 18.96 per cent in Gwalior though it was much better in Bhopal and Indore with 36.48 per cent and 42.39 per cent, respectively (ibid.: 206).

dominant

An important reason for the two major parties dividing the regions

between them is the absence of an agrarian-based party in MP such as the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) in UP. The BKD in the mid-1960s changed an evolving two-party system in UP into a three-cornered fight by undercutting the Jan Sangh in a number of regions. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has remained too small a party in MP to play such a role and forms a third force between the two major parties snatching

votes from both of them. Following the establishment of a pattern of two-party competition after 1967 continuing into the 1970s and 1980s, both the Congress and the Jan Sangh came to have a secure electoral base within a statewide structure of partisanship (Mitra 1990: 187). Large swings back and forth between the two parties became the norm; each party when it won could make inroads into the stronghold of the other while retaining its own area of strength. In 1967, the Congress formed the government but was defeated by the opposition, which formed the Sanyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) coalition in which the Jan Sangh played an important role. Factionalism continued in the post-1967 period which witnessed the

rise of a new generation of regional leaders in the state. Shyama Charan Shukla from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, the elder son of Ravi Shankar Shukla, was made the leader of the Congress opposition party in the legislature defeating Mishra on 26 November 1967. Eventually, despite the existence of many other senior leaders in the legislature he became the CM on 26 March 1969 when the SVD coalition fell because the MP High Court declared Mishra’s 1963 election to the state assembly void and he was debarred on grounds of corrupt practices from contesting elections to the legislature for six years (Purohit 1975: 212). The Mahakoshal–Chhattisgarh faction had again succeeded in capturing the office. There was also support for Shukla as he was not an outsider but a leader within the state.10 On assuming power, Shukla attempted to revamp and rejuvenate the state administration and put it on a sound financial and administrative basis. It was felt that with a younger generation in power, factionalism would end and the party would be united. The brief period in which the Congress party had to sit in the opposition had also curbed However, Shukla had the disadvantage that he had little support at the centre in comparison with Mishra who remained powerful at the central level of the party due to the support of Indira Gandhi. Consequently when the Congress party did not perform as well as the other states in the 1971 general elections gaining 21 out of 37 seats with the Jan Sangh gaining 11 seats, Mishra’s supporters at the state level connived to remove him. They complained that the poor performance was a result of infighting and lack of interest by the CM. Shukla also did not take up some of the programmes suggested by Mrs Gandhi to state governments or remove ministers who were seen as corrupt (Ali 1970: 220). His defiance of the PM and the impression

factionalism.

that he was supporting the Syndicate when the Congress split led to his removal (Purohit 1975: 217). The central leadership again decided to bring in P. C. Sethi an ‘outsider’. This was done so that with the Mishra group, he would be able to ensure that the Congress (R), supporting Indira Gandhi well in the state assembly elections of March 1972 — the first state assembly election after the split. Hailing from Rajasthan, Sethi was a supporter of Mrs Gandhi during the Congress split at the centre and was Minister of State for Petroleum and Chemicals in the central Congress ministry (Ali 1970: 220). Sethi was initially not keen as he felt that his own party was against him, but as the central leadership supported him he decided to take up the post.11 Mrs Gandhi hoped that he would implement her socialist policies, which Shukla had failed to do. Sethi enacted a Ceiling Law, house sites to the poor were distributed, Rural Debt Amortisation Law was enacted, revision of minimum wages took place, legislation abolishing bonded labour was passed, etc.12 A second reason for his appointment was his roots in the MB region of Ujjain where he had been active in the MB Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC). This was where the Congress was badly defeated and it was hoped that Sethi would be able to rehabilitate the party and meet the challenge posed by the Jan Sangh. However by the time Sethi was sworn in, ticket distribution for the 1972 state assembly elections had already been decided by the central of which D. P. Mishra was a member. The factional lines were clear; few of those who had been ministers in Shukla’s government received tickets, and Shukla himself was given one in the last stages of the process. However, the Congress (R) performed well in the 1972 assembly election getting as many as 220 seats out of 294 while the Congress (O) was wiped out in the state. It gained 220 seats and 47.9 per cent of the votes while the Jan Sangh seat share fell to 16.2 per cent. But even without the benefit of an opposition alliance (as in 1967) and despite a pro-Congress swing, the Jan Sangh could sustain its share of the vote at 28 per cent (Ahmed and Singh, 1976: 169–70). It got 27 seats in MB: 19 in Gwalior and eight in Indore. The Congress increased its strength in the Mahakoshal, MB and Bhopal areas though its seats fell in the Vindhya region. The Congress performed better in MB securing 62 seats against 23 in 1967; in Gwalior it gained 10 seats out of 31 and in Indore 52 out of 62. In Bhopal division, it gained seven out

performed

committee

of 11 seats (Purohit 1975: 219). However, in VP, it could gain only 26 seats compared to 30 earlier. Despite the victory of the Congress party in the 1972 elections,

factionalism continued to plague the Sethi government and Congress leaders used every opportunity to criticise and oppose the running of the administration. Although Mrs Gandhi attempted to keep it down by threatening the dissolution of the assembly, yet signature campaigns took place for and against the CM. In the 1970s, endemic factionalism strengthened the hands of the Jan Sangh. In bye-elections between 1972 and 1975, Congress lost six seats particularly the important Jabalpur and Govindpura seats, which increased the strength of the rightist forces in the state. However, the real problem was that Sethi had no base in his own in the party as he had been brought in by the high command. Most of the members of the legislature were supporters of Mishra or the Shukla brothers. Sethi tried to run his administration independently and despite being an efficient person, could not succeed. Finally in December 1975, Sethi was made minister in the central government and S. C. Shukla was again sworn in as the new CM in January 1976. Although the Congress had been in power for most of the post-independence period, by 1978 the state had been governed by 11 CMs for a period of 22 years (ibid.). In the 1977 assembly elections in MP, the Congress also performed

badly gaining only 84 seats but it could still secure 35.9 per cent of the vote. The Janata Party (JP) won 230 seats and 47.3 per cent of the vote and formed the government. However, the JP experiment was shortlived and in the 1980 assembly elections in MP the Congress came back to power with a huge majority though the Jan Sangh retained 30 per cent of the votes. This was repeated in 1985 though the Jan Sangh retained 32 per cent of the votes. The central government to bring in Arjun Singh, a strong leader from the Vindhya region of the state. Like Mishra, he was again a nominee of Indira Gandhi who felt that a strong leader was required to control factionalism. He was opposed by other contenders within the state such as Shukla and Kamal Nath and their followers. However, with the support of the central leadership he was sworn in as CM on 9 June 1980 with B. S. Solanki as Deputy Chief Minister on the demand of party leaders within the state. 13 Mishra was not made CM as he had quit the Congress in 1977. While many believed that it was because he was ignored by the central Congress leadership including Mrs Gandhi, other commentators have pointed out that it was because the Bhave

decided

Commission investigating into the gulabi channa14 relief money scandal in MP had passed strictures against him as CM for not removing the corrupt ministers in his cabinet (Singh 1977: 1729–30). This led to the retirement of Mishra and left Arjun Singh without a leader who could challenge him. Arjun Singh was from an important jagirdari family from VP and was a late entrant into the Congress in 1960. Prior to that, he was elected to the MP assembly as an independent. From 1962 onwards, he had been member of the cabinet of Mishra and later Sethi. In 1980, it is alleged that he joined hands with the Gwalior exprince Madhav Rao Scindia and other feudal elements and was able to become the CM keeping out both V. C. Shukla, the younger son of Ravi Shankar Shukla, and Sethi. A feature of Arjun Singh’s tenure was that he undertook major reshuffle of his cabinet many times during his tenure and changed his ministers, thereby keeping a number of legislators happy and control-ling factionalism. He also attempted to give due representation to all the regions in the state which helped him complete his term of five years (Ali 1970: 465). In 1983, over a dozen Congress MLAs were appointed chairman and vice-chairman of various public undertakings and other state-level bodies such as the Energy Development Corporation, Rural Housing Corporation and Warehousing Corporation with the rank of cabinet minister or minister of state (ibid.: 471). Following the 1985 assembly elections, in which the Congress performed very well, the new PM Rajiv Gandhi intervened to make a number of changes in MP to curb the endemic factionalism in the state. Constant change of Chief Ministers by the central leadership is seen during the decade giving little chance for local Congressmen to choose their own leaders. Motilal Vora, an ‘outsider’, was appointed the CM and a young supporter Digvijay Singh was appointed the head of the MPCC. Vora was earlier a supporter of Arjun Singh but on his appointment did not include supporters of the latter in the cabinet and attempted to create his own following. Though from Rajasthan, Vora had been elected to the MP assembly for the first time from Durg in 1972 and had held the seat consistently since then. 15 He did not belong to any of the factions in the state and had a reputation as a capable and honest person. However, his tenure was marked by constant efforts by the Arjun Singh faction to remove him. 16 Using his pro-poor stand and the policies he had implemented for this section during his tenure, Arjun Singh constantly criticised the Vora administration

for not looking after the interests of the poorer sections and thereby undermining the support base of the Congress among them. Issues such as removal of slums and jhuggis (shanties) and policies for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) were used to undermine the position of the CM which led to heightened factionalism in the party even leading to en masse resignation of Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) loyal to Mishra. 17 These events led the central leadership to remove Vora and Arjun

Singh was sworn in as the Chief Minister in February 1988. 18 The main reason was the im-pending state assembly elections in 1990 in which the Congress would have to face the new Hindu party, the BJP. It was felt that Arjun Singh with his pro-poor image was better fitted to lead the Congress against a party associated with the upper caste Hindus. The new cabinet was hence seen as an ‘election cabinet’ but in reality, it was packed with Arjun Singh’s supporters. But due to the Churhat Lottery scandal in which Arjun Singh and his close relatives were associated, he had to resign and the central leadership brought back Vora as the Chief Minister on 28 January 1989, just prior to the assembly elections.19 Factionalism and constant change of CMs during the 1980s, which

led to constant disruption in policy making, was an important factor in the defeat of the party in the 1990 assembly election. By the early 1990s, the Congress was again divided into a number of groups. headed by Arjun Singh, the two Shukla brothers, Motilal Vora and Madhav Rao Scindia created divisions in the party, which was responsible for the loss of a number of seats in MP. These groups were joined by two younger leaders, Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh, who were keen to play a seminal role in the state. The various factions joined hands using a platform of development to defeat the BJP in 1993, but factionalism continued unabated once the party captured power. The two terms in office by Digvijay Singh were marked by attempts by the Arjun Singh and other factions, who had opposed his selection, to remove him from office.

Factions

Political Competition in the 1990s: Division of MP By the 1990s, it was clear that the Congress party had not been able to integrate the various regions out of which the state of MP was

formed. In fact, demands for the division of the state had begun fairly early from all political parties, including the Congress, not only for a separate state of Chhattisgarh but also MB and Bundelkhand. While a separate state of Chhattisgarh was formed in 2000, the question of formation of Bundelkhand by merging it with contiguous areas in Uttar Pradesh still remains open, pointing to further possible divisions within the state. The area described as Chhattisgarh does have certain features

distinguishing it from the rest of the state of MP. It is one of the historical-

cultural regions of central India and is described as the ‘rice bowl of central India’. Large part of it is forested and it also has a substantial tribal population mainly in Bastar and Surguja districts. The region, which is rich in forests and minerals, experienced a number of movements. But these have been mainly by the tribals against exploitation by out-siders in the colonial period and by organisations such as the Kisan Adivasi Sangthan, Bandhua Mukti Morcha, Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh and Satpura Kisan Evam Mazdoor Kalyan Samiti, after independence (Roy 2002). Organised mass for the formation of a separate state have not taken place. Such have emanated from some of the elite sections and political leaders. In the 1950s, Congress leader Khubchand Baghel started the Chhattisgarh Mahasabha and later the Chhattisgarh Bhratir society) Sangh with Pyarelal Singh, a freedom fighter. In the late 1960s, Pawan Diwan, a poet and later Congress MP from Mahasamund, started the Chhattisgarh Rajya Nirman Manch. More seriously in mid-1978, a group of political leaders signed a written document demanding a separate state of Chhattisgarh and formed a separate Chhattisgarh State Formation Committee (Kumar 1998: 131). It included Vidya Bhusan, a Janata MLA; Purushottam Kaushik, erstwhile Socialist leader and Union Minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation who de-feated V. C. Shukla in the 1977 elections on a platform of statehood for Chhattisgarh; and S. C. Shukla and Pawan Diwan who had defeated the latter in the assembly election (EPW 1978: 680). They argued that the vastness of the state of MP had resulted in the growth of regional disparities and with an area of 1.55 lakh sq km and a population of 1.15 crore (11.5 million), Chhattisgarh could be a state bigger than Punjab, Haryana or Kerala.

movements demands (brotherhood

During the 1980s, the demand for a separate state of Chhattisgarh

became closely entangled with Congress factionalism, which gave it a fillip despite the lack of movements on the ground. As CM,

Arjun Singh used the idea of a distinct Chhattisgarhi identity to build both his own base and keep the Shukla brothers out of power. In the absence of any grass roots movements, he encouraged regional Congress OBC leaders, particularly Kurmis such as Purushottam Kaushik and Chandulal Chandrakar who periodically demanded the creation of a separate state, to undermine the position of the Brahmin Shuklas. But at the same time, Arjun Singh attempted through various policies for disadvantaged sections to gain the support of the tribals and dalits (Mitra 1990; Gupta 2005). Some of his policies such as removing the middlemen in the tendu leaf business helped local tribals and were aimed against the BJP.20 Most importantly, by showing some support for the Chhattisgarh Rajya Nirman Manch (CRNM) or Chhattisgarh State Creation Campaign, formed in the 1980s to lead the campaign for a separate state, in order to undermine the position of his rivals, Singh gave the demand some standing.21 However, despite these political developments the demand for a

separate state remained confined to the elites and mainly the urban areas of Durg, Raipur and Bilaspur and did not spread into the rural areas or smaller towns. Within the population of the region, the only section interested in the formation of a separate state was the elite exMalgujas (communities of rich peasants, who earlier had the jagirdari rights to collect land revenue on behalf of the Maratha and British rulers) keen to become numerically powerful under a new state. The exMalgujas mainly comprise Brahmins and Kurmis, and many Congress leaders, such as Rajya Sabha member Dr Khubchand Baghel who demanded the new state, were Kurmis. The tribals, landless labourers and poor peasants have not been organised or shown much interest in the formation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh. In fact, certain groups preferred in the late 1990s to join a separate tribal state of Jharkhand if formed than Chhattisgarh, and the Naxalites wanted a separate state of Dandakaranya around Bastar (Kumar 1998: 131). There was also considerable sub-regional disparity within the Chhattisgarh region in matters of growth of industries and irrigation facilities which could prevent any such movement from moving forward. A study in the late 1990s classified the demand for a separate state of Chhattisgarh together with Bodoland, Gorkhaland, Vidharbha and Bundelkhand as ‘low key demands’ which persisted over time but with little or no mass support and which it was argued had little hope of success (ibid.: 130).

Chhattisgarh is described as a tribal state when it was created and as much as 32 per cent of its population belongs to this category. But neither did the tribals demand its formation nor have a voice; it is the rich cultivating peasantry, the upper castes and OBCs settled in the plains and the business community that occupies a predominant position in the governance of the state. Some scholars argue that the formation of these states was possible due to the emergence of this regional elite (Majeed 2003: 97). More immediately, in the 1990s the issue of separation of

Chhattisgarh became enmeshed in strong electoral compulsions arising out of the highly competitive two-party system that arose following the collapse of single party dominance and emergence of unstable coalitional governments at the centre. In MP, there was intense competition between the Congress and the BJP to gain power as the two national parties faced each other. With no strong regional/ state-level parties that could capture power, there was heightening of competition seen in the neat division of support in MP in their regional strongholds between them. The BJP managed to capture power in 1990 gaining 219 seats out of 320. But in 1993, all the various Congress factions in a rare show of unity joined hands and using the plank of development, as against the Hindutva agenda of the former, were successful in defeating it.22 The Congress and the BJP alternated in power firmly establishing the two-party system around these two parties in the state. These were the immediate political developments responsible for the division of MP rather than any genuine desire on the part of either the Congress or the BJP to fulfill the aspirations of the local people. The competitive politics of the 1990s contributed to the revival of the CRNM under the leadership of Chandulal Chandrakar and after his death, Ajit Jogi, later the first CM of Chhattisgarh. Several successful region-wide bandhs and rallies were organised under its banner supported by major political parties including the Congress. These activities led local leaders of the BJP, which earlier did not have a base in the region, to compete with the Congress in demanding a separate state, which they hoped would give them the support of the OBCs in the Chhattisgarh plains and the tribals in the Bastar area (Choudhary 1998). Although both parties had promised statehood for Chhattisgarh in their election manifestoes since 1993, the BJP did not take interest in the issue when it was in power in the state between 1989 and 1992, as it had not emerged as a significant electoral issue

(Venkatesan 2000). The demolition of the Babri Masjid that led to the dismissal of the BJP government in 1992 was far more important at this point. The BJP began to espouse the cause of statehood in the mid-1990s only after it lost all the 11 seats from the region in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections. By making the electoral promise to carve out a separate state, the party won six seats in the region in the 1996 elections. It was during the 1998 Lok Sabha elections that the issue of separation of Chhattisgarh became part of the electoral struggle between the Congress and the BJP to gain power at the centre. During the campaign, Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee promised statehood for Chhattisgarh if the voters elected BJP candidates to all the 11 seats. This pledge paid handsome dividends; BJP candidates were elected from seven constituencies. The BJP-led government at the centre introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha in 1998, but it lapsed after the government fell. In the 1999 elections, Vajpayee repeated the promise and held the Congress responsible for bringing down the government before the Bill could be passed in Parliament. This led to the BJP obtaining eight seats in the region. Electoral compulsions also influenced the Congress party in the 1990s. The party had officially not recognised the various demands for Chhattisgarh prior to 1993 even though it was in power both in the state and at the centre over several terms. The Congress government headed by Digvijay Singh on assuming office in 1993 realising that the issue was gaining importance and could help the Congress strike roots in the region, passed the resolution for statehood in the Assembly in 1993 and again in 1998 when the President referred the Bill to elicit its views. It passed the resolution again when the President once again referred the Bill to it, after the centre introduced a fresh Bill to replace the 1998 Bill. Despite the two main parties taking up the issue, apart from political

rallies there were few signs of a movement on the ground. 23 It was the Congress-led Chhattisgarh Rajya Sangarsh Morcha (CRSM) started in May 1999 by V. C. Shukla that led a strong agitation after the Democratic Alliance (NDA) government failed to introduce the Bill in the Budget Session of Parliament in 2000. The CRSM became active as it became clear that both the BJP and the Congress were in the creation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh. It was able to gain some support in the region by merging with the Chhattisgarh Asmita Sangathan Samiti (CAS), an independent group of who met frequently in Raipur to exchange ideas on the concept

National interested intellectuals

and contours of the new state. Started in January 1994 by Mannulal Yadu, it was formed as a non-political organisation after earlier to maintain the Chhattisgarh State All-party Manch failed. In 1999 with the issue gaining political importance, its members felt the need to expand the organisation under influential local leadership so that it could make an impact. Yadu approached V. C. Shukla, who unhappy on being denied a ticket by the Congress party to contest the Lok Sabha elections of 1998 and hoping to take advantage of the fact that he belonged to the region, agreed to merge the CRSM with the CAS (Venkatesan 2000).

attempts

Although the CRSM had members from other parties, it had none

from the BJP as Yadu held that ‘the former is essentially a secular movement’. The movement created divisions within the Congress, as Shukla’s political rivals in the Chhattisgarh were unhappy that it would help him emerge as a leader within the region. Pawan Diwan, a former Congress Member of Parliament from Mahasamund, accused him of hijacking the movement from him. The Congress party did not openly oppose the CRSM, and this helped Shukla mobilise Congress supporters, says Vijay Guru, a former State Minister hailing from this region. Shukla used the picture of Sonia Gandhi in the CRSM’s banners, although he had not obtained prior permission from the Congress to launch the movement. The CRSM organised a rally on 30 May 2000 at Jagdalpur in Bastar district and on 26 June, its members courted arrest in the Chhattisgarh region. When it became almost certain that the centre would introduce the Bill in the monsoon session, the CRSM sponsored a 24-hour bandh in Chhattisgarh on 20 July, followed by an impressive rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, to coincide with the start of the Parliament Leaders of the CRSM alleged that the BJP wanted to delay the Bill until the Assembly elections of November 2003, in order to reap electoral dividends. Leaders of the BJP on the other hand accused the Congress of blocking the introduction of the Bill in the Budget Session by raising technical objections that the draft Bill was not circulated to the members in advance. Congress leaders feared that the BJP would take credit for the passage of the Bill even though Congress support was essential for its adoption in both Houses of Parliament. With the passage of the Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Bill in the Lok Sabha on 31 July 2000, the new state of Chhattisgarh was carved out of MP with Ajit Jogi the first CM between 2000 and 2003.

session.

Congress factionalism even after the formation of a separate state between the Ajit Jogi and V. C. Shukla factions contributed to the loss of the region in the 2003 state assembly elections. The latter, angry at being ignored by the central leadership, joined the Congress Party (NCP) just before the elections to ensure that the former did not become the Chief Minister. As a result, the NCP got only one seat in Chhattisgarh, but 8.95 per cent of the vote which affected Congress fortunes (Sharma and Sharma 2003). Detailed results show that the NCP ensured the BJP’s victory in nearly 20 seats, securing 4 to 21 per cent of the votes polled. The combined Congress-NCP vote in these seats was way ahead of the BJP, that contrary to all expectations gained 50 seats against 36 for the Congress.24 In a straight contest, the Congress could have defeated the BJP and retained Chhattisgarh after its formation if it had been able to unite the party during the elections. More than the BJP, it was the factionalism between the Shukla and Jogi factions that contributed to the defeat of the party in the state.

Nationalist

constituency-wise

Conclusion States Reorganisation was an important component of the project of nation building in the immediate post-independence period. It involved both bringing the princely states into independent India and redrawing the map of the subcontinent to reflect the desires of the people of the various regions. The principle used by the SRC, based on promises made during the national movement, was that of unity in diversity based on language, regional identity and large size to enable centralised planning and ensure effective use of national resources. This had different repercussions in different parts of the country. In southern India, it created states such as Madras, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh based on language and regional identities that had evolved over time and which were expected to hold the state together. However, in the Hindi heartland it created large states such as UP, MP, Rajasthan and Bihar that historically had no regional identity, consisted of a number of geographical and cultural sub-regions including princely states, and were carved out of administrative artifacts created by the British for colonial governance. The basic problem at independence in the states of the Hindi was creating political integration among the various sub-regions that were at different levels of economic, political and social Among them MP, standing in the middle of the subcontinent

heartland development.

with a number of cultural zones, a largely immigrant population, a number of tribal groups and many princely states provides a good example. The princely states, except in few cases such as Gwalior and Bhopal, had experienced autocratic systems of governance and were economically backward. The nationalist movement had not into these states until the late colonial period when praja mandals were established. The remaining regions, although governed by the British from the latter half of the 1800s and having experienced mobilisation by the INC, continued to maintain their distinctive cultural characteristics. Moreover, political developments in the colonial period such as organisation and mobilisation along sub-regional units by the INC contributed to the continuation of these divisions into the post-colonial period. While integration was a problem faced by many new states emerging out of colonialism, in contrast to the new states of Asia and Africa, in India it was to be carried out not through authoritarian/military means but through a democratic process. With the establishment of a democratic system on the foundations of a long nationalist movement, it was hoped that in the states of the Hindi heartland lacking a regional identity, through the functioning of institutions such as legislatures, the electoral system, political parties and common governance over a period of time, coherent states with an overarching composite holding the sub-systems together would evolve. Rapid economic development through five-year plans, it was felt, would provide support to the new federal structure. In states such as MP, which had not experienced regional/identity movements and thrown up parties such as the Dravidra Munetra Khazagam (DMK) in Madras state. It was the single dominant Congress party system as a broad-based umbrella organisation that could mobilise various sections of the people and hold the regions together, that was expected to function as the ‘party of integration’. In MP, the Congress had branches in all regions of the state and it was hoped that these would provide the foundation on which this process of integration would proceed. Analysis of the post-independence period shows that due to tall leaders in the Congress party such as Sardar Patel, the integration of the princely states and reorganisation of the states was successfully carried out throughout the country despite problems. There was no balkanisation of the subcontinent as feared by some scholars. In MP during the process of state formation, many different propositions were raised before the SRC over the manner in which the various regions

penetrated

subregional

identity

were to be integrated. While the state was formed on the basis of language, patterns of mobilisation in different regions and differences among regional Congress leaders in the colonial period also played a role, leaving a divisive legacy. However, the Congress party in the immediate post-independence period was able to gain the support of a cross section of the population, establish itself in a number of regions and emerge as a party of dominance. Opposition parties were initially weak and formed after independence. But this early phase proved to be brief due to endemic region-based factionalism coupled with the early establishment of a competitive two-party system with the rise of the Jan Sangh and later the BJP. Thus, whatever integration of the state took place, it was eventually under a system of two-party competition, not under a single dominant party system. By the late 1970s, demands for division of the state along lines began to be voiced, as the process of integration could not move towards fruition. Internal factionalism weakened the Congress organisation and did not allow the establishment of a strong and party. The lack of an inclusive party in which the lower castes/ classes could participate as equal members meant that factionalism was a struggle among upper caste/class regional leaders for power and patronage. In the absence of strong leadership that could hold the party together, Congress factions based in regions competed for the Chief Ministership and important posts in the government and the party. Organisational interests of the party remained neglected at the cost of ministerial ambitions. As a consequence, group and regional considerations very early gained the upper hand over the interests of the state as a whole. In the 1990s, intense electoral competition between the Congress and the BJP to capture the different regions, that in turn acerbated factionalism in the former, further intensified divisions leading to the formation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh.

subregional

coherent

Some lessons can be drawn from the MP experience that are of

relevance to the states in the Hindi heartland. The Congress party could not function as a party of integration creating an overarching composite state identity. Endemic factionalism within the Congress party played both a positive as well as a negative role. It allowed a number of different groups to co-exist within the party allowing it to be a broad-based umbrella organisation representing a number of groups and regions. However, it also created a loose, decentralised and region-based organisation that lacked strength and coherence. With the early establishment of a bipartisan structure, attention became focused on competitive populism rather than statewide development,

a feature that intensified in the 1990s with the emergence of coalition governments at the centre. These developments on political and economic governance seen in the continuation of backward regions within the state. It is these factors that led to the formation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh despite the absence of any strong grassroots movements. The movements in the late 1990s for a separate state were led by political leaders, primarily Congressmen, fuelled by internal competition to establish a support base in the region and keep out opponents. These primarily political movements did not focus on the backwardness of the Chhattisgarh region nor was this a significant demand for the formation of a separate state. As our study shows, even after the formation of the state, the Congress lost the 2003 elections more due to internal factional quarrels rather than the BJP, which traditionally did not have a strong base in the region.

unstable impacted

In sum, the MP experience suggests that division of large states in

the Hindi heartland such as MP, UP or Bihar into smaller states, as suggested by its advocates, will not necessarily translate into better governance or faster economic development. Some scholars, pointing to the experience of small states such as Haryana or Himachal Pradesh have argued that such a division will be of advantage in the case of the large BIMARU states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) in the Hindi heartland as well. Smaller states, it is held, will bring government closer to the people and enable improve However, our study indicates that this is not possible if the same structures of political competition and governance as in the larger states are continued in the new states. The mere breaking up of a state to create smaller ones alone will not bring about a basic transformation in governance or development as the example of Jharkhand testifies. Moreover, it is important to realise that the demand for a separate state of Chhattisgarh has been in existence in MP for a long time. It is only after the intensely competitive politics of the 1990s between the Congress and the BJP and factionalism within the former that this demand was granted. Instead, the new states created must build inclusive political structures that will bring all regions and groups including the dalits and tribals, towards working for regional, social and economic development. This is possible only when these states are able to move beyond divisive politics to a more genuine democratic politics that encompasses all sections. The reshaping of the states of the Hindi heartland, including MP, lie in this direction.

administration.

Notes 1. The title ‘Making of a Political Community’ is borrowed from Wilcox (1968). 2. For UP, see Kudaisya (2006); for Rajasthan, see Sisson (1972); for MP, see Wilcox (1968); for Bihar, see Brass (1974). 3. This aspect has not been dealt with in this chapter. See Shah (2005). 4. The role of the States Department and of Sardar Patel is dealt with in Menon (1956). 5. For a detailed day-to-day description of the process whereby the various regions were amalgamated into MP, see ibid. 6. ‘Congress Defeat is Nearly Certain in MP’, Tenth of the Series ‘1967 General Election’, The Times of India, 26 December 1966, New Delhi. 7. This section, except where otherwise stated, draws upon Pai (2010). 8. Link, p. 28, 5 July 1964, New Delhi, quoted in ibid.: 155. 9. The Times of India, 3 August 1964, quoted in Wilcox (1968: 156). 10. ‘Mr Shukla’s Return’, The Times of India, 25 December 1975. 11. ‘P. C. Sethi says Threat to Leadership’, Statesman, 29 October 1974, New Delhi. 12. National Herald, 28 June 1976, New Delhi. 13. The Times of India, 14 June 1980, New Delhi. 14. Channaor chickpea is a major pulse grown in large parts of MP, especially in Indore, Bhopal and Vidisha. It is easily affected by the amount of moisture in the soil. In the late 1970s, the crop was spoilt due to untimely rain leading to it becoming gulabi or pink in colour. The state government provided relief to farmers but the funds were siphoned off by middlemen leading to a scandal which was investigated by the Bhave Commission. This scandal contributed to the removal of Mishra as chief minister and appointment of Arjun Singh in his place by Mrs Gandhi. 15. Deccan Herald, 12 June 2007, Bangalore. 16. News Time, 5 May 1985. 17. ‘Another People’s Leader’, The Statesman, 27 May 1987, New Delhi. 18. The Times of India, 15 February 1988, New Delhi. 19. The Times of India, 28 January 1989, New Delhi. 20. ‘TenduPolicy, Key Issue in Chhattisgarh’, The Hindu, 10 November 1993, Chennai. 21. Discussion with Satyadev Katare and other Congress MLAs at Bhopal, August 2007. 22. The BJP performed well in its traditional stronghold of Malwa and Bhopal, particularly in the areas of the former princely states where the RSS had developed roots very early, and which the Congress has not been able to enter into. In 1993, the BJP retained more than three-fifth of the 50 seats it had been able to win in 1990 that left it with a majority of seats in

the region. In Bhopal it won nine seats out of 12, as against 11 in 1990. In contrast, the Congress performed well in the Mahakoshal area. In 1990 here, the BJP had won 61 out of 76 seats but in 1993 its tally was reduced to 23, similar to its performance in 1985 when it was able to win only 15 seats. Nor did the BJP do well in Gwalior and Vindhya Pradesh in 1993: in the former, it had won three-fourth of the seats in 1990 but could retain only half of them in 1993; in the latter, its strength fell by half. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP had managed to make inroads into this region in the 1985 state assembly elections; it gained five seats in 1990 but in 1993 it won 34 seats. 23. There was little support from other parties. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) stated that there was no basis for the creation of a new state. The party’s State secretary Shailendra Shaily argued that in the 1950s, new states were created on the basis of language, which was rational. The demand for Chhattisgarh ‘stems from political reasons rather than from any genuine popular movement. The language spoken here is Chhattisgarhi and the script used is Devnagari. So, Hindi will continue to be the official language of the new State,’ he pointed out. 24. For instance, in Dondi Lohara, the BJP got 40.64 and the Congress 31.18 per cent of the votes. What made the difference was the NCP’s 21.74 per cent share. Likewise, at Mahasamund, the BJP won by a little over 1 per cent margin in a three-way contest that saw the NCP cornering 15.48 per cent of the votes. Pronounced in individual constituencies, this trend found equal expression at the state level; the BJP’s 35.02 per cent vote was only a fraction more than the Congress’ 34.98. See Sharma and Sharma (2003). See also, Katyal (2004).

References Ahmed, Bashiruddin and V. B. Singh. 1976. ‘Dimensions of Party System Change: The Case of Madhya Pradesh’, in D. L. Sheth (ed.), Citizens and Parties Aspects of Competitive Politics in India. Delhi: Allied. Ali, Syed Ashfaq. 1970. Bhopal Past and Present. Bhopal: Jai Bharat Publishing House. Almond, Gabriel and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Apter, David. 1965. The Politics of Modernization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baker, D. E. U. 1979. Changing Political Leadership in an Indian Province: the Central Provinces and Berar. Delhi: OUP. Bendix, Reinhard. 1977. Nation-building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brass, Paul R. 1974. Language, Religion and Politics in North India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chandidas, R. 1967. ‘The Fourth General Elections Madhya Pradesh: A Case Study’, Economic and Political Weekly , II (33–35): 1503–14. Choudhary, Neerja. 1998. ‘Mandal Winds Blow in MP’, The Indian Express, 24 November, Chennai. Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). 1978. ‘Divide and Dominate’, EPW, 13 (16): 680. Finkle, Jason L. and W. Gable Richard. eds.1971. Political Development and Social Change, 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Geertz, Clifford. 1963. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays . New York: Basic Books. Government of India. 1955. ‘Report of the States Reorganization Commission 1955’. Delhi: Manager of Publications. Gupta, Shaibal. 2005. ‘Socio-economic Base of Political Dynamics in Madhya Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly , 40 (48): 5093–5104. Huntington, Samuel. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Katyal, K. K. 2004. ‘The Politics of the Strategic Vote’, The Hindu, 8 April, Chennai. Khan, M. A. 1988. History of British India (Administrative System . Delhi: Shree Publishing House. Kodesia, Krishna. 1969. The Problems of Linguistic States In India. Delhi: Sterling Publishers Ltd. Kohli, Atul. 1987. State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kudaisya, Gyanesh. 2006. Region, Nation ‘Heartland’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic. Delhi: Sage. Kumar, B. B. 1998. Small States Syndrome in India. Delhi: Concept Publishing. LaPalombara, Joseph and Myron Weiner. ed. 1966. ‘Impact of Parties on Political Development’, in Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (ed.), Political Parties and Political Development, pp. 399–435. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Majeed, Akhtar. 2003. ‘The Changing Politics of States’ Reorganization’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 33 (4): 83–98. Menon V. P. 1956. The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. Mumbai: Orient Longmans Ltd. Mitra, Subrata. 1990. ‘Political Integration and Party Competition in Madhya Pradesh: Congress and the Opposition in Parliamentary Elections: 1977–1984’, in Richard Sisson and Ramashray Roy (eds), Diversity and Dominance in Indian Politics: Changing Bases of Congress Support , vol. 1, pp. 168–90. Delhi: Sage. Morris-Jones. W. H. and Biplab Dasgupta. 1968. ‘Fourth General Election in Madhya Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly , 3 (1/2): 178–80. Mukerji, Krishna P. and Suhasini Ramaswamy. 1955. Reorganization of Indian States. Mumbai: Popular Book Depot.

O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley: University of California. Pai, Sudha. 2010. Dalit Question and Political Response: the Congress Party’s Experiment with Land Distribution and Supplier Diversity in Madhya Pradesh , New Delhi: Routledge. Purohit, B. R. 1975. ‘The Congress Party in Madhya Pradesh since 1967’, Indian Journal of Politics , 9 (2): 202–25. Pye, L. W. 1958. ‘The Non-Western Political Process’, Journal of Politics, 20 (3): 468–86. Roy, Dunnu. 2002. ‘Land Reforms, People’s Movements and Protests’, in Praveen Jha (ed.), Land Reforms in India: Issues of Equity in Rural Madhya Pradesh, vol. 7, pp. 33–50. Delhi: Sage. Shah, Mihir. 2005. ‘Ecology, Exclusion and Reform in MP: Introduction’, Economic and Political Weekly , 40 (48): 5001–9. Sharma, K. K. 1967. ‘The State of MP’, The Statesman, 5 January. Sharma, Vinod and Rajnish Sharma. 2003. ‘Shukla Spelt Jogi’s Doom’, The Hindustan Times, 5 December, Delhi. Singh, N. K. 1977. 8 October 1977, Economic and Political Weekly, 12 (4): 1729–30. Sisson, Richard. 1972. The Congress Party in Rajasthan: Political Integration and Institution Building in an Indian State. Berkley: University of California Press. Spate, D. H. K. and A. T. A. Learmouth. 1967. India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography. London: Methuen & Co. Venkatesan, V. 2000. ‘Chhattisgarh: Quiet Arrival’, Frontline, 17 (17), 19 August–1 September. Verma, Rajendra. 1984. The Freedom Struggle in the Bhopal State: A Gambit in the Transfer of Power. Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1961. Africa: the Politics of Independence. New York: Vintage Books. Wilcox, Wayne. 1968. ‘Madhya Pradesh’, in Myron Weiner (ed.), State Politics in India, pp. 127–72. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

4 Reorganising the Hindi Heartland in 2000: The Deep Regional Politics of State Formation Louise Tillin In November 2000, three new states came into being in India: Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Several features stand out about this most recent reorganisation of borders within India’s federal system. In the first place, it involved the division of three large states— Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh— in the so-called Hindi heartland of north-central India. This was the first time since independence that a central government had agreed to a largely non-linguistic rationale for granting statehood. Second, given that the prominence and influence of these states in national political life had often been explained in part by the large number of parliamentary seats they wielded, we might not have expected to see chief ministers agreeing easily to their bifurcation. The rhetorical resistance of Bihar’s Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, who exclaimed ‘Jharkhand mere lash par banega!’ (‘Jharkhand over my dead body!’), was more in keeping with expectations. Yet from the early 1980s, leaders of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had begun to toy with political strategies that had the effect of promoting the idea of dividing their states. 1 Not only were they pursuing politics that might have had the effect of diminishing their future political power, they were acquiescing in a potential reduction of the revenue base of the state in the future. Third, one might expect some degree of counter-mobilisation— such as has been evident in the case of Telangana in 2009–2010— from groups who expected to lose out as a result of border change. But by the time that the new states were created, there was no significant opposition to statehood within the regions that became states and the resistance that had existed in some parent states had been largely overcome.

m Louise Tillin

This chapter has a limited ambition: to explain why a variety of actors at the subnational level in north India began to think that it was to their advantage to politicise the question of state borders. It will ask why such a significant degree of consensus emerged around the idea of creating new states given that, for the reasons listed above, the issue had the potential to be contentious. I will suggest that the reorganisation of the Hindi heartland reflected the gradual shifting of the tectonic plates of federal political geography in response to distinct and evolving logics of politics at different levels of the federal system since the late 1960s. Three levels can be singled out as important: the national, state and sub-state (regions of individual states). In this chapter, I will focus on the two subnational levels (state and sub-state). I largely leave aside the national level of analysis, not because it is insignificant but because I seek to highlight the deep regional roots of state creation.2 Article 3 of the Constitution, which sets out the right of Parliament at the centre to create new states or change boundaries on the basis of a simple parliamentary majority, appears to set Indian federalism apart from other federal systems which give greater protection to states’ rights in these matters. But one of the most significant aspects of the central government approach to the question of states reorganisation over time has been its disavowal of an interventionist role in setting a clear agenda for the revision of internal federal borders. The central has, over time, left space for consensus-building at the regional level. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government moved ahead with plans to create certain states between 1998–2000, it did so where there was already a large degree of consensus at the state- and sub-state level in favour of bifurcation. This was partly— but not only— as a result of decisions by local BJP politicians to support longer standing demands for statehood.

government

The three new states are all richly endowed with natural resources

—minerals, forests and water— and have been home to prominent social movements, including Chipko, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha which were all formed in the early 1970s. These three movements, in different ways, problematised the pattern and consequences for local populations of resource extraction and conditions in the extractive industries which had developed in their respective regions. These currents of protest intersected with identity-based movements— among tribal communities in Jharkhand (and to a lesser extent also among tribals and Scheduled Castes in Chhattisgarh) and hill-dwellers in Uttarakhand, some of which also

Reorganising the Hindi Heartlandm

demanded statehood. This has led to the suggestion that the granting of statehood should be seen as an institutional recognition of the of these movements and of the historical injustice meted out to certain communities as a side-effect of patterns of economic I will argue here that we should approach such readings with a degree of caution. Not only did state creation take place at some from periods of heightened mass mobilisation and in the absence of such mobilisation in Chhattisgarh, it only occurred once broad based pro-statehood coalitions had formed in electoral politics: these became more than simply coalitions of the disadvantaged.

demands development. distance Table 4.1: Scheduled Tribe Table 4.1: Scheduled Tribe and and Scheduled Scheduled Caste Caste Population Population of of the the New New States States State

Chhattisgarh Jharkhand Uttarakhand Source'.

Scheduled Castes (2001)

Scheduled Tribes (2001)

11.6% 11.8% 17.9%

26.3% 3%

31.8%

Government of India (2001).

This chapter is divided into three parts. It begins by considering existing explanations for state creation in the Hindi heartland. The second section looks at the role of chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in helping to create a situation where borders became part of the currency of politics. The third section focuses on the reasons for a convergence of opinion around the idea of statehood within the regions of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand that were to become states. At the state level, a gradual realignment of politics had been

taking place in north India from the late 1960s. The most important structural change arose from what Christophe Jaffrelot has called the ‘silent revolution’ that swept north Indian politics in this period as a result of the rise to political power of lower castes (2003: 55) and, in places, the emergence of locally dominant landowning castes who had benefited from land reforms and the Green Revolution. These changes took place alongside— and compounded— the decline of Congress Party dominance across north India. In this chapter, I argue that the regionally differentiated nature of the gradual assertion of political independence by the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and groups of farmers especially, served to slowly change the logic of the existing boundaries of north India. As Zoya Hasan notes of Uttar Pradesh, it was upper-caste dominance of politics that had provided

the ‘framework of political bonding in a fragmented society’ in that state (1998: 19). Similar could be said of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. As distinct political arenas were consolidated within each state as a result of the politicisation of middle and lower castes in different ways and time periods in individual regions of large states, some state-wide leaders began to endorse and pursue politics that brought the borders of their existing states— hitherto tacitly legitimised by patterns of social dominance— into question. At the sub-state or peripheral level, political leaders were more

embedded in the local political economy of these resource-rich than state-wide leaders. A critical part of the story here is the interaction between politicians and actors in the various social and statehood movements that grew up in these regions. In each of the regions, the development of a local BJP leadership who— often with the encouragement of national leaders— began to support demands for statehood was centrally important. In Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, it was partly the competition between social movements and political parties, against the backdrop of the politics of caste-based empowerment that was transforming the politics of the rest of Bihar and UP, that led popular movements and political parties to converge around a shared goal of statehood. Support for statehood was particularly attractive for the BJP because it offered a potential means of demobilising some extra-parliamentary protest and attempting to channel this into electoral politics, while also allowing them to compete with pro-statehood parties. In Chhattisgarh, where there was no mass mobilisation in favour of statehood, the impetus for border change came largely from within the political elite and partly reflected the social mobility and politicisation of some lower caste communities within Chhattisgarh, as well as competition between Congress and the BJP.

regions

Existing Explanations There have been only a handful of attempts to explain the creation of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Most of these studies have argued that we should see state creation in the light of changes to the relationship between the central government and states in the 1990s, but differ as to whether they analyse state creation as a product of an evolving system of ethnic conflict management or as a result of changes in the party system.

One set of explanations frame states reorganisation as an institutional response to social and ethnic diversity. Maya Chadda sees the creation of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand as being made possible by a new self-confidence among national elites about the resilience of Indian federalism and the country’s territorial unity, especially following the resolution of conflicts in Assam, Punjab and Kashmir (2002: 53). ‘Despite serious limitations and glaring flaws,’ she writes of India after 2000, ‘India’s federalism had finally forged a nation state from a vast array of diverse and divided ethnic entities’ (ibid.). As conflicts between the central government and the states began to ebb and regional parties found greater prominence in national political life, the creation of new states became a less challenging prospect for the central government to contemplate: it did not lead to soul-searching about the threat of national disintegration. Other authors suggest that the creation of the new states improved the representation of tribal or culturally distinct groups or that the bestowing of statehood was the culmination of struggles of social movements among marginalised populations in these regions (see, for example, Oommen 2004: 140; Guha 2007: 621). As I argue elsewhere, such shorthand explanations for the creation of new states can be misleading because they do not open up the political process by which the states came into being (Tillin 2011). Social movements made an important contribution to political life in these regions, but the prelude to state creation involved the emergence of tacit consensus around border change among groups with diverse interests and ethnic identities. Another set of arguments focus more on the regionalisation of

India’s party system since 1989, with the coming to power of caste-based parties in north India and the advent of national coalition government. David Stuligross has argued that national parties such as the BJP became increasingly likely to support statehood demands as they became ‘simultaneously more dependent on voters in neglected sub-regions (because state-level parties appeal to voters in the “other” part of their states with greater success) and less capable of promising substantive developmental benefits in exchange for votes’ (2001: 18). For Stuligross, it was both the decentralisation of budgetary control to state governments from the centre, as well as the increasing success of state-level parties, that explain the changing attitude of national towards regional movements. By supporting the creation of new states, national parties could seek to improve their influence in parts of states that were being governed by a new type of regional political party.

parties

A complementary argument is made by Emma Mawdsley who suggests that support for regional movements was particularly attractive to the BJP in light of the ‘clear potential political pay-offs (in terms of MPs and state governments)’ that would result from the creation of states (2002: 48). Even though the number of seats involved was relatively small (5 in Uttarakhand, 11 in Chhattisgarh and 14 in Jharkhand), she suggests that in the new era of unstable coalition government at the centre, a few seats either way could help determine who governs in a state, and even at the centre. Thus the advent of national coalition gave national party leaders greater incentives to respond to regional demands.

government

My argument has a good deal in common with those that highlight

the evolving party system in north India. It is important to note, however, that the national parties which were being sidelined into neglected sub-regions by the rise of new caste-based parties in north India were not parties which ever commanded electoral majorities across entire states in north India before they began to support statehood demands. Instead, they were national parties— such as the Socialist Party in Chhattisgarh, the Jan Sangh and later BJP in Jharkhand and Uttarakhand— which fostered sub-state political bases to increase their leverage against Congress initially. Offering support for statehood was one way that non-Congress parties could demonstrate their regional roots. The rise of national parties in these sub-state regions happened at the same time as the emergence of state-level parties elsewhere. The emergence of new national political formations (the Janata Party and BJP) and state-level parties was tied up with the dismantling of the era of one-party Congress dominance across the country. This is the backdrop against which consensus about the desirability of changing state borders gradually developed among a variety of different actors at the state and sub-state levels in north India. The roots of the slow evolving consensus around statehood were

deep and lead me to add an important extra layer of historical to arguments about why the BJP might have favoured the creation of these new states in 2000. It may be the case that the BJP’s central leadership banked on increasing their electoral presence in the regions which later became states, or on increasing the power of the centre by dividing large, politically influential states. But the party’s regional leaders were involved in a more complex game, entangled with longer term structural changes in north Indian politics. Changes

complexity

in the nature of government formation in New Delhi and the instability of coalition governments in the 1990s are, as Mawdsley emphasises, important in understanding the immediate decision-making context of national party leaders. They help to explain why national parties might be more sympathetic to the creation of more states in 1998–2000 when legislation to carry out this reorganisation of states was tabled in the national parliament. But it was the achievement of political consensus at the regional level that was important in ensuring that certain statehood demands were acted upon by the BJP-led national government in the late 1990s (and why others such as Telangana and Vidarbha outside the Hindi heartland were not). This chapter therefore highlights the longer term process of political negotiation and contestation at the regional level. Unlikely Parents: State Leaders and Demands for Statehood In this section, I set out how in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, two different types of chief minister— one a lower caste leader of a regional party and the other an upper caste Congress politician —began to bring the borders of their state into question. I suggest that they did this as part of a bid to consolidate a shift in the social base of electoral politics and undermine the hold on power of upper caste politicians, especially their rivals, in the region for which statehood was being proposed. These processes took place in two large states of the Hindi belt in which upper caste dominance of politics had lasted significantly longer than in the linguistic states of south and west India (Jaffrelot 2003: 7). In the absence of strong countervailing identities or founding myths, I propose that it became relatively uncontentious for chief ministers to toy with borders.

statewide

As Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph have argued, the 1980 election

was a watershed moment for the Congress. Even though the party returned to power at the national level, they could not simply revert to pre-1977 modes of politics and hope to survive (Rudolph and Rudolph 1981). Though the Congress continued to win national electoral majorities, it faced an increasing array of regional opposition. Political participation among OBCs had increased markedly by the early 1970s and new political parties sought to mobilise voters along caste lines, consolidating different types of electoral coalition. The survival of state-level politicians depended on their adaptation to the new political climate of deepening social participation in politics. One part of a

strategy of adaptation to the emerging political landscape by both Congress and non-Congress leaders was to encourage a new ‘politics of borders’. Caste demography and the intensity of lower caste political mobilisation varied across regions within states. A more assertive class of owner-cultivator farmers emerged in some regions of north Indian states, but nowhere were they to be found in all regions of a state. In this context, some state-level leaders seized on statehood demands as one means of coming to terms with the decentralised political landscape within their states. This chapter takes only a snapshot view of this process, focusing on two periods in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh when the actions of a state leader helped to bring the borders of their state into question. Arjun Singh (Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh from 1980–1985, and 1988–1989) an upper caste Thakur, came to power in Madhya Pradesh as Congress took over from the Janata Party government of 1977–1980. On becoming the chief minister, he faced two major challenges. First, if the Congress Party were to survive in the region he needed to adapt to the new political landscape that had come to fruition in the three years of Janata rule. The party had to build new social alliances and Arjun Singh was the first Congress chief minister in Madhya Pradesh to explicitly seek to include lower castes in the ruling coalition. This was a state that had long been dominated by a very narrow range of societal interests drawn from a handful of prosperous families, many of which were the former rulers of princely states. 3 The second major challenge for Arjun Singh was to keep his factional competitors at bay, especially the Shukla brothers (Vidyacharan or VC and Shyamacharan or SC), in Chhattisgarh. I suggest that the promotion of a regional Chhattisgarhi identity helped him address both these challenges: (a) by attempting to build alliances with lower castes and classes in Chhattisgarh, and seeking to maintain their allegiance to Congress, and (b) by isolating the Shukla brothers on their home turf by encouraging a focus on their ‘non-Chhattisgarhi origins’. Arjun Singh saw the potential to reach out to the large population

of politically available OBCs across Madhya Pradesh. In the absence of widespread mobilisation from below (for example, through farmers movements as seen in other states in this period), he pursued a largely top-down approach. He began by implementing some (limited) affirmative action policies and inducting more OBCs into politics.4 In doing so, he was ahead of many other north Indian leaders (Gupta 2005). But where there had been some mobilisation of farmers in the

state—

by the Socialist Party in Chhattisgarh, for example— he attempted to align with this social stratum, with the added incentive of seeking to marginalise his major opponents in the party. In Chhattisgarh

—the ‘rice bowl’— there was some fertile agricultural land (although this should not be overstated— it was largely dependent on rain-fed ir igation)5 — and some OBC landowning, cultivating castes who exerted a degree of social and economic dominance. It was these castes, Kurmis, who had been involved in kisan (farmer) and socialist politics in Chhattisgarh, including land rights campaigns, and had periodically demanded the creation of a separate state of Chhattisgarh. While the Jan Sangh had been the dominant player in the Janata government in the rest of Madhya Pradesh, the Socialists had developed a pocket of strength in Chhattisgarh. The Kurmi leader Khubchand Baghel had set up the Chhattisgarh Mahasabha in 1956, after leaving Congress to join the Socialist Party. Purushottam Kaushik, another Kurmi Socialist politician, had defeated the region’s prominent Congress leader V. C. Shukla in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections on a platform of statehood for Chhattisgarh (as well as opposition to the Emergency). Later, Arjun Singh promoted another Kurmi member of Parliament (MP) Chandulal Chandraker, who went on to become the most well known advocate for the creation of a separate state in the late 1980s and early 1990s (when he was also a national Congress spokesperson in Delhi). Chhattisgarh had a considerably smaller upper caste population than elsewhere in Madhya Pradesh (about 3 per cent compared to 13 per cent across Madhya Pradesh)6 and a larger proportion of the population belonged to OBC castes. This provided an important backdrop for the politics Arjun Singh was to pursue.

particularly

Arjun Singh did not initially explicitly support the idea of statehood.

Instead, in the early 1980s, he made symbolic gestures to a Chhattisgarhi identity by, for example, honouring ‘heroes’ of Chhattisgarh by erecting statues, endowing a new university chair and so on. The first champions of a Chhattisgarhi identity— in prose at least— were Chhattisgarhi Brahmins. But the Chhattisgarhi identity promoted by Arjun Singh explicitly reached out to lower castes too— OBCs, Scheduled Castes or Satnamis— as well as adivasis (indigenous on tribal communities, otherwise known as Scheduled Tribes). He sought to fan the resentment of such groups about the domination of politics and in the region by a small elite of ‘non-Chhattisgarhi Brahmins’ such as the Shukla brothers— his factional rivals. Both S. C. Shukla and V. C. Shukla were sons of Ravishankar Shukla— the first chief minister

administration

of Madhya Pradesh, whose political base was in Chhattisgarh. The former (S. C.) was a key state-level leader, and the latter (V. C.) a national player too. They were Kanyakubja Brahmins (who became known as ‘non-Chhattisgarhi Brahmins’), a community who had generally moved to Chhattisgarh in the last 100–200 years, often to take up administrative jobs or positions in industry. They were more recent arrivals than the landowning Saryupali Brahmins (who became known as ‘Chhattisgarhi Brahmins’). Arjun Singh tried to woo rivals of the Shuklas among lower castes, as well as Chhattisgarhi Brahmins, into the Congress. V. C. Shukla (who developed a reputation for being to statehood), unsurprisingly, questioned the depth of Singh’s commitment to statehood, or to the promotion of lower castes from the region. He said: ‘Arjun Singh’s entire or sole aim was to weaken our position in Chhattisgarh. Those that he promoted were not supporters of Chhattisgarh, but opponents of ours.’7 By 1993, and possibly before, Arjun Singh had begun to speak openly in favour of statehood for Chhattisgarh. It was also in this period that the Chhattisgarh Rajya Nirman Manch (Chhattisgarh State Creation Campaign) was formed to lead the campaign for a separate state. The first resolution on statehood for Chhattisgarh was passed in the Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly under Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in 1994. However, arguably it was Arjun Singh’s politics that laid the groundwork for a politics in which borders were called into question. It was under Arjun Singh that a state-wide leader had first entertained the idea of changing the borders of Madhya Pradesh, although the demand for statehood in Chhattisgarh never developed the character of a mass movement as in Jharkhand and Uttarakhand.

opposed

In contrast to Arjun Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav (Chief Minister

of Uttar Pradesh from 1989–1991, 1993–1995, 2003–2007) was a Socialist leader who rose to power on the back of a new social coalition of OBCs, especially Yadavs, in eastern and central Uttar Pradesh (UP). This was the high tide of the politics of Mandal and a central part of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s platform was his support for caste-based reservations. Yadav also encouraged the demand for a hill state for reasons which were similar to Arjun Singh: to make life uncomfortable for his opponents (for Mulayam Singh Yadav, this meant his opponents in Congress and the BJP) and to consolidate his own political base in UP outside the hills. In Mulayam Singh Yadav’s case, however, the aspiring lower castes to whom he sought to appeal lay geographically

outside the putative breakaway region of Uttarakhand, which had an overwhelmingly upper caste population. Mulayam Singh Yadav realised the possibility of using the statehood demand to consolidate his own position in UP outside the hills almost unwittingly. Previously he had paid lip service to his appreciation of the problems of the hills, misunderstood by planners in the plains areas of the state. He passed a resolution supporting statehood after becoming chief minister in 1993 and appointed the Kaushik Committee to look into the grievances of the hills. It was only after he unintentionally provoked mass popular mobilisation in the hills of Uttarakhand that he saw the potential to use the idea of statehood in order to pursue his own goals in the rest of UP. This mobilisation followed the government’s attempt to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations for 27 per cent reservations for OBCs, despite the fact that OBCs comprised only 2 per cent of population in the hill districts. A series of protests began in July 1994 in the hills against the new quotas in higher education because they were seen as discriminating against the local population who would effectively lose places in local universities as a result of the new affirmative action for OBCs. It was feared that students would migrate to Uttarakhand to take up these new reserved places in local universities. It should be noted that the protestors in Uttarakhand were not protesting about reservations as a wider point of principle but saw them as discriminating against Uttarakhandis more generally because of the small number of OBCs in the hills (Mawdsley 1996). In the early days, the protests were not immediately concerned with the question of statehood. However gradually, demonstrators began to fuse their frustration about the new reservations policy with the longer standing demand for the hills to be separated from the rest of UP. Before this, the idea of statehood had been promoted by political parties more than civil society movements. In the 1950s, the question of statehood had been raised by P. C. Joshi, member of the Communist Party of India. The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) was later formed in 1979 to campaign for statehood, and leaders of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the region supported the idea of statehood from the early 1980s. The anti-reservation protests began as non-party movements led by students at first, but soon spread into a broader movement in both regions of Uttarakhand (Kumaon and Garhwal). This movement encompassed many older social movement activists as well as new

types of protestors including ex-servicemen. It seems unlikely that the state government had anticipated that the decision to extend reservations for OBCs in higher education institutions across Uttar Pradesh would provoke a regional movement in Uttarakhand. As a top bureaucrat in UP in the early 1990s said in an interview, confirming the fears of those who argued for statehood for the hill region on the basis of regional neglect, ‘Uttarakhand just didn’t figure too much in mainline politics in Uttar Pradesh’.8 Once the protests had started, however, Mulayam Singh Yadav made mileage of them for similar reasons that Arjun Singh had encouraged the emergence of a regional identity in Chhattisgarh. Yadav sought to use the protests to achieve two goals: first, to cement a fraying political coalition among lower castes outside the hills (not in the region demanding statehood like Arjun Singh) by portraying the protestors in the hills as chauvinistic upper castes opposed to For the first time, a state government dominated by OBCs, Dalits and Muslims had come to power in Uttar Pradesh in 1993. This was a coalition between Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party or BSP (Hasan 1998: 161). However by mid-1994— just the point at which the agitation in Uttarakhand began— there were serious tensions between the coalition partners (Duncan 1997).9 The crisis in Uttarakhand provided an opportunity for Mulayam Singh Yadav to highlight his credentials as a champion of lower caste empowerment through the reservations system. Yadav’s second goal was to make life difficult for the BJP by portraying the party, which supported statehood, as pro-upper caste. He also sought to increase the disarray of the Congress Party in the state (and nationally) by exploiting divisions between its biggest leader in Uttar Pradesh, three-time former Chief Minister N. D. Tiwari who hailed from the hills of Uttarakhand, and the Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Yadav made deliberately inflammatory statements and, as Mawdsley writes, it seemed that the state government was actually trying to intensify the struggle— for example, by calling a pro-reservation bandh in September 1994 (1997: 116). A series of subsequent incidents, including serious episodes of police firing on protestors, increased the tension between the plains and the hills. But although he labelled the protestors in Uttarakhand as ‘anti-lower caste’ and ‘anti-reservation’, Yadav continued to say that he supported the granting of statehood to the region.

reservations.

These tactics left the Congress in a bind, especially because it was

supporting Mulayam Singh Yadav’s state government from the outside.

The Congress Party had been losing upper caste support to the BJP for some time as many upper castes turned to Hindu nationalism and the campaign for a Ram Mandir, which the BJP used to compete with the politics of caste-based empowerment of the OBCs. The Congress, therefore, did not want to lose further ground among upper castes by appearing to oppose the demand for a hill state. In August 1994, at the height of the protests in the hills, N. D. Tiwari— a Brahmin— was reappointed as Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president, replacing the backward caste Mahabir Prasad, in a bid to rejuvenate the party organisation. 10 The chief minister skilfully exploited the divisions between Prime Minister Rao and the UPCC chief. At the state level, Tiwari began to campaign for Congress to withdraw the support it was giving to the Yadav government from outside in the legislative assembly because of its failure to deal appropriately with the protests in Uttarakhand. However, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Congress leaders at the centre did not support Tiwari and simply urged the Chief Minister to negotiate with the protestors. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s aim, wrote columnist Manoj Joshi, was to use the Uttarakhand agitation to marginalise Tiwari and transform him into a ‘minor hill politician’ and also to regain the momentum he had lost while being in a coalition government with the BSP (Joshi 1994). One Congress MP summed up the predicament of the party: ‘Mulayam Singh is running the government with the help of the Congress, yet he is blackmailing us. If we withdraw support, he will say we are anti-reservation; if we don’t, he grows stronger at our expense.’11 The result was that although the Narasimha Rao played a delaying game over whether it supported statehood for Uttarakhand, or not, a large degree of consensus in favour of statehood emerged among political players in both the Uttarakhand region and the parent state of UP.

government Thus in both Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, tensions thrown

up by the rise of lower caste politics and the challenge to upper caste social and political dominance, created reasons for chief ministers to encourage the questioning of state borders. The political leadership of north Bihar, on the other hand, made no pre-emptive strategic to sponsor a regional movement in south Bihar. This stemmed in large part from fear of losing the revenues generated by industry in Jharkhand, as well as the real threat of an existing statehood movement in the region. However, there was also a political dynamic too. competition within state politics in Bihar tended to be structured

decision

Factional

around caste leaders rather than regional leaders— unlike Madhya Pradesh (Singh 1975). This gave north Bihari politicians in Congress less of an incentive to give encouragement to a regional movement in Jharkhand because none of their major competitors within the party were dependent on a power base in Jharkhand. Creating New Political Space: Political Entrepreneurs in the Periphery So far, we have considered the possible incentives for chief ministers to behave in a way that helped to question the fixedness of borders in north India. There were also important and, in many ways, independent developments occurring at the sub-state level as political parties reacted to local social movements and sought to create new electoral space for themselves. Regional political leaders created both their own opportunities, and seized on those created by chief ministers, to make space for themselves in regions that, as a result of what could be called the political or demographic geography of empowerment, lay outside the core political constituency of the whole state. This section will focus particularly on why local leaders of the BJP came to support calls for statehood that had been initially associated with social movements or other political parties. In each region, BJP leaders latched on to statehood as a means of

neutralising the appeal of a major competitor. In Uttarakhand, the UKD, a regional party, established in 1979 to campaign for was the BJP’s main rival in their bid to dislodge the Congress. In Jharkhand, the BJP sought to steal ground from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), which was established in 1972 as a vehicle for uniting worker and agrarian struggles by supporting the demand for statehood (albeit for a truncated version of Jharkhand just comprising the districts of south Bihar).12 It seems likely that the BJP (and Congress who entered into an electoral pact with the JMM) saw advantages in drawing the statehood issue back into electoral politics and thereby encouraging the demobilisation of agitational politics led by non-party formations. In Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, the BJP sought to distance themselves from the existing demands for statehood by adopting names for the state-to-be: Vananchal and Uttaranchal. The party officially adopted the demands for these states in 1989. It is notable that both these regions lay outside the principal arenas of caste-based

statehood,

different

politics pursued by Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh. This made these regions more natural ground for the BJP. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP appeared to adopt the demand for in their 1993 manifesto in order not to lose out to Congress if the Congress also adopted this demand. One former BJP politician, who supported the statehood idea, described the process as one of “‘constructive competition” between the BJP and Congress. The BJP thought if we don’t support creation of the state, the Congress will and the Congress thought, if we don’t support state creation then BJP will. So both parties supported state creation.’13 In the 1990 state elections, the BJP had emerged as a strong challenger to the Congress in Chhattisgarh— in both the tribal areas of the state (where the Jan Sangh had historically had a presence) as well as the plains (where their presence had previously been minimal). But they had suffered a setback in the 1991 elections when the Congress achieved a clear sweep of the region’s 11 parliamentary seats. After the death in 1995 of the leading Congress spokesperson for Chhattisgarh Chandulal Chandraker, the BJP then seized the opportunity to take over of the statehood campaign.14 As it had been for chief ministers, the idea of statehood was to national and regional leaders of the BJP who were seeking to widen the social base of their party. It is perhaps telling that one of the national BJP leaders who was pivotal in overcoming the opposition of north Bihar leaders to the creation of Jharkhand/Vananchal was Govindacharya, the architect of the party’s policy of ‘social engineering’ and the general secretary responsible for Bihar. After the BJP’s former leaders in Jharkhand, Inder Singh Namdhari and Samresh Singh (who had pushed the party to accept the statehood demand in the late 1980s), quit the party BJP in 1990, Govindacharya encouraged the promotion of new regional leaders in Jharkhand. Key among these was Babulal Marandi— a Santhal adivasi (and a former VHP pracharak or worker) who went on to defeat JMM chief Shibu Soren in 1998 and become the first chief minister of Jharkhand in 2000.15 Reaching out to lower castes was not such an issue for the BJP in the upper caste dominated Uttarakhand hills. However, in Chhattisgarh, key proponents of statehood within the BJP such as Chandrashekhar Sahu and Keshav Singh Thakur, were also supporters of the ‘social engineering’ approach. It could be argued that offering support to campaigns for statehood was a means by which the BJP could

statehood

leadership attractive

send signals to lower castes, or groups that felt excluded from the ruling coalition while the region was part of Madhya Pradesh, while seeking to construct electoral majorities that overcame what the party regarded as the divisive potential of exclusive political appeals to caste or tribal identities. In each region, the BJP was also encouraged to support statehood

by their allies in the RSS, the Hindu nationalist volunteer social organisation, who sought to minimise the disruptive implications of social and economic change in the region. In Uttarakhand, this goal took the form of a concern about the implications for national security of large-scale migration from this hill region which bordered China. Statehood was necessary for the region in order to enable economic development to take place, they argued, and to stem migration (see, for example, Nityanand 2004). In Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the RSS and their political wing, the Jan Sangh (and later the BJP), wanted to counter the influence of the church in tribal areas. Christian tribals, who tended to be the more educationally and economically advanced communities among tribals such as Jaipal Singh, had been at the forefront of the demand for statehood in Jharkhand. In all three new states, the main rhetorical explanation for the statehood demand and the sloganeering used by BJP leaders was that of regional neglect. By focusing attention on regional neglect and the need for redistribution on a regional basis— from the parent state to the new state, as a whole— leaders could use the statehood demand in an effort to avoid specifying promises about the redistribution of resources or power between different social groups within the region itself. This was consistent with wariness about class-based, caste or ethnic mobilisation of a type which some social movements had attempted in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Thus, at the sub-state level, party convergence around statehood represented another means of coming to terms with new forms of political mobilisation. This had the effect of helping to defuse possible opposition to statehood at a later stage. Conclusion This chapter has considered the gradual evolution of agreement among different political actors within regional arenas in favour of the creation of the newest states in India from Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. It has emphasised the uneven geographical spread of lower

castes and medium-sized owner cultivators, as well as the organisation of factional conflict in the parent states, as factors that help to explain the willingness of state-wide leaders to make mileage out of regional movements even though this meant countenancing the division of their states. At the sub-state level, I have shown how parties— especially the BJP— supported statehood in response both to popular movements as well as a desire to build broad non-ethnic regional political support bases. By converging in support of statehood, regional political leaders sought to neutralise the appeals to statehood made by rival political parties.

national

My intention in this chapter has not been to suggest that the creation

of new states was somehow an inevitable result of the evolution of a new political settlement within north Indian states. In a federal system, it is problematic to make a path-dependent argument — such that change at one level of the system will lead deterministically to change at another level. Instead, I have tried to suggest how by the late 1990s, the conditions at the state level were fertile for intervention to create new states by a national government that was so inclined. We should be careful to avoid the risk of teleology. There was nothing inevitable about the achievement of statehood for any of these regions as a result of the evolution of political conditions within the sub-state regions or their parent states. The states could only be created by a sympathetic central This fact should also lead us not to over-emphasise the depth of the pro-statehood sentiment held by regional politicians. They may have assumed that the actual bifurcation of their states was not a very likely outcome and so, politicising of borders appeared to be a relatively low-cost political manoeuvre. Even if this was the case, it seems likely that the slow dance of competing political parties and politicians around the idea of statehood made it easier for a central government to press ahead with the creation of states in these places —and not other regions where a similar degree of consensus had not emerged.

government.

By looking at the deep regional politics of state reorganisation,

this chapter has challenged some overly top-heavy images of Indian federalism. Precisely because the centre has not historically taken a clear line on statehood demands in Hindi-speaking states, it left space for the organic development of these demands through the political process at the sub-national level.

Notes 1. The current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati has also called for her state to be divided into three. See, for example, ‘Mayawati for Trifurcation of Uttar Pradesh’, Times of India, 11 December 2009. 2. Deeper analysis of the logic driving politics at each of the three levels can be found in Tillin (forthcoming). This essay draws on interviews and archival research conducted in each of the new states, their parent states and Delhi. 3. This was partly a result of Madhya Pradesh’s formation as an of Hindi-speaking regions hived off from the non-Hindi speaking states created in 1956. No dominant state-wide political class subsequently emerged in Madhya Pradesh and factionalism in the state’s Congress Party was probably the most notorious in the country. See Wilcox (1968); Mitra (1990). 4. In 1981, Arjun Singh established the Mahajan Commission to undertake a survey of the OBC population in the state and make recommendations to the government about their needs. The significance of Singh’s efforts to introduce lower castes into politics was repeatedly noted by a variety of interviewees during fieldwork in Chhattisgarh. 5. The average size of economical landholdings tends to be smaller in rice-growing regions than wheat-growing areas, but unlike ‘all’ other major rice-growing states in India, the majority of the area under rice cultivation in Madhya Pradesh (of which most was in the Chhattisgarh region), was comprised holdings of over 4 hectares (10 acres). See Government of India (1970–71). 6. See 1931 census data in Jaffrelot (1996: 113). 7. Interview with V. C. Shukla, Raipur, 4 December 2007. 8. Interview, New Delhi, 17 September 2007. 9. In 1995, the BSP withdrew support to the government forcing Mulayam Singh Yadav to resign. 10. ‘Tiwari has Task Cut Out for him in UP’, Times of India, 27 August 1994. 11. Congress MP Harikesh Bahadur, quoted in ‘Parties Make Capital of Uttarakhand Stir’, Times of India, 9 September 1994. 12. Inder Singh Namdhari, BJP state president (1988–1990) was explicit about this, explaining after he left the party because of differences with the state leadership: ‘It was owing to this [statehood] demand that we were able to compete with the JMM. But some leaders seem to be unable to swallow the idea.’ Quoted in ‘Namdhari Hits Out at Bosses, Quits Post’, Hindustan Time, 10 March 1990, Patna. 13. Interview, 7 December 2007, Raipur.

amalgamation

References Chadda, M. 2002. ‘Integration through internal reorganisation: Containing ethnic conflict in India’, Ethnopolitics, 2 (1), 44–61. Duncan, I. 1997. ‘New Political Equations in North India: Mayawati, Mulayam and Government Instability in Uttar Pradesh’,Asian Survey, 37 (10): 979–96. Government of India. 1970–1971. All India Report on Agricultural Census 1970–1971. Delhi: Department of Agriculture. ———. 2001. Census of India 2001. Delhi: Ministry of Home Affairs. Guha, R. 2007. India after Gandhi: The history of the World’s Largest Democracy . London: Macmillan. Gupta, S. 2005. ‘Socio-Economic Base of Political Dynamics in Madhya Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly , 40 (48): 5093–100. Hasan, Z. 1998. Quest for Power: Oppositional Movements and Post-Congress Politics in Uttar Pradesh. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jaffrelot, C. 1996. The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2003. India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. London: Hurst and Company. Joshi, M. 1994. ‘The Uttarakhand Question: Is Separation Necessary’, Times of India, 20 September, Delhi. Mawdsley, E. 1996. ‘Uttarakhand Agitation and Other Backward Classes’, Economic and Political Weekly , 31 (4): 205–10. ———. 1997. Non-Secessionist Regionalism in India: The Demand for a Separate State of Uttarakhand. Unpublished PhD dessertation, University of Cambridge. ———. 2002. ‘Redrawing the Body Politic: Federalism, Regionalism and the Creation of New States in India’, The Journal of Commonwealth and Politics, 40 (3): 34–54. Mitra, S. 1990. ‘Political Integration and Party Competition in Madhya Pradesh: Congress and the Opposition in Parliamentary Elections 1977–1984', in R. Sisson and R. Roy (ed.), Diversity and Dominance in Indian Politics , pp. 168–90. Delhi: Sage Publications. Nityanand, D. 2004. Uttaranchal: Itihasik Paridrshya evam Vikas Ke Aayam (Uttaranchal: Historical Perspective and extent of Development). Dehradun: Chavi Prakashan. Oommen, T. K. 2004. Nation, Civil Society and Social Movements. Delhi: Sage Publications. Rudolph, L. and S. H. Rudolph. 1981. ‘Transformation of Congress Party: Why 1980 was not a Restoration’, Economic and Political Weekly, 16 (18): 811–18. Singh, M. P. 1975. Cohesion in a Predominant Party: The Pradesh Congress and Party Politics in Bihar. Delhi: S. Chand and Co.

Comparative

Stuligross, D. 2001. A Piece of Land to Call One’s Own: Multicultural Federalism and Institutional Innovation in India . Unpublished Ph.D. dessertation, University of California. Tillin, L. 2011. ‘Questioning Borders: Social Movements, Political Parties and the Creation of New States in India’, Pacific Affairs , 84 (1): 67–87. Tillin, L. Forthcoming. Remapping India: The Politics of Borders in India. London: Hurst & Co. Wilcox, W. 1968. ‘Madhya Pradesh’, in M. Weiner (ed.), State Politics in India, pp. 127–76. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Part III Languages and States: Western and Southern India

5 The Paradox of a Linguistic Minority Rita Kothari The case of the Sindhis as a linguistic minority in the post-colonial nation–state is fraught with ironies: the only official classification of the Sindhis is that of a ‘linguistic minority’; yet the post-partition generation of Sindhis barely speaks the language. The federal design of the nation–state divested the community of the purposes of retaining its language, and now the same state incurs expenditure to ‘encourage’ the language through awards and promotional grants. The Partition in 1947 led to the dispersion of the Sindhi

community

through the length and breadth of India. The opportunity to ‘reterritorialise’ in the form of Gandhidham came at a time when most people had already found new trades and occupations in various Indian cities, and the community did not, by and large, see this second uprooting as a viable choice. After achieving economic stability, some Sindhis made a concerted effort to concretise their identity around the nucleus of language. What drove this effort was not so much a need for the state infrastructure that would accompany the recognition of their language but a symbolic reassurance of ‘belonging’ by being reflected in the state’s official picture. By the time this desire was fulfilled, an entire generation had grown up without feeling the need to speak or study Sindhi. A of this language question is the contested issue of whether Sindhis should continue with the Perso-Arabic script or adopt the Devnagari script. While the efforts to concretise their identity around the first two co-ordinates were abortive, the last remained unresolved. This chapter examines the dialectics between the community and the new nation–state in the light of the three co-ordinates of identity mentioned before. It argues that instead of becoming an organic expression of pluralism in India, Sindhi became a structural and token expression of pluralistic design. And yet, the narrative of the Sindhi

subset

Rita Kothari

minority in India is not one of marginalisation and disempowerment. The economic success of the community obfuscates the ruptures in the organic and mythic consciousness of its members. If we do not inspire the young blood to learn Sindhi today, then the day is not far when we will only have Sindhi surnames left to identify with! In course of time if Sindhis do not speak, write or speak the language, then we will lose the linguistic minority status itself (Wadhwani 2003).

Jethanand, the protagonist of Gobind Khushalani’s short story ‘Kahani Kismet Jee’ escapes from Sindh under life-threatening and arrives in India as a penniless stranger, only to rise to riches within some years. In his old age, he feels the need to turn his attention to his community and roots, only to realise that Sindhi which forms the basis of both has begun to disappear from the lives of the Sindhis. The narrative so far is constructed of the stuff of post-Partition Sindhi success as well as failure in India. However, the narrative irony of this particular story lies in the fact that Jethanand requests his old friend Qasim in Pakistan to send him a Sindhi primer which he and Qasim had jointly published for their firm. The primer was meant to teach the language to the new immigrants — the Mohajjirs in Pakistan — but now Jethanand needs it for his own community in India. The two friends share nostalgic moments and also the agony of Sindhi language on both sides of the border. It is not directly relevant to discuss here how Jethanand’s friendship with Qasim across the borders of India and Pakistan indicates the trans-border literary, linguistic and personal relations between the Sindhi Hindus of India and the Sindhis in Pakistan. Although these relations are shot through with ambivalence, the two groups constitute for each other a friendly ‘other’, a real and imaginary readership. They bond over the marginalisation of Sindhi (despite the benign nation–state in India, and because of draconian measures of Pakistan) in the subcontinent. This issue would divert us from a discussion that intends to focus upon the Sindhis as a linguistic minority in India.

circumstances,

Before we embark upon the discussion, it is necessary to qualify that

the Sindhi Hindus (displaced by Partition) are not the only Sindhi-speaking community in India. Those identifying themselves as Kacchis, Khojas and Memons in Gujarat, or as Tharis and Jaisalmeris on the borders of Rajasthan also speak varieties of Sindhi, although their self-identification may be different (Khubchandani 1991: 85–86). However, it is the urban (and incidentally, Hindu) Sindhis who entered

The Paradox of a Linguistic Minority

into a conversation with the nation–state about the recognition of their language that form the fulcrum of this chapter. We shall revert to them after a few general comments on the linguistic reorganisation of states in India. The imagery of the nation–state as a conglomeration of diverse linguistic groups living in what are made to be ‘self-contained’ units called states is very compelling. The linguistic reorganisation of India has partly created and partly reinforced a conflation of territory and language in the post-colonial Indian nation–state. It has led to what I call a ‘terri-ethnic’ sense of identity — an ethnic identity that is derived from language and territory — so that the answer to the question who you are, is also the answer to the question where you are from, leading to forms of ethnic essentialism. This terri-ethnic sense of being ‘Indian’ informs much of the state’s chauvinism. Thus, as the linguist Khubchandani notes, ‘the state reorganisation commission’s efforts in 1956 to effect a coterminality between administrative units and linguistic regions has converted cultural frontiers into political frontiers’ (1997: 84). The ground policies of cultural resources such as grants for literature and publishing activities disbursed by the central government are based upon the idea of linguistic groups with ‘states of their own’. Without a linguistic territory, it is difficult to ‘imagine’ the specific and regional sides of an ‘Indian identity’. Languages which are not ‘major’ enough to have a linguistic state but possess a social through geographical concentration may still survive without state support; but those which are neither major nor concentrated in a specific territory lose their relevance over time — a fate that Sindhi is inching towards. By not having a state to itself, Sindhi ranks alongside Urdu and Sanskrit, the two languages it drew its model from, to rally support for inclusion in the Eighth Schedule. However, being included in the Constitution has not ensured the relevance of Sindhi, and at this stage neither the absence nor the presence of a linguistic territory can fortress a Sindhi identity. In order to understand the ramifications of this situation, it is important to underscore the historical incident of Partition which displaced the Hindi minority of Sindh; the absence of a designated territory in divided India which forced them to scatter all over the country; the consequent erosion of community cohesion; and the peculiar position of Sindhi as a distinct and stateless language, written in the Perso-Arabic script. As a post-Partition community, the Sindhis entered into three not-so-simultaneous levels of dialogue

education,

collectivity

with the nation–state: land, language and script. Of these, language in particular, became the nucleus of Sindhi identity, and although the community attributes its anxiety about the diminishing use of the language to its lack of territory, the struggle over region was short-lived and half-hearted. Nonetheless, I have provided below in broad strokes, the attempt made by at least one Sindhi to reclaim a small territory for Sindhis, or rather to rebuild a Karachi in divided India. Chalo, Chalo Gandhidham As refugees, Sindhis were not expected in India. In light of the relatively peaceful conditions in Sindh in 1947, the Indian government had not made any preparations for rehabilitating the Sindhis in a single place, but had called upon various state governments to contribute to the when the migration began. The most unique event in this history occurred in the region of Kutch in Gujarat. Kutch was not supposed to receive the refugees from Sindh, but through what would seem public and private partnership, the region created an alternative territory for the Sindhis to settle in and reclaim their language and culture.

process

Bhai Pratap, a well known businessman and national activist from

Sindh, requested the Indian government to provide them a region where the displaced Sindhis could live as a single community. Through conversations amongst community members, and also with Gandhi, Kutch emerged as the natural choice because of the trade and cultural links it shared with Sindh (see Kothari 2007). Bhai Pratap’s concern was twofold: he wished to make opportunities of livelihood to the Sindhis and also to provide them with a means of their collective identity. Gandhi responded to this request and urged the Maharao of Kutch to come forward and help rehabilitate the community in Kutch. The Maharao granted 15,000 acres of land near the port of Kandla for the purpose of building a new township, which came to be called Gandhidham. On the basis of this offer, Bhai Pratap founded the Sindhu Resettlement Corporation or the (SRC) (a non-governmental organisation) whose main aims were to build Gandhidham (wherein plots of land were allotted to shareholders on easy terms) and to undertake or aid industrial, commercial and other public utility projects.

available maintaining

Bhai Pratap came up with ingenious methods of luring Sindhis to

Gandhidham. These included sending well-known Sindhi singers to relief camps to urge displaced Sindhis by making them sing along with songs such as the one below:

Pyaaro Pyaaro Gandhidham Desh asanjo, vesh asanjo Hik jahiri aahe raunak Hik jahiri aahe rahini Hik jahiri aahe dharti Our beloved Gandhidham Our nation, our clothes The same spectacle The same lifestyle The same earth. (Translation by author)

This building up on the similarities between Sindh and Kutch in terms of ‘desh’ and ‘vesh’ did not wash with the community, or at least with those who had choices, or who had managed to settle down in bigger cities such as Ahmedabad, Mumbai or Delhi. The project became a reality only after 1952 and by then most Sindhis were scattered in different parts of India, and they chose not to uproot themselves a second time. In any case, it is not clear except through anecdotal information whether all Sindhis knew about the Gandhidham plan, or whether it had been presented as a viable option. Resistance must also have come from the hostile conditions of Kutch which is a dry wilderness with no industry, vegetation or urbanisation. For better or worse, most Sindhis had gravitated to urban parts of India and chosen to stay as members of a linguistic minority in states that offered better business opportunities. Apart from this instance, and occasional petitions for renaming the

Ulhasnagar Camp as Sindhunagar, Sindhis on the whole did not pursue the demand for a separate territory. However, the lack of territory as an emotive and binding space is a leitmotif in the community’s discourse about language, which forms the chief nucleus of Sindhi identity. Scheduling Existence Sindhi has a complex narrative in India: as a legacy brought to India partly by displaced migrants, and partly created by speech-based communities that resided in India prior to Partition. It has a long, multilayered and sophisticated history of both oral and written publishing and polemical activities. It is by no means an ‘underdeveloped’ language. However, by virtue of being a frontier language, its evolution and vocabulary have made it distinct from other

literature,

languages of the western region of India, what with hybrid from old Prakrit on the one hand, and Persian and Balochi on the other. The public domain in India had no room for Sindhi, and the Sindhi businessman had to learn local languages in states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi in order to survive. Despite this, the community managed to build several educational institutions, especially in Bombay, by the mid-1950s, long before the language was included in the Schedule. It might be worth asking as Gupta, Abbi and Aggrawal do, ‘why this eagerness of a community that their language be included in the Eighth Schedule? What is the fascination the Schedule offers these speech communities? What power or status does it bestow on the languages that are included in this hallowed “sanctum sanctorum” and conversely, what benefits are withheld from languages that fail to be listed as members of this elite club?’ (1995 : xi) When members of the Sindhi community began to negotiate with the nation–state for inclusion in the Schedule, the motivation was not so much economic support, but rather a symbolic recognition of their existence in the official picture of the state. The long-drawn episode which finally culminated in the inclusion of Sindh in the Eighth Schedule in 1967 is important for us to understand today, not so much for what it achieved (or failed to), but to understand the terms of the specific forms of ‘Indianness’ that the community imbibed in its political campaign for acceptance.

combinations

My narrative about the language is based on the archives of Jairamdas

Daulatram, a close associate of Gandhi and the governor of Bihar and Assam. Jairamdas Daulatram’s papers show how the Sindhis, after achieving some economic stability in India, began to articulate anxieties about recognition at multifarious levels. A medley of letters — seeking a time slot in All India Radio, or a performance slot in national festivals, or requests for a Master’s degree in Sindhi literature, or consideration of official posts in the Legislative Assembly — among Jairamdas Daulatram’s papers recreate the poignant and interesting story of this mercantile community’s efforts at unmercantile forms of representation in India. The conflation of language and territory in the wake of linguistic

reorganisation generated much discussion amongst the leaders of the Sindhi community. While the Sindhis themselves, on account of being a microscopic community dispersed in various parts of India, did not stubbornly pursue the project of gaining a territory, they were certainly concerned about their invisibility in India’s cultural spaces. A

realisation that only languages included in the Schedule were eligible for competitions, awards and other forms of recognition at the national level made the Sindhis feel that they could claim to belong to India only by being represented. This led to nitpicking discussions about what ‘region’ meant in the contexts of the term ‘regional language’ and whether it was possible to break the synonymy between region and language. Among one of the early letters received by Jairamdas Daulatram, the writer Ghanshyam Shivdasani states, ‘Sindhi cannot be a regional language as there is no particular region in India where it is spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of the region. But it can be included in the schedule of languages given in the Constitution. Sanskrit and Urdu are included in the schedule. Both of these languages are not regional languages’ (Shivdasani 1955). The counterargument to this claim could be that the cultural heritage of Urdu and Sanskrit was far superior to Sindhi, a fact that Shivdasani was aware of. Hence he goes on to the next argument in favour of Sindhi by quoting from articles 344 (1) and 351 of the Indian Constitution: ‘The Schedule as has a reference to a particular Article of the Constitution which deals with the growth and enrichment of the Hindi language. The Languages mentioned in the schedule are the languages from which help can be derived for enrichment of Hindi. Sindhi can as well be included in the schedule because Sindhi also can enrich Hindi in some respect.’ This harnessing of the Hindi sentiment became one of the central rallying points for Sindhi, serving to illustrate how the community shaped and fashioned its linguistic demands in the light of the state’s bias towards Hindi. In his reply to Shivdasani’s letter, Jairamdas Daulatram suggests that the ‘type of representation that is needed [to include Sindhi in the ES] is to be of a fairly technical character’ (Daulatram 1955) and what ensues from this point is an entire discourse on Sindhi’s ancient links with the Aryan civilisation and how the language flourished along the banks of the river Indus. Daulatram goes on to say that the Sindhis ‘should show the importance of the Sindhi language, not only from the point of view of the Sindhi refugees but also in view of its basic ancient links with various languages of the country’ (ibid.). Another chain of arguments in the same letter shows how Sindh had ancient links from Assam to Gujarat, in both the western and eastern coasts of India. Therefore, goes the argument, the Sindhi language ‘has certain inherent links with Indian languages and deserves to be studied even from the national point of view’ (ibid.).

inherent,

Daulatram thus cushions the legitimacy of Sindhi by appealing to its Aryan antiquity on the one hand, and its pan-Indian status on the other. What remains unspoken in this entire process is Sindh’s connection with Persian, which apparently had no space in the community’s parleys with the government. I will deal with this very telling omission later in the chapter.

intimate

For now, we return to the problem of gaining ‘official’ recognition.

Another very crucial segment of the community’s dialogue with the nation–state is the playing of the number game. Daulatram warned his community leaders that the speakers of some other languages not recognised in the Constitution may be larger in number than the Sindhis, and hence the enumerative argument as the basis for needed to be played out carefully. According to him, ‘For an effective argument it would be better to give the number of Sindhis and not only displaced persons. This number would include the displaced persons and the previous settled Sindhis’ (Daulatram n.d.). The well known linguist Khubchandani documented his reservations about this argument by pointing out the fragile grounds on which numbers and consequent demands of representation stand. According to him, the evolution of Sindhi as a full-fledged language with a long history of writing, publishing and polemical activities was sufficient enough reason for its inclusion in the Schedule. He also argued against the tendency of tracing ‘inherent’ links with Sanskrit and Hindi, so as to suggest that some languages were more eligible on grounds of with Sanskrit and Hindi. This, according to Khubchandani, went against a democratic polity that needs to create space and relevance for a pluralistic acceptance of languages. To put it simply, Khubchandani (2007) felt that Sindhi needed to be viewed favourably for its survival as a rich literary and political tradition, for its will and strength in the difficult circumstances of post-Partition India.

representation

proximity

Khubchandani’s fears about essentialising Sindhi as an Aryan

language remained unheeded in a community that became busy itself to suit the ‘Indian’ ethos as defined and propagated by the nation–state. Jairamdas Daulatram’s standing as a spokesperson of the government held sway and determined an Aryan construction of the Sindhi language which laid the foundation not only for the memorandum submitted to the government, but also for the self-perception of the community at large. The efforts of the community paid off 20 years after its arrival in India, a sufficient period for an

fashioning

entire generation to have grown up wondering whether there was any point in speaking Sindhi at all. In any case, the judgement appeared in the Lok Sabha session on 7 April 1967, during discussion on the Constitution (Twenty-first Amendment) Bill seeking the inclusion of Sindhi in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution with Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s oft-quoted support to the language: ‘Sindhi is one of our national languages. India’s soul speaks through Sindhi. I speak through Hindi. But Sindh is my mousi (aunt) and I respect Sindhi as much as Hindi’ (Sharma 2006: 239–40). Script: Fishing Mohenjodaro In 1972, five years after Sindhi had been recognised in the constitution, Narayandas Malkani, a well known Congress leader from Sindh mentioned in the Preface to his autobiography: Some friends asked me a sudden question, which script would you use for this autobiography? I could not answer this question immediately. Although I can read the Nagri script, I can’t write in it. I hope that this autobiography will be available in the Nagri script also. (Malkani 1973: 7)

Malkani wrote his autobiography in the Perso-Arabic script, since that was the one he had grown up with. At the same time, he was required to respond to the question of why wouldn’t he write his autobiography in Devnagari? This episode leads us to a very polarised, bitter and long-drawn battle over the script for Sindhi that took place in the late 1950s and lasted for almost two decades.1 During the discussions on language, Jairamdas Daulatram advised

his community to take a less ‘sentimental’ view of script, and suggested switching to Devnagari, given the post-Partition associations with the Perso-Arabic script. Outlined once again as a strategy for marshalling forceful arguments in favour of Sindh’s inclusion in the Schedule, the script issue evoked far more resistance than a selective theory about the origin of the language. Unlike the history of the language, the script impinged on everyday practice and became a bone of contention those who wished to continue with the Perso-Arabic and those who advocated switching to Devnagari. It is important to mention here that historically the British had consolidated the Perso-Arabic script out of several possibilities — Devnagari being one — and all dissension, if any, by Hindus or Muslims of Sindh, was only on grounds

between

of phonology, or lexicon but not on religion. The post-Partition phase in India witnessed the perception of script as an entity different from language, and also as a site of Muslim domination. In the initial phase of the debate about the script, Daulatram’s

plea was made on the grounds that Sindhi belongs to the Indic family of languages and all Indic languages use one or the other form of Devnagari writing. Associated with mainstream politics in India and Sindh, Daulatram believed firmly in the unified and assimilative notion of identity. He therefore urged Indian Sindhis to blend with their host populations and not make much of their distinctness. Perhaps in the same assimilative vein, Daulatram felt that the future of Sindhi lay in its indigenisation in post-independent India. He was supported in this claim by anti-Arabic thinkers such as Loknath Jetley, Ghanshyam Shivdasani and Tarachand Gajra. It is important to note that Jairamdas Daulatram’s companions belonged to a revivalist school of thought among the Sindhis. The pre-Partition engagements of Gajra and Jetley show a clear inclination towards a purificatory view of the language and religion which they believed had been much too Islamised. Jairamdas Daulatram traced the Sindhi letters to the Brahmi script and argued that even the seals and coins at Mohenjodaro showed the presence of Devnagari (see Daulatram 1993). As time went by, and the pro-Arabic group showed strong resistance, the pro-Devnagari group resorted to a strong communal rewriting of Sindhi history. But before we come to that stage, let us take a look at the pro-Arabic group. Tirth ‘Vasant’, Lekhraj Aziz and Wadhwani have argued the aspirations of the section that supported the Perso-Arabic script. To match Daulatram’s seals, the Perso-Arabic section deconstructed the Mohenjodaro fish and argued that it was the origins of the Arabic letters. This school also argued that only the Arabic script could carry all the sounds of the Sindhi language. As both groups created divergent narratives of the past, and engaged in writing ‘authentic’ histories of Sindh to justify which script was natural, ancient, relevant, meaningful and more importantly, native, they also engaged in their own post-Partition self-definition (Figure 5.1). I find it useful here to present before you some statements gleaned from this controversy. For instance, T. T. Wadhwani refers to the gandi zehniyat (dirty

mentality of the Devnagari script), underlying the arguments forwarded

by the pro-Devnagari school, especially the one to the effect that the Arabic script reeks of Muslim domination. According to Wadhwani:

Figure 5.1: A pro-Arabic group staging a protest in Delhi, 1967

Source: Courtesy of Kishore Jetley.

‘It is in the Arabic script that our Gita, Yoga Vashisht, Ramayana and Mahabharata exist. Are they any less sacred because they are in the Sindhi script? On the other hand, if there are awful books in Devnagari script, do they become beautiful merely because they are in Devnagari? (Wadhwani 1962: 32).

He goes on to say, ‘They [the pro-Devnagari] say that Sindhi script should not exist because it is Islamic, they may say in future that the Sindhi language should not exist because it has poetry by Muslim poets’ (ibid.). Broadly speaking, the supporters of Devnagari underscored the

need to blend in with other linguistic groups in India, which the of the Arabic script perceived as a ‘sell-out’ and a falsification of Sindh’s literary heritage. The former argued for the possibility of readership within India, while the latter expressed concern about the loss of readership in Sindh, where their compatriots could not read Devnagari. The Devnagari group raked over the history of partition and memory of communal politics, while the Arabic group drew attention

supporters

to the secular nation–state and its support of Urdu. Even in the midst of differences, some issues must have been clear to the sparring groups: the fact that the Perso-Arabic script would have to struggle for its survival in India and that state support, at least in tacit ways, was extended to the Devnagari script. The issue was not resolved; while some schools continue to teach Sindhi in the Arabic script, others now use Devnagari, and the simultaneity persisted without being acknowledged or even recognised as the happy coexistence of both scripts. Interestingly, in a nation–state that was asking for straitjacket definitions of culture and representation, the Indian rupee did not include the Sindhi script of either kind because the community was officially required to come to a consensus about one or the other. As things stand now, the Sindhi intelligentsia laments the diminishing usage of spoken Sindhi, and worries about the script have receded, by and large. Also, the availability of script software has made the entire question obsolete. The discussion in the previous section of this chapter focused on

three instances of successful and unsuccessful, half-hearted and negotiations that the Sindhi community made within its own self and with the state. In preparing a political pitch for the government, the community took a look at itself and invented some old and new mythologies to ‘justify’ itself within the contexts of a nation where representation was possible only on certain grounds, and their lack meant an absence from the official discourse of the state.

animated

It may also be useful to briefly touch upon another leitmotif of

Sindhi identity which they negotiated amongst themselves, (and less self-consciously) through everyday practices. I have discussed elsewhere how the Hindu Sindhis of India come with a long legacy of a blurred and quasi-syncretic understanding of religion (see Kothari 2007). Centuries of exposure to different forms of Islamic rule, Sufi traditions, Hinduism (but without an emphasis upon the differences Shaivism and Vaishnavism) had made the Hindu Sindhis fairly atypical examples of Hinduism. Shades of such looseness fortunately continue to be mirrored in the modes of self-perception and the religious practices of the Sindhis in India. However, there are also forms of closure and rigidly Hindu self-definitions in Sindhis who belong to certain parts of India. Against this backdrop, it is important to see how the Sindhis felt the need to invent a form of commonality through the figure of Jhulelal as their chief rallying symbol in post-independent India. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide the

perhaps between

origins of Jhulelal and the almost conscious ways in which the Sindhis in India made him their symbol, conferring upon themselves a ‘normal’ Hindu identity. However, what I wish to underscore here is that forms of coherence were achieved through the satsangs (spiritual gatherings) that the Sindhis followed, the business practices they enjoined, and the insertion of Jhulelal into their religioscape. The three issues of land, language and script are interlinked as moments of self-definition of a culturally distinct (but eager to blend) minority in the post-colonial nation–state. The terms of assimilation such as the subservience to Hindi, the philological and etymological emphasis upon Indo-Aryan-ness, the proximity with Sanskrit and the use of Devnagari indicate a gentle modification of the Sindhi towards a particular form of Indian-ness. Over a period of time, instances of community projection coupled with certain sociological experiences I have discussed elsewhere (see Kothari 2007) effected a gradual erasure of ‘Islamic influences’ among Sindhis — a pristine and Aryan historiography that focused on Sindh as a primal site of the Indus Valley Civilisation has come to be circulated widely among the intelligentsia. Although not all members of the community the mixed legacy of Hindu–Islam syncreticism, it got reduced to a much quieter acknowledgement among some members of the migrant generation. The interaction with the nation–state discussed hitherto also illustrates the making of a minority discourse, the need to establish a glorious past for acceptance in the present and the anxiety to create symbols and signposts. We also witness from this point on a shifting in the community’s concerns from ‘being’ to ‘preserving’ and thus shaping a minority discourse. The lived reality of the Sindhi community shows diminishing signs of the language, and ironically, the community has more awards than writers, and more writers than readers. The social effects of deterritorialisation and dehistoricisation have led to a cultural vacuum among the post-Partition generations, who describe themselves as Sindhis if they have to, but don’t know what that means in the absence of a language and territory. I would like to conclude this chapter by recounting an episode about how the conflation of the ground realities of language and territory confers a recognisable identity to a common Indian, and the absence of which leads to an ignorance about the existence of such While perusing the files of Jairamdas Daulatram (classified as files of limited access in the National Archives of Delhi because of his tenure as the Governor of Assam), I was asked by a suspicious clerk

identity

abandoned

communities.

why I needed to read about Pakistan and what business did I have reading Urdu papers. On replying that I was reading Sindhi papers, and I had to refer to the pre-migration period of the Sindhis, I was told, ‘First you tell me you are interested in the Sindhi language, now you go around reading on border issues, what does one have to do with other? I will not let you copy those Urdu letters.’ If such a view exists in the National Archives of Delhi, a state institution whose officials are expected to be aware of the different parts of India, its communities and languages — the struggles of the recognition of the language mean little at ground level. My argument is that instead of becoming an organic expression of pluralism, Sindhi has become a structural expression of pluralistic design. Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the average Sindhi businessman has flourished in India; his stereotype is all too visible and common, even if his history and culture remain unknown to most.

Note 1. The controversy over script in the Sindhi community carries partial resonances of the way Urdu, both as a language and a script, came to be associated with the Muslim community in the post-independent India. Aijaz Ahmad mentions how ‘Independence and Partition were doubtless key watersheds in the chequered history of the Urdu language and its literature, in the sense that the thematics of this literature as well as the reading and writing communities were fragmented and recomposed drastically in diverse ways’ (1996: 191). However, the resonances are partial to my mind, because unlike Urdu, Sindhi saw a division between the same community of Hindu Sindhis living in the same nation–state of India.

References Ahmed, Aijaz. 1996. ‘In the Mirror of Urdu: Recompositions of Nation and Community, 1947–65’, in Aijaz Ahmed (ed.), Lineages of the Present, pp. 191–220. Delhi: Tulika. Daulatram, Jairamdas. 1955. ‘Reply to Ghanshyam Shivdasani’, 19 Files of Jairamdas Daulatram. Delhi: National Archives. ———. n.d. ‘Note on “Regarding Recognition of Sindhi Language”’, Serial number 75/184, Files of Jairamdas Daulatram. Delhi: National Archives. Gupta, R. S., Anvita Abbi and Kailash S. Aggarwal. ed.1995.Language and the State: Perspectives on the Eighth Schedule. Delhi: Creative Books.

Khubchandani, L. M. 1991. Language, Culture, and Nation-Building: Challenges of Modernisation. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. ———. 1997. Revisualising Boundries: Analysis of Plurilingual Ethos . Delhi: Sage Publications. ———. 2007. ‘Personal Interview with Rita Kothari’, 3 February. Kothari, Rita. 2007. The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat. Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Malkani, Narayandas. 1973. ‘Preface’, Nirali Zindagi Zindagi (An Unusual Life). Mumbai: Navrashtra Press. Sharma, Mohanlal. 1993. Sindhua Jee Khoja (In Quest of Sindhu). Delhi: Mohanlal Sharma, Pratap Nagar. Sharma, Suresh. ed. 2006. Language in Contemporary India , 2 vols. Delhi: Vista International. Shivdasani, Ghanshyam. 1955. ‘Letter to Jairamdas Daulatram’, 17 September, Files of Jairamdas Daulatram. Delhi National. Wadhwani, J. 2003. ‘Special Officer’ for Sindhis: J. T. Wadhwani asks Dy. P. M. to invoke Article 350-B of the Constitution’, Interview with Mahesh Vaswani, Sindhishaan, April. Wadhwani, T. T. 1962. Sindhi Bolia Jee Lipi Keri? (What should be the Script for the Sindhi Language?). Delhi: Sindhi Boli Ain Lipi Sabha.

6 Political Currents in Maharashtra: Language and Beyond* Usha Thakkar and Nagindas Sanghavi Maharashtra is the second largest among India’s 28 major states and five Union Territories in terms of population and the third largest in area. Its per capita income is 40 per cent higher than the all-India average. It has the country’s second largest urban population with about 43 persons of every 100 living in towns and cities (Human Development Report Maharashtra 2002: 2). The state however cannot be treated as one homogeneous entity. It comprises broad, distinct regions like Marathwada, Vidarbha and Western Maharashtra and Konkan, each with a varying cultural nuance or attitude, diverse natural endowments and different levels of economic and social development. Marathwada, which was once a part of the erstwhile Nizam’s Hyderabad State, has distinct cultural traits inherited from there. It has a relatively higher Muslim population followed by Budhhist population. Vidarbha, having been a part of the Hindi belt earlier, is more attuned to the cultural practices of that region. Western Maharashtra is different from these two regions, and also has extreme variations within it. The industrialised and urbanised Mumbai–Thane belt and Pune have a large slum population which is not homogeneous; it consists of people from various states (ibid.: 30). Maharashtra was never a political unit till 1960. As Y. D. Phadke points out: ‘At no time in history of India, all the sub-regions which now constitute Maharashtra, were politically one’ (1979: 32). Though Maharashtra has neither remained great (maha), nor is it a nation (rashtra), its sense of inflated identity and regional ego to survive. Despite the lack of political homogeneity, the concept of the identity of Maharashtra that has evolved over centuries has remained strong. Shivaji and Tilak were the brave heroes who are even today remembered with great reverence. Maharashtra has been the birth place of many progressive movements and social reformers and its people are known for their allegiance to law and order and respect

continue

Political Currents in Maharashtra: Language & Beyondm

for scholarship. The comments of some leaders in the recent past display its excessive pride for cultural traditions and identity. Some of them are: ‘Other states have geography, Maharashtra has history too.’ Or ‘If Maharashtra dies, the nation dies; the cart of the nation cannot be in motion without the Marathas’. When Y. B. Chavan was invited to join the central cabinet, the obvious reaction of the multitudes of the people of Maharashtra was that ‘Sahyadri has rushed to help the Himalayas’. Such slogan-mongering is by and large an attempt to rest on past achievements. The establishment of the new state of Maharashtra in 1960, based

on Marathi language, stimulated new aspirations among people. This naturally generated new politics that brought in new players and gave rise to new challenges in the field. Much has, however, changed by the first decade of the twenty-first century. Changing political culture, melting social ethos, new economic forces, increasing consumerism, ruthless competitiveness and manipulative politics have brought about a sea change in perspectives and working in public life. The issue of identity surfaces at regular intervals at all levels, but often for non-serious or political purposes, turning non-issues into issues. This chapter attempts to show glimpses of currents and undercurrents of the journey of Maharashtra after it got its political identity based on Marathi language. The first section deals with the historical context and the second outlines the electoral politics of the state since 1960. The following sections focus on Shiv Sena, the role of the Marathas, the Dalit politics and issues of Vidarbha and Marathwada. The last section presents the conclusions. Historical Context Much of what Maharashtra is today has been carved out of the province and later the state of Bombay or Mumbai. The province encompassed much of western and central India, as well as parts of post-partition Pakistan. The area was also honeycombed with numerous native states. During the British rule, the Marathi-speaking people were scattered in the two British Indian provinces of Bombay and Central Province and Berar, besides the state of Hyderabad and several other small states ruled by Maratha princes (Phadke 1979: 33). The cultural identity of Maharashtra has suffered from a double

jeopardy of such territorial trifurcation and social fracturing along caste lines and the historical experiences are still so fresh that these divisions are neither forgotten nor are they forgiven by those who claim

m Usha Thakkar and

Nagindas Sanghavi

to be the victims of these diversions. This double jeopardy has led to fragmentation and polarisation of political attitudes and approaches and exacerbated mutual hostility and suspicion. The ongoing stream of political events and pressures, in addition, play their own role. The earliest clear manifestation of Maharashtrian identity can be traced to Shivaji, a sagacious and farsighted ruler of seventeenth century India and the founder of the Maratha empire. Playing Delhi and Bijapur against each other, he survived onslaughts of Mughals by adopting guerrilla tactics and crowned himself as the king in 1674. He is considered to be a great hero by the people of Maharashtra. The expression ‘Maratha Tituka Melavava, Maharashtra Dharma Vadhawava’ (Bring as many people into the Maratha domain as possible and expand the tenets of Maharashtra) became very popular after his rule. Soon after his death, Shivaji’s kingdom was almost destroyed by

Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor. However, when Mughal empire was tottering to its grave in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the Peshwas who were Brahmin prime ministers of the successors of Shivaji, revived and expanded Maratha hegemony by forging a confederacy that aspired to replace the Mughals. The Maratha empire however died inspite of its struggle to be reborn, leaving behind a vacuum that was filled up by the British East India Company. The last attempt was the resistance put up by Peshwa Nana Saheb, Tatya Tope, Lakshmibai of Jhansi in 1857 which was crushed in 1858. The Brahmin supremacy of the Peshwas coined the contemptuous phrase: ‘Sade Tin Takkyenchi Sanskriti’ (the culture of three and half per cent), which indicated how the Brahmins enjoyed benefits which was disproportionate to their meager number. This span of time is also the period when Marathi identity further got fractured along caste lines. The deep-rooted prejudices of traditional society did a permanent damage because fissures that developed during this period are still festering, even after nearly two centuries and they still actively impinge on political alignments in Maharashtra of today. The political hegemony enjoyed by Marathas and Brahmins and the resultant patronage made both these communities owners of vast tracts of land. As the rural elite, they utilised and exploited the cheap labour available from the depressed castes and the economic exploitation set scheduled castes against both the Marathas and Brahmins. Social reformers like Jyotiba Phule, Vitthal Ramji Shinde and later Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked hard for the upliftment of

the oppressed classes and their well-being, making them conscious of the injustices inherent in the caste system. The leaders of Maharashtra had been in the forefront of the

formation and working of the Indian National Congress, since its inception

in the then Bombay, in 1885. The long tradition of scholarship and an uncanny capacity to understand and adjust to changing scenario prompted the Brahmins to take to new English education like fish to water and put them in the forefront of public life and agitations, either constitutional or violent, against British domination. It is interesting to note that many illustrious and sagacious leaders like Mahadev Govind Ranade, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, as also Vasudev Balvant Phadke, the Chaphekar brothers, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar are all Chitpavan Brahmins. Tilak was the undisputed leader of the extremist wing of the Congress. For more than two decades, Maharashtra was synonymous with the face of Tilak and it was he who both represented and sculpted Maharashtrian identity in its most vocal form. The cult of Shivaji and the festival of Hindu God Ganesh that he initiated are still very popular. After his death in 1920, Mahatma Gandhi emerged as a colossus on the political scene and the country was agog with the spirit of nationalism. Concurrent with the movement for independence was the demand

for linguistic reorganisation of provinces. The unwieldy and heterogeneous provinces created several administrative problems for the people as well as the administrators and breaking them up into more viable units seemed to be a logical move. While demand for linguistic provinces was gaining strength in several parts of India, the political leadership in Maharashtra was deeply engrossed in national issues. The need for regional and linguistic identification became vocal in course of time. According to Y. D. Phadke, ‘Unlike the powerful movements for the creation of separate provinces of Bihar, Orissa, Andhra and Karnataka, the campaign for the formation of Samyukta Maharashtra was relatively of recent origin. Though some prominent intellectuals and well known Marathi writers, for quite some time, toyed with the idea of a separate province of the Marathi-speaking people no vigorous campaign was launched till 1946.’ (1979: 66).

linguistically

A group of journalists and writers issued an appeal in November

1939 asking people to join a new organisation called the Samyukta Maharashtra Sabha. The signatories to this appeal included G. T. Madkholkar, S. S. Navare and T. V. Parvate. The new organisation

was formed in Bombay on 28 January 1940. It claimed to have support from all parties, but could not succeed in making its demand a lively issue. The sentiments were not matched by any notable action. The demand for Samyukta Maharashtra was revived at the 30th session of the Marathi Sahitya Parishad at Belgaum on 12 May 1946, and a resolution clearly delineating the constituent units of Samyukta Maharashtra was passed. The years immediately before and after independence were the years of momentous events in India and the issue of linguistic reorganisation was dwarfed by the partition and transfer of power with its resultant and concomitant complications and happenings that threatened the very existence of the country. Neither leaders nor people had the time or energy to address the issue of linguistic organisation of states. The Dar Commission (1948) observed that the formation of provinces on exclusively or even mainly linguistic was not in the larger interests of the Indian nation. The JVP Committee (consisting of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramaiyya) report (1949) was not as strong as the Dar Commission’s report. After the Constitution came into force, the issue of linguistic states seemed to have taken a back seat. But this was not to be: Andhra erupted in violence following the death of Potti Sriaramulu after a prolonged fast on 15 December 1952. The state of Andhra had to be constituted immediately and the entire issue of linguistic reorganisation was submitted to the States Reorganisation Commission, a three-member commission which was formed in 1953 with S. Fazl Ali as its chairman and H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar as two other members. The demand for Samyukta Maharashtra caught momentum in the 1950s and the Samyukta Maharashtra Parishad was reorganised in October 1953. When the States Reorganisation Commission report, released in October 1955, rejected the demand for Samyukta Maharashtra and recommended the formation of a ‘balanced’ bilingual state with Bombay as its capital, there was a flurry of protests and many incidents of violence in Bombay.

political

considerations

Maharashtra now became active in asserting its claims. Most of the

leaders called for a unilingual Maharashtra including all Marathi-speaking areas, while Vidarbha insisted on being a separate state. The Gujaratis staked their claims to the city of Mumbai and the Congress high command hesitated to include Mumbai— the financial capital

of India— in a unilingual state. Then, a militant body of opposition parties with a few dissidents from Congress was formed calling itself the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti. It demanded a united unilingual state of Maharashtra including Marathwada, Vidarbha, Karwar, Belgaum and adjoining areas. It suspected that Congress leaders were not responsive to their demand, they roused tempers and held demonstrations in support of their demand. The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, formed at Poona on 6 February

1956, organised satyagraha and other peaceful forms of agitation with occasional outbursts of violence. Leaders like S. M. Joshi, S. A. Dange, N. G. Gore and P. K. Atre fought relentlessly and over a hundred lives were lost. The bigger bilingual Bombay state was formed on 1 November 1956. The mood of the people was reflected in the elections that followed and the Congress suffered a debacle in the second general elections. Finally, the Congress Working Committee decided to bifurcate the bilingual Bombay state and Maharashtra was formed on 1 May 1960. The inclusion of Mumbai and the needs of Marathwada and Vidarbha however remained thorny issues. Mumbai was ultimately incorporated into Maharashtra, much to the displeasure of Gujarat. The Akola Pact and the Nagpur Agreement were attempts to give Vidarbha some of its dues. An understanding emerged that political leadership would be rotated among the regions and that Nagpur would be the second capital of Maharashtra and one Assembly session would be held every year in that city. However, the demand for a separate Vidarbha has been raised periodically and Belgaum, Nipani and Karwar still remain simmering issues in the politics of the state. Electoral Politics in Maharashtra The results of the 1957 election to the Assembly were a jolt to the Congress. The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti won 11 of the 24 seats in Bombay city and 102 seats in western Maharashtra, excluding the city of Bombay. Y. B. Chavan, who had earlier favoured the creation of a unilingual state of Maharashtra, later changed his views. He thus succeeded in fulfilling the regional aspirations of his people without antagonising the national leaders. The Congress in Maharashtra cleverly raised and then accepted the demand of the opposition parties to have a unilingual state of Maharashtra and thus removed the very plank on which the opposition parties were agitating.

In the Assembly elections of 1962, the first since in the new state of Maharashtra, the Congress under the leadership of Chavan won 215 seats in the state and 21 seats out of 24 in the capital city of Bombay. The Congress once again re-established itself in the position of power. V. P. Naik, a leader from Vidarbha, managed to foster and cooperation among various factions of the party and enjoyed the longest term as the chief minister from December 1963 to February 1975. The Emergency and the post-emergency period brought about a change in the national as well as state-level politics. Indira Gandhi’s confrontational politics took its toll; elections after the emergency witnessed a decline in the dominant position of the Congress in Maharashtra. It was the reflection of what had happened at the centre and was also the result of politics within the state. The old Congress could no longer accommodate the new aspirants for power. Though the elite in the Maratha retained their hold on the rural economy, internal competitions within the Marathas for power and position were visible. Indira Gandhi used these internal squabbles and personal ambitions for her political purpose. In 1978, there was a split in the Congress on the issue of Indira Gandhi’s leadership and a subsequent split in the Maratha group. The Congress (Samajwadi) under Sharad Pawar, a leader who had carved out his position of power by now, emerged on the political scene. Major opposition political parties came together in 1978 and supported Sharad Pawar. They put together a coalition government of the Progressive Democratic Front (PDF), the first non-Congress government in the state. It however lost to the Congress party within 18 months. It had failed to organise the landless labour and other deprived sections of the rural area.

consensus

After coming to power in 1980, Indira Gandhi declared fresh

elections in nine states including Maharashtra. After this election, the Maratha leadership acknowledged Indira Gandhi’s leadership. In the elections of 1980 and 1985 legislative assembly elections, the Pawar group showed its strength. It was however obvious that it will not be possible to look after the interests of the Marathas by being outside the formal framework of the Congress. Having realised this, Sharad Pawar re-entered the Congress in 1986 and became the chief minister in 1988. There were eight chief ministers in Maharashtra during 1975 and

1988. During this period, the Congress organisation found it difficult to contain differences within the party. There were other too. The uneven pace of development stimulated some unrest

developments

in Marathwada in 1974. Around the same time, the new politics of Dalits also surfaced when there was a demand to name Marathwada University after Dr Ambedkar. This new politics also raised its voice against the Maratha leadership. During the 1970s, the Congress had neglected the interests of the farmers and supported industrialisation by the capitalists. Industries were developed in the Mumbai–Thane belt. Naturally the Congress leaders and workers, barring western Maharashtra, raised their voice against the Congress leadership of the state. People also felt that the Congress government and leadership were unable to protect the interests of the rural agriculturists. Now the anti-Congress feeling became obvious. In the beginning of the 1980s, the Shetkari Sanghatana became active and it exposed the internal economic tension of the Maratha–Kunbi group. In addition, the ideological framework of the Congress was inadequate to cope with the formidable challenge of Hindutva thrown up by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena. After the 1989 elections, a realignment of political parties surfaced

with the decline in the of the Congress power. Around this time, the Shiv Sena started spreading its tentacles outside the Mumbai–Thane belt. Maharashtra experienced emotional and ideological politics in the 1990s as the BJP–Shiv Sena axis emerged in the elections as a powerful alternative against the Congress. The Congress felt the need to take help of other parties, though it retained its hold over the votes of the Adivasis, Dalit and the Muslims. The bomb blasts in Mumbai, Hindu–Muslim riots and the corruption scandals had tarnished the image of the Congress. In 1993, Sharad Pawar took over the charge from Sudhakar Naik after the riots. However, differences between the two factions, one under Naik and another under Pawar, came to the surface. The sizable number of rebels in the Congress coupled with the advent of Hindutva in politics contributed to Congress’s defeat in the 1995 elections and the BJP–Shiv Sena combine won. Pawar’s formation of a new political party, the Nationalist

Congress Party (NCP), in 1999 started a new chapter in the politics of

Maharashtra. It won 58 seats in the 1999 assembly elections and the government was formed based on an alliance between the Congress and the NCP. This alliance rests on pragmatic considerations rather than ideology. Therefore both the parties had no problem in 2002 fighting elections at the Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti levels individually and showing good results. The alliance between these two parties brought victory to them in

the 2004 assembly elections: the NCP got 71 and the Congress got

69 seats. This trend continued in 2009. The assembly elections of 2009, held after the victory of the Congress at the national level, brought victory for the ruling alliance of the Congress and the NCP, despite the incumbency factor, internal factions and differences. In an assembly of 288, the Congress won 82 seats and the NCP 62. The alliance, however, did not have a smooth start and the allocation of the ministries could be settled only after prolonged negotiation. Palshikar et al. draw attention to the relative stability of vote share

of the four major parties over the last one decade and point out that Maharashtra’s political scenario displays a curious blend of electoral stability, limited levels of satisfaction and a lot of social volatility (Palshikar et al. 2009). Slowly, a bipolar arrangement of two fronts has emerged in Maharashtra: the Congress–NCP-led Democratic Front and the BJP–Shiv Sena alliance. The fact that the Congress is in the saddle both at the centre and the state at present has its own equations. It has to be noted, however, that factors like currents and undercurrents at regional and local levels, caste-based identity politics, role of rebels in all major parties, political bargaining and pulls and compromises within and between various parties forming alliances have made Maharashtra politics fluid. Claim for Regional Identity: The Shiv Sena Since its formation in 1966, the Shiv Sena has emphasised on the sons-of-the-soil principle and has struck immediate chord with the Marathi-speaking people of Mumbai, who feel threatened with people coming to the city from other regions. From its beginnings, the party made its impact on local politics by championing the economic interests of the Maharashtrians whose jobs, it claimed, were being usurped by the outsiders, particularly south Indians. As a part of the sons-of-the-soil movement, it has made Maharashtrian-centric its first priority, followed closely by an anti-Communist stance and the championing of a patriotism that demonised ‘anti-national’ Muslims. From its inception, the Shiv Sena has had a reputation for violence. Its attack on the Communist Party office in Parel (Mumbai) in 1967, its alleged role in the murder of the Communist member of the Legislative Assembly Krishna Desai, its assaults on south Indian restaurants and street hawkers, its involvement in the 1971 Bhiwandi riots and in Belgaum border clashes were all early demonstrations of the party’s readiness to utilise extreme methods of political action. At the same time, the party has pursued a populist programme— providing

politics

services in local neighbourhoods and slums and courting the loyalties, particularly of Marathi-speaking male youth (Katzenstein et al. 1998: 218–19). The Shiv Sena has thrived because of its image as the saviour of the Marathi people— a Robin Hood figure with some welfare work— has yielded rich results. The Shiv Sena started participating in the city elections of Thane and Mumbai since 1967. After the mid-1970s, the ability of the Congress to absorb different interest groups declined, dissensions within the Maratha leadership surfaced, the Janata Party could not fulfill its promise of a truly democratic government, and the BJP had its own limitations. There seemed to be a void in the public sphere. The farmers’ movement (Shetkari Sanghatana) led by Sharad Joshi and the new party led by Sharad Pawar also did not come up to the expectations of the people. The grip of the sugar and other cooperatives under the Maratha leadership loosened. A new politics emerged in this void where the issues of cultural identity, caste identity and sharp divisions between the urban and rural areas became pronounced. The Shiv Sena rushed into this void with emotional appeal for the people of Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena expanded in the 1980s and made its presence felt in the 1990s in the state and at the centre. In the 1990s, the Shiv Sena used the new card of Hindutva to enhance its importance in politics and built an alliance with the BJP. It made an emotional appeal to the Hindus and ambitious unemployed youth. In the elections, many new faces won on the tickets of the Shiv Sena. It became a curious mix of various groups ranging from urban to rural, Maratha–Kunbis to Other Backward Castes (OBCs), and it recruiting from all communities. The party even had a Muslim in the government which it formed in 1995 in the state. Bal Thackeray remains supreme for the party followers and his word is the law. His oratory, his wit, his appearance at the Dussera rallies, his effective histrionics and his ability to communalise issues attract the crowds. He exercises his choice in all appointments including that of the chief minister: Manohar Joshi was replaced by Narayan Rane in 1999. The party’s militancy, preference for action rather than dialogue, indifference to the established norms of politics and macho stance of politics have a raw appeal for the people. It has managed to hold its space in formal politics by taking part in and non-formal politics by organising groups and taking action as suited to the situation. There is no ideological framework for the party; it prefers to survive on locating the ‘other’ and following the dictates of the supreme leader.

elections

The journey of the Shiv Sena is fascinating. It received the support of the Congress in its early years, mainly due to its ability to destroy the trade union movement in Mumbai. Over the years, it has learnt to make use of cultural identity, to play the game of power politics and to adopt a policy according to the circumstances. It supported the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi, tried other avenues and has finally allied itself with the BJP since 1984 Lok Sabha elections. Both of them have also been contesting most of the local elections as partners. Gradually the Shiv Sena has grown outside Mumbai too while retaining its hold in Mumbai and Konkan. At the assembly-level, it emerged as the largest opposition to the Congress in 1990 and got power with the BJP in 1995 and even had its chief minister. It has adopted an anti-Congress policy and has retained its strident policy of Hindutva. It has attacked the central government for appeasing the Muslims on issues such as the Shah Bano case. Its aggressive pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim stance provides the ideological base which appeals to the people. Its weekly Marmik and daily Samna have their avowed readers. The rivalry between the cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray ultimately led Raj to set up a new party— the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)— in 2006 which follows the same methods and means adopted by the Shiv Sena. This party made a dent in the Shiv Sena vote in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, especially in the Mumbai–Thane belt, benefiting the Congress–NCP alliance. The MNS won 13 seats in the 2009 assembly elections and it will be interesting to watch the competitive politics of the cousins. The Shiv Sena has been able to carve its niche in the politics of Maharashtra. Taking up the cause of giving the Marathi manoos (people) priority in the commercial, industrial and public spheres and emphasising on the Marathi identity, the party evokes the cultural legacy of Shivaji. According to Suhas Palshikar, ‘It is possible to argue that the Sena’s appeal hinged on the adroit combination of nativism, regional identity and a communal construction of nationalism.’ (Palshikar 2006: 263). It changes its cards according to the — the ‘other’ of its perception keeps on changing from the south Indian to non-Marathi to the Muslim. Its clever mingling of the ideological and cultural aspects with politics has yielded rich dividends. It conveys its ideas and strategies in simple and direct way and displays its action-oriented stance that attracts the people, especially the youth. Some instances are: the issue it raised over playing cricket with the team from Pakistan, opposing ghazal concerts

situations

by artists from Pakistan, its demand for driving away Bangladeshis as well as north Indians from Mumbai, organising maha-aratis, (massive congregation offering prayers with religious songs and lamps to Hindu gods), opposing some passages in Dr Ambedkar’s book Riddles of Hinduism and opposing the naming of the Marathwada University at Aurangabad after Dr Ambedkar. Its assumption of the role of the custodian of culture and protector of order justifies its ways of extortion and other methods of settling the score outside the formal sphere of law and politics. Since the 1980s, it has spread its influence in rural Maharashtra riding on its anti-Muslim and anti-Dalit agenda. It has obtained support of the Marathas in Marathwada and the OBCs in Vidarbha and Mumbai to some extent. This however does not stop the Shiv Sena to offer alliances with the Dalit as Uddhav Thackrey did in 2003 asking Shiv Shakti (the force of the Sena/Hindu) and Bhim Shakti (force of Dalits of the Republican Party) to come together. The call of ‘Mumbai for the people of Mumbai’ now includes non-Marathi people like Gujaratis also, who have been staying here for a long time. At present, the MNS also tries to work on the discontent and frustration of the Marathi people, just as the Shiv Sena did in the past. Commenting on the situation, Aroon Tikekar (2008) points out that neither the leaders of the Shiv Sena nor its followers noticed that transient success made Marathi Mumbaikars arrogant, insincere, with no respect for learning, instead aspiring for quick rewards and searching for short cuts to prosperity. Now the situation has changed. The younger generation of the Marathis, having tasted the success and rewards of money power, is trying to find its own dreamland. The aggressive posture of the Shiv Sena no longer attracts it and it shuns the politics of violence. The growing middle class is convinced that in the long run, only merit pays and hard work benefits. The Role of the Marathas The Maratha–Kunbis form the dominant and largest single caste group of population in Maharashtra and are found in almost all regions of the state. No other state has such a large caste group with social, political and economic advantages combined together. Their presence in the Legislative Assemblies has been impressive. The number of the Maratha members in the 10 assemblies since the formation of the state has been between 125 to 140— 45 per cent of the total number of legislators (Vora 2007: 66). There have been many leaders from

this group such as Sharad Pawar, Vilasrao Deshmukh, the father-son duo of Shankarrao and Ashok Chavan and R. R. Patil. This group, consisting of almost 31 per cent of the population, has dominated the political scene in Maharashtra for decades. Though often perceived as homogeneous, it is a socially and economically stratified group. Its members have enhanced their interests by the politics of ‘development, cooperation and local government’ and the Congress, especially in the initial decades. The relationship between the Maratha dominance and the sugar cooperatives, in this context, is important. Sugar cooperatives have helped the economy of the rural areas in western Maharashtra. However, the same cannot be said for other parts of Maharashtra that have followed suit. The politics of sugar cooperatives is interwoven with economy, caste politics and wielding of political power. Sugar cooperatives are now making way for other centres of power like educational institutions and influential political players have entered this new sphere. Among the Marathas also, there are rich land holding farmers and poor farmers. Balancing their interests in times of globalisation and liberalisation is an issue. The political scene is changing and the Maratha–Kunbi is no longer the main base for the Congress and the NCP, as the BJP–Shiv Sena politics has made a dent here.

supporting

important

The internal discrepancies and discord within the Marathas have

come to surface with the changes in the social and economic situation. The decline in agriculture with growing urbanisation has triggered economic changes that influence politics too. Since privatisation that started in the 1990s, only those farmers who could compete have tended to gain. However, aspirations of the lower and middle level farmers have not been fulfilled. Discontent at local level took form of and resulted in some political upheaval. The Mandal politics has created disturbances among the Marathas and has raised important questions regarding the preservation of the entity of the Maratha– Kunbi group and the issue of reservation for the Kunbi–Marathas as available to the OBCs. As pointed out by Rajeshwari Deshpande, the Marathas face a dilemma under the changing political circumstances. Weakening of their control over the formal centres of power compels them to go along with the backward castes. Yet their self-image as rulers prevents them to openly accept backward status. The arrival of a caste called Kunbi–Maratha serves a dual purpose. The Marathas get an easy access to the reservation available to the backward castes, if they wish. At the same time, their status and glory as a ruling caste

movements

gets protected in the process. In that sense, not only the state but the dominant caste also manipulates the reservation discourse in a neat manner (Deshpande 2004: 1449). The issue of reservation within the Marathas is causing political tensions. Politics of the Dalits Movements like the Satyashodhak Samaj and ideas of Phule and Ambedkar have strengthened the anti-caste discourse and struggle. The concept of Bahujan Samaj to accommodate the non-Brahmin communities was also accepted in Maharashtra. The sad fact remains that in spite of the reservations and some silver lines, these disadvantaged groups have not received their due from the process of development and democracy (The Scheduled Tribes or STs account for 8.9 per cent and the Scheduled Castes 10.20 per cent of the population of Maharashtra). There are, however, some leaders who have reached high positions: Sushil Kumar Shinde of the Congress became the chief minister in 2003.

however

Participation of the Dalits in the movement for the formation of

linguistic state of Maharashtra brought them in the political process and political expediency pushed them to ally with the Congress. Some factions of the Republican Party of India has always been with the Congress while some have been with political parties other than the Congress. The SCs have experienced a new awakening under the leadership of Dr Ambedkar. The MA-DHA-V factor (Mali, Dhanagar, Vanjari combine) is important in this context. The Malis today are a fairly wealthy and educated community who have in due course of time changed from being gardeners to contractors, and so did the Telis and Koshtis of Vidarbha. The Dalit youth got involved in the Dalit Panther movement of

the 1970s that brought them near to the socialist and communist parties. But their hopes for a broad and radical agenda were shattered with a split. The movement however prepared them to fight against the established social norms. They clashed with the Shiv Sena in early 1970s, though in recent times, they have not hesitated to make some political compromises. The Dalits are fragmented, there are many intra-Dalit caste differences. The Mahars, who largely converted to Budhhism, are perceived as more advanced than the Charmakar and Matang. This generates its own dynamics. There is an undercurrent of schism within the Dalit community as a whole, which not only impedes its unified political action but also provides spaces for Hindutva to

intervene in Dalit politics. Unfortunately, the Dalits have not been able to build one united political organisation, and therefore their impact on politics has been limited. Their politics, however, is visible in cities like Mumbai, Nagpur and Aurangabad. The three main Dalit political factions, led by Athavale, Gavai and Prakash Ambedkar, play their games in elections, while the electoral politics have enabled the BJP and the Shiv Sena to get seats reserved for the SC in the assembly in mid-1990s. The democratic transformation visualised by Ambedkar has been lost sight of. Compromises are made by the leadership and the ordinary Dalits remain on the margin of power. When such workers look at the Mayawati experiment of Uttar Pradesh, the logic of power defies all other considerations. Ambedkar is made into an icon rather than a beacon (Palshikar 2005: 208–23). Power game pushes some leaders from the Dalit communities to prominence. Such power positions, however, hardly translate into development for the community. It is interesting to note that an important Dalit poet and leader like Namdeo Dhasal chose to align with the Shiv Sena. The OBC politics also has its own currents and undercurrents at all levels: every party has a strong OBC lobby. The 2009 Assembly elections witnessed the efforts of Ramdas

Athavale (Republican Party of India) to bring various Republican factions together and to form a third front named Republican Left Democratic Samiti, consisting of some small parties— mainly the Communist parties, the Peasants and Workers Party, the Janata Dal (Secular), the Samajwadi Party and some Republican Party factions. This initiative, however, resulted in their winning just 12 seats. It is important to note that persistent efforts by the Bahujan Samaj Party to make an entry in to the state assembly did not yield any result, and it could not win any seat when it contested 281 seats. Issues of Vidarbha and Marathwada Vidarbha politics has been different from other parts of Maharashtra. The area is backward, social structure is different, the Maratha is not strong and there are many groups. The issue of separate Vidarbha is still alive and within the Congress too, this issue has remained important. There have been such demands also from some persons in the Shiv Sena belonging to the Vidarbha region, though the party is opposed to it. The issue comes up in different places in different contexts.

leadership

To calm the fears of the people of Vidarbha region, the Constitution of India was amended in November 1956 and the President was empowered to bestow on the Governor of the state the responsibility to appoint statutory development boards for Vidarbha, Marathwada and rest of Maharashtra. Dissatisfaction with regional inequality led to the appointment of a Fact Finding Committee chaired by Prof. V. M. Dandekar in 1984. The publication of the Report awoke the backward regions to the constitutional provisions for the appointment of the statutory regional development boards. Dissatisfaction over the tardy of the planned removal of the backlog simmered for a decade and led to the appointment of the Indicators and Backlog Committee in 1995 to find out if the backlog had increased between 1984 and 1994. It was found that while intra-regional disparity was reduced in the rest of Maharashtra, it had widened in Vidarbha and Marathwada.

implementation

The issue is not free from political undercurrents. Very often, the state

makes an announcement of a development scheme for one region and soon has to follow up with similar schemes for other regions without making detailed provision for funds or making sure that the particular scheme is suitable for the region concerned. The announcement of a special development programme for Vidarbha in 1996 inevitably led to the announcement of similar schemes for Marathwada, Konkan and other regions. There is electoral politics also. The number of members elected to the legislative assembly from Vidarbha is sizeable, and often they have helped the party in the number game. Marathwada is even more backward than Vidarbha. The Marathas

are strong here and its local leadership is with the Congress. The Marathwada Congress raises its voice against the dominance of established leadership of the Marathas in western Maharashtra. Shankar Rao Chavan and Shivajirao Nilangekar Patil became chief ministers but could not get full support of the people. The initial period of the Congress political framework helped in the establishment of some sugar factories in Marathwada. But the strong institutional support of the cooperatives like that of western Maharashtra could not be established here. Politics based on patronage and the dominant feudal ideology has led to frequent clashes between the Dalits and high caste persons at regular intervals. Atrocities on the Dalits, like the one that erupted on the issue of change of name of the Marathwada University after Dr Ambedkar, are alarming.

Conclusion The glitter of the promise of a strong and unified Maharashtra on the basis of a language has faded. Marathi is the official language of the state. However, language has not proved to be a strong thread binding people to a common destiny. Over the years, electoral politics and forces have played a major role in moulding the destiny of the state and the caste politics has emerged as a powerful force. Convenient alliances and deals create competitions at many levels, making the electoral battles far more complex. The sad reality of contemporary politics is that rivalries among leaders, personal ambitions, hold of some families on power, factional politics, infighting, corruption, scandals and decline in ideology and moral standards have afflicted all political parties of Maharashtra. In addition, the state faces grave issues of suicides of poor farmers and Naxalite violence.

economic

The promises and ways of working of political parties from the

so-called progressive to conservative have started resembling each other. Perspectives and policies also do not have much different to offer as was evident from the Enron issue. Challenges before the parties are: providing visionary leadership, chalking out and implementing viable and solid programmes for economic progress and social building disciplined structure, managing the relations among leaders from local to national levels and coping with the dominance of caste, family and money. Making politics a profession of power has encouraged members of parties to change their loyalties. Since the late 1990s, rebels have made their presence felt in all the political parties— Anna Dange left the BJP and Raj Thackaray left the Shiv Sena. The father and son duo of Balasaheb and Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil left the Congress for Shiv Sena, only to re-enter it later. Narayan Rane left the Shiv Sena, joined the Congress, and again left the latter only to rejoin it later. Such rebels create ripples in both the parties— the party from where they defect as well as the party to which they go.

justice,

Parties attempt to establish power in different regions and power

equations differ depending on the economy, presence of dominant castes and leadership. The political situation encourages alliances of all kinds and parties like to leave their options open. The Congress and the NCP alliance is that of convenience. The BJP, after the demise of Pramod Mahajan, is not strong and its alliance with the Shiv Sena is not very smooth. It will be interesting to watch the changes on the political scene of Maharashtra.

The issue of border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka comes up in different contexts. It surfaces at literary forums also. An eminent scholar of Maharashtra Y. D. Phadke, as the President of the Marathi Sahitya Sammelan held at Belgaum in 2000, raised the issue of merger of Belgaum, Karwar and Nipani (at present in Karnataka), in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena had objected in 2004 to the appointment of the former Karnataka Chief Minister S. M. Krishna as Governor of Maharashtra. Growing incidents of intolerance in the civil society indicate its

fragile fabric. Sambhaji Brigade vandalised the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, in 2004 because Prof. James Laine had done research here for his controversial book on Shivaji. Writers and journalists are often attacked and threatened for expressing their views freely, if there are not in conformity with the regional ethos. The passages in the textbooks also come under scrutiny to findout whether they hurt the regional feelings. The tirade in the name of Marathi manoos is disturbing. Demand of reservation of jobs for local youth is no longer the prerogative of any particular political party. Such populism causes concern as it goes against the progressive ideas entrenched in Maharashtra. Added to this is the discontent among people against the decline in political culture. The Muslims, in particular, feel agitated at lack of action vis-à-vis the recommendations of the Srikrishna Commission. The goal of the development gets entangled in the political cobweb

and its pace becomes uneven with only some urban centres prospering. Despite the effort to disperse industry to backward regions, most of it remained on the periphery of Mumbai and Pune. Some industrial development did occur in Marathwada and Vidarbha. However, even there, the industry has remained mostly within their prime cities and at the most on their fringes (Maharashtra State Development Report 2007: 304). Despite a glorious past and a prosperous present, the state has a quarter of its population below the poverty line (ibid.: 165). Maharashtra’s prosperity is concentrated in Mumbai and other industrial and commercial cities like Thane, Pune, Nagpur and Nashik, while her villages, where the majority of her disadvantaged communities live, have no share in the prosperity and they eke out a living on the fringes (ibid.: 166). The development in 35 has also been much dispersed. Districts like Dhule, Jalna and Buldhana are very poor, while districts such as Nashik, Kolhapur, Pune, Nagpur, Thane and Mumbai are rich. Within each region also, a substantial divergence exists (Human Development Report Maharashtra 2002: 40–41.)

districts

Localisation of politics has assumed crucial importance. As pointed out by Suhas Palshikar, state politics is becoming the sum total of many and often unrelated political situations at the district level. Political competition is only for local issues; political economy is seen and understood as only a local phenomenon. There is no capacity in this kind of politics to relate to broader issues concerning the state (Palshikar 2004: 4400). The vision of a strong unified Maharashtra suffers not only from political maneuverings but also from administrative inefficiency. The Maharashtra Government Administrative Reforms Committee Report (2002) brings to the fore the public perception of the which is characterised by the four Ds— Discourtesy, Delay, Dishonesty and Deficiency (Maharashtra State Development Report 2007: 219). Unfortunately, the evil of corruption has also crept in. As ideals are replaced by selfish interests, money and muscle powers are exhibited in their worst form. G. V. G. Krishnamurthy, the former Election Commissioner, revealed that there are at least 110 organised criminal gangs in Maharashtra, of whom no less than 55 are in Mumbai. The concentration of criminal gangs in Mumbai is not a reflection solely of the city’s wealth, but also of the close links that they have forged with the dominant political parties in the city (Prem Shankar Jha 2002, quoted in Maharashtra State Development Report 2007: 224). The norms of cultural diversity and tolerance are being fast forgotten, as incidents of enforcing the dress code or sign boards in Marathi or organising demonstrations for jobs for the youth of Maharashtra indicate.

government,

It is convenient to pay tribute to all those who dreamt of a

progressive and strong Maharashtra based on the linguistic principle.

However, in practice, economic forces, caste equations, political manipulation and electoral power games have taken over the ideals expressed at the time of the formation of Maharashtra. There are, however, some pockets of clean administration or good development work or people’s participation at local level.

Note * We thank Dr Aroon Tikekar for his insightful comments on the draft.

References Deshpande, Rajeshwari. 2004. ‘Kunbi Maratha as OBC: Backward Journey of a Caste’, Economic and Political Weekly , 39 (14–15): 1448–49. ———. 2006. ‘Maharashtra: Politics of Frustrations, Anxieties and Outrage’, Economic and Political Weekly , 41 (14): 1304–7. Eckert, Julia. 2003. The Charisma of Direct Action. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Human Development Report Maharashtra 2002 , Mumbai, Government of Maharashtra. Katzenstein, Mary F., Uday S. Mehta and Usha Thakkar. 1998. ‘The Rebirth of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra: The Symbiosis of Discursive and Institutional Power’, in Amrita Basu and Atul Kohli (eds), Community Conflicts and the State in India, pp. 215–38. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Lele, Jayant. 1995. ‘Saffronisation of the Shiv Sena: The Political Economy of City, State and Nation’, in Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner (eds), Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, pp. 185–212. Mumbai: Oxford University Press. Maharashtra State Development Report, 2007, Planning Commission, Government of India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Palshikar, Suhas. 2004. ‘Issues in an Issue-less Election: Assembly Polls in Maharashtra’, Economic and Political Weekly , 39 (40): 4399–4403. ———. 2005. ‘Maharashtra: Dalit Politics in the Hindutva Trap’, in Anand Teltumbde (ed.), Hindutva and Dalits: Perspectives for Understanding Communal Praxis , pp. 208–223. Kolkata: Samya. ———. 2006. ‘Shiv Sena: A Tiger With Many Faces?’, in Peter Ronald deSouza and E. Sridharan (eds), India’s Political Parties, pp. 253–80. New Delhi. Sage Publications. Palshikar, Suhas and Suhas Kulkarni. eds. 2007. Maharashtratil Sattasangharsha: Rajakiya Pakshanchi Vatchal (Power Struggle in Maharashtra: The Journey of the Political Parties). Pune: Samakalin Prakashan. Palshikar, Suhas, Rajeshwari Deshpande and Nitin Birmal. 2009. ‘Maharashtra Polls: Continuity amidst Social Volatility’, Economic and Political Weekly , 44 (48): 42–47. Phadke, Y. D. 1979. Politics and Language. Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House. Thakkar, Usha and Mangesh Kulkarni. 1995. Politics in Maharashtra. Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House. Tikekar, Aroon. 2008. ‘No Identity Crisis’, DNA, 9 February 2008, Mumbai. Vora, Rajendra. ‘Marathavarchasva’ (Maratha Dominance), in Suhas Palshikar and Nitin Birmal (eds), Maharashtrache Rajkaran: Rajakiya Prakriyeche Sthanik Sandarbha (Politics of Maharashtra: Local Context of Political Process), 2nd edn, pp. 65–83. Pune: Pratima Prakashan.

7 Discourses on Telangana and Critique of the Linguistic Nationality Principle K. Srinivasulu Andhra Pradesh occupies an important place in the history of states’ reorganisation for it has seen two opposite tendencies: while it has seen a demand for ‘Vishalandhra’, a unified linguistic state of the Telugus, it has also seen from the beginning a resistance to such a demand from Telangana which resulted in popular mobilisation in the 1950s, 1960s and since the 1990s. If the ‘Vishalandhra’ demand has been politically articulated by the Communist Left and theoretically informed by the concept of linguistic nationality, then the demand for statehood to Telangana, apparently governed by pragmatic concerns of the political leadership, has displayed sensitivity to the historical specificity of the region and sought to articulate the problematic of regional uneven development (between Telangana and Andhra regions) in its multidimensionality.1 Though there is no serious attempt to critique the linguistic nationality 2 principle in the Indian context, the discourses generated as part of the Telangana state movement promise to present an alternative on the question of regional autonomy and identity. This may help us to critically reflect on the last 50 years of our federal experience and help us to rethink the future of states’ reorganisation.

perspective

This chapter seeks to address the above issue by foregrounding the

theoretical assumptions and perspectives implicit in the two opposite positions on the question of Telangana and examine the larger of these positions for the growing demand for a second phase for states’ reorganisation in India.

implications

This chapter is organised in four sections. In the first section, the

concept of nationality is examined in terms of two models that could be explicated from the historical development of national formations. It seeks to highlight how, in the context of belated and especially colonial societies like India, the nationality formations differ from the classical formations and pose problems of both conceptual and political nature.

Discourses

on

Telanganam

In section two, an attempt is made to contextualise the Telangana issue in its historical background to see how its trajectory of social, political and economic development is different from the Andhra region so that the persistence of the Telangana demand could be appreciated. Section three discusses the different phases in the history of the

movement for the Telangana statehood and engages with the discourses

on Telangana movement that: (a) reflect the depth and expanse of the popular engagement with the issue and (b) shows the serious limitations of the linguistic determinism in the shaping of democratic political and regional identities.

The last section sums up the argument by highlighting the need

for rethinking the nationality question as the framework for the reorganisation of states in India and need to negotiate with the powerful regional identities that are shaped by the deeper historical and cultural processes and which are generally glossed over in the adherence to the linguistic principle. I The history of nationalism is closely related to the emergence and development of capitalism. In western Europe, nation–states were products of capitalism. It was in relation to the process of growth and expansion of the bourgeoisie here that market as a mechanism of economic transactions and modern nation–state as a political entity have evolved and stabilised. The classical bourgeois revolutions were largely successful in striking a balance between the national market, community and the state. As a result, more or less unproblematic nation–states emerged in western Europe. Historically the path of development of capitalism and of nation–states has been quite varied. In spite of the complexity and multiplicity of variations, in a broad theoretical sense, two distinct models of development of nationalism can be identified: namely, the ‘classical’ and ‘belated’ models.3 In the classical model of capitalist development, the ascendant

bourgeoisie, by occupying pre-eminent position in the world of came to direct the state. Here it is necessary to make an analytical distinction between civil society and state. Civil society consists of the ensemble of social institutions that are non-political; state, on the contrary, refers to the bureaucratic–institutional structure, through which political power relations are organised. In the classical model, the capitalist class organised its hegemony in the civil society, largely

production,

m K. Srinivasulu

independently of the state intervention. The process of creation and development of hegemony could bring about a symmetry between different instances of social totality, i.e., between economy, society and culture. Therefore, in the classical path, it is the capitalist class that organised

its hold over the modern market, its hegemony on the society and permeated its values and world-view through a common language in the political spatial unit of nation–state. Thus the bourgeoisie embodied in itself the ‘national spirit’ as a corollary to the objective process of capital accumulation. The formation of nation–state in western Europe can thus be described as the ‘classical path’ of development of nationalism. Based on this experience, a nationality can be defined as a historically evolved community formed on the basis of a common language and cultural identity within a territorial boundary for a stable market and organised political power. Critical to the formation of a nationality is the consciousness of community which, following Benedict Anderson, can be called a sense of ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983). According to Anderson, nation defined as an imagined community becomes a historical reality with the gradual dissolution of the old face-to-face groups because ‘the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (ibid.: 15). The act of imagining is crucial for the national formations and the question of whether it is forged through genuineness or falsity becomes secondary to the means, mode and ‘the style in which they are imagined’ (ibid.: 15). This imagination is the basis on which ‘a new way of linking fraternity, power and time meaningfully together’ (ibid.: 40). The means through which this is achieved are provided by the

emergence of ‘print capitalism’ which created a unique and an ‘explosive interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity’ (ibid.: 46). Print capitalism created the possibility of a vast market and ‘unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars’ (ibid.: 47). Anderson further observes that print capitalism ‘gave a new fixity to language, which in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation’ (ibid.). Its role in creating ‘languages of power’, with certain dialects playing a dominant part in communication through printing, is being emphasised. It is the possibility created by print capitalism of ‘growing

number of people to think about themselves, and to relate themselves to others, in profoundly new ways’ (Anderson 1983: 40). so that they can imagine themselves as a community that forms the basis of crystallisation of nationality identity. Such an élan is absent in the case of belated capitalism. Any way,

such a process of formation of nationality is rather slow and uneven in these countries, especially in the context of the colonialism. The relative structural weakness of the bourgeoisie here rendered it inadequate to accomplish a thoroughgoing social transformation. As a result, the economy remained unevenly developed with the classes of earlier modes of production still remaining dominant. This is evident in its lack of initiative and leadership in the civil society. Because of its organic weakness in the civil society consequent upon its weak position in the economy, the class failed to organise the culture of the entire society on bourgeois hegemony and left the cultural space to pre-capitalist ideologies, making it composite without a principal organising principle.

structural

With the access to modern education limited to a miniscule urban

middle class and rural landed classes, the gulf between the literate and non-literate population remained quite huge with the latter the majority. As a result, the reach of the benefits of print was also limited to the minority literate classes and therefore restricted the social, political and cultural communication across social classes. This has an inhibiting impact on the cultural transactions the literate and the vernacular cultures with serious implications for the hegemonic process. The failure on this side leaves the civil society relatively weak vis-à-vis the state.

constituting capitalism

between The weak structural position of the bourgeoisie in the social

production, and consequent upon it, its organic weakness in the organisation

of consent and hegemony in civil society had its impact on the nationality formation. Thus the uneven expansion of capital, and development of economic production and culture is corresponded by an unevenly developed nationalities. The nationality question in India has to be understood against this theoretical background. To appreciate the nationality articulation in the multinationality context of India, it is necessary to note two distinct political realities in India which existed on the eve of independence: one, the British-ruled provinces and two, the native princely states. These two regions displayed vastly divergent pictures in terms of historical economic development, cultural articulation and political While the former, which was exposed to colonial modernity,

experiences, movements.

could experience certain degree of agricultural and industrial expansion in education and employment, modern structures of governance and middle class elaboration, the princely India lagged behind in all these aspects. Nationality, defined as an imagined community, is a product of modernity. Therefore in terms of development of nationalist imagination, these regions show variations. The nationality question in India, historically, has to be located in the context of national movement. Indian nationalism can be best as an incomplete revolution, as all the theoretical assumptions stated in the earlier paragraph can be found here. The bourgeoisie in colonial India did not develop in an independent manner. On the contrary, its development was conditioned by the logic of semifeudalism and colonialism/imperialism. The capitalist development in India was structurally dependent on the requirements of the metropolis. In spite of this generalisation, which is applicable to all colonial countries, India had certain unique features that distinguished it from other colonies. India was a fairly developed colony. In spite of the structural the native bourgeoisie came to acquire a certain degree of autonomy from the metropolis, especially in the twentieth century. The most significant factor was of course the inherent contradiction in the world capitalism itself, which culminated in the intra-imperialist wars. However, the question of autonomy cannot be overemphasised: the saga of nationalist struggle itself testifies to the limitations of the Indian bourgeoisie. The consequence of the organic weakness of Indian bourgeoisie is objectively reflected in the fact that capitalism never developed in a full-fledged fashion. A large section of the economy, i.e., agriculture was largely left untouched and wherever it was effected, the impact was partial, i.e., modernisation of agriculture without corresponding structural transformation of agrarian social relations. The development of capitalism in India was highly uneven in terms of spatiality and transformative potential. In the politico-cultural domain, the nationalist movement failed to bring about any deep ideological transformation. The uncritical and predominant use of Hindu dharmic and caste ideologies, and Gandhian moralism in the nationalist discourse, illustrates the incomplete character of bourgeois hegemony.

development, institutional

described

dependence,

In the context of the nationality question, the Indian National

Congress— the dominant organisation of Indian nationalist movement —recognised the importance of language as the basis of organisation

of states.4 However, it failed to articulate and incorporate the various linguistic nationalities into the nationalist movement. The highly developed nationalities in colonial India that played a significant role in the nationalist struggle were Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, etc.5 By virtue of having been under the British rule early on and having been centres of British colonial power, these provinces had come under the impact of British economic policies. Thus, these provinces experienced early modernisation and liberal education and as a consequence, they were the first to witness the rise of trading and industrial bourgeoisie and educated middle classes in the regional contexts.6 It is these classes which played a crucial role in the social and political modernisation, and formation of linguistic regional identities. On the eve of independence, the nationality scenario in India was

quite uneven. Three phases of development can be identified after independence which was predominantly determined by the logic of uneven development and expansion of capitalist relations. They are: (a) the Nehru era (1947–1967); (b) the pre-Emergency period (1967–1977); and (c) the post-Emergency period (after 1977). The Nehruvian period is generally designated as the nation-building phase. The euphoria and celebration of independence did not last long and started waning within less than a decade. The contradictions that were inherited as part of the colonial legacy became manifest in the form of violent nationality struggles in the north-east. The different tribal nationality formations (like Nagas and Mizos) that were never properly influenced by, let alone integrated into the nationalist struggle, felt their inclusion in India as a violation of their aspiration to The story of secessionist insurgency in these pockets and Indian state’s suppression of it is well known (Samuel 1993). The second phase saw the rise of sub-regional and nativist which were either the consequence of the factional fights within the Congress or activities of the regional formations. In spite of their varied manifestations, ideological differences and opportunistic politics they were structurally related to the ‘internal colonisation’ and marginalisation of the people of the less developed regions, which was a consequence of uneven development. Most of these movements were articulated and led by the elite of dominant caste/classes of these regions. Again in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a surge of regional autonomy movements demanding rearrangement of the centre–state relations. Though these movements were constitutional, the response

freedom. movements

of the centre towards these struggles was disturbingly negative. Thus, when ‘pushed to a corner’, as it were, some of these movements forms of armed secession, as in the case of Punjab. Each of these nationality struggles deserve concrete analysis of its historical evolution in its mediation with the specific class–caste structure and power relations. This chapter examines the case of Telangana which goes beyond the framework of linguistic nationality as the basis of states’ formation and provides an opportunity to explore alternative frameworks of regional autonomy and state reorganisation.

assumed

II The Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh, which was formed in 1956 on linguistic basis, comprises three regions— Telangana, coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. These three regions present different backgrounds: while the Telangana region was part of the erstwhile Nizam’s Hyderabad state, the latter two regions formed part of the British-governed Madras Presidency. This historical background is crucial to the understanding of the political economy of development and the trajectory of social and political processes in these regions. These historical differences are also important for they continue to inform the socio-political processes in the state— the articulation of social forces, caste–class dynamics and the nature and patterns of social mobilisation. The composite Hyderabad State comprised eight Telugu-speaking Telangana districts, three Kannada and five Marathi-speaking districts. Given the historical specificity of the Nizam’s dominion, the nature of socioeconomic change and political trajectory in Telangana differs from that of the British-governed Andhra. A class of landed gentry consisting of Muslim jagirdars and Hindu deshmukhs belonging to the Reddy, Velama and Brahmin castes, constituted the support base of the Nizam’s rule. The Hyderabad state displayed characteristics of a medieval feudatory and lagged far behind the Madras Presidency in terms of exposure to modernity. The access to modern education was very restricted and thus the development of the middle class was very limited.7

historical

In sharp contrast to the Presidency areas, the Nizam bestowed the

citizens with hardly any civil and political rights. The landed gentry too inflicted suffering on the rural population through the extraction of free goods and services (known as vetti), the forced eviction of

tenants (bedaakal) and much more significantly, the denial of dignity and self-respect. The Andhra Maha Sabha (AMS) had been in the forefront of

democratic struggles since the early decades of the twentieth century.

Though the Telugu-speaking people constituted the majority, Telugu language and literature suffered neglect because of the official policy of the Nizam’s State that encouraged the Urdu language. Further, the educated middle class of Telangana region found themselves marginalised and neglected in a social and cultural scenario that was dominated by the influential Marathi elite apart from the dominant Muslim elite. It is this sense of neglect and humiliation suffered by the Telugu-educated elite in the Hyderabad state that forms the context of the cultural articulation8 and which was subsequently turned into a political movement by the AMS as its organisational expression. In the beginning, it was dominated by pro-Congress elements. However by the 1930s, it assumed a radical image under the leadership of communists who took up issues such as the abolition of vetti, protection to tenants and the demand of ‘land-to-the tiller’. The anti-Nizam and anti-feudal peasant struggle, led by the through the AMS in the 1940s, is an important fact crucial to the understanding of political articulation in the subsequent period. The strategic presence of the communists in the Telangana political scenario, relevant to note in the context of the present discussion, formed the political basis of the ‘Vishalandhra’ demand. The coastal Andhra region is far more developed than the other two regions of Rayalaseema and Telangana.9 Crucial to the development of this region, and to the districts of Guntur, Krishna, East and West Godavari in particular, were the irrigation projects constructed on the Krishna and Godavari rivers in the mid-nineteenth century by the British colonial state. With a view to augmenting its revenue from agriculture, an extensive area was brought under cultivation. This paved the way for the commercialisation of agriculture and the generation and accumulation of agrarian surplus (Rao 1985). The impact of this could be witnessed in the growth of urbanisation in this region which led to the emergence of centres of commerce, education, culture and social reform. The growth of towns such as Kakinada, Rajamundry, Guntur, etc., in the coastal region has to be seen against this backdrop.

communists

A significant aspect of rural transformation that has occurred since

the late nineteenth century is the differentiation of peasant society and the emergence of an enterprising agrarian stratagem belonging

predominantly to the Kamma, followed by the Reddy and to a lesser extent to the Kapu communities. The educated elites of these peasant castes were catalytic in the emergence of caste-specific movements in coastal Andhra. They also played a leading role in the kisan (peasant) movement and the anti-zamindari struggles by rallying the lower strata of the agrarian society. Because of these struggles, which led to the abolition of the zamindari system and the tenancy reforms after independence by the post-colonial state, the ryots and tenants belonging to these peasant castes gained access to most of the fertile lands. What is sociologically significant about this trajectory of change,

and of immediate relevance to our analysis, is the polarisation of this class along caste lines across mass organisations, political parties or factions therein. While the Reddys joined the ranks of the Congress Party and waged struggles against Brahmin leadership, the Kammas gravitated to the Communist Party of India (CPI) and rose to positions of leadership (Harisson 1956). If the literary and cultural development in the prosperous Andhra districts since the middle of nineteenth century contributed to the emergence of regional linguistic identity, then it was the social and political elite, cutting across the political differences, which articulated the demand for a separate political identity for the Telugus in the Tamil-dominant Madras Presidency.10 It was only in 1953, following an agitation for separate statehood, that the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions were formed into a separate state of Andhra, with Kurnool as its capital. The political elite of Andhra region, both belonging to the Congress and the Communist party, had been quite vocal in their articulation of the Vishalandhra demand. While the understanding of the Left is informed by the thesis that linguistic nationality would form the basis for the reorganisation of the states, the Congress elite of Andhra region, not known for such theoretical or historical were concerned with practical problems like finding a capital, the budgetary deficit through merging of Andhra and Telangana. The argument of linguistic state was seen to be coming in handy (Jayashankar 2004). In 1956, the state of Andhra Pradesh was formed, despite the to the contrary by the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC), headed by Justice Fazal Ali. The SRC recommendation that the two regions should be formed as separate states was made on the basis of the different historical experiences and uneven development of the regions. It was opined that the merger of backward Telangana with advanced Andhra may eventually lead to discord and demand

rational sophistication, solving recommendations

for separation. In other words, the linguistic premise on the basis of which a unified state was demanded was found to be insufficient for the formation of the Telugu state by the SRC.11 What is noteworthy is the observation of the Commission on the

deeper distrust that forms the basis of the opposition to the Vishalandhra. The Commission opined that the opposition emanates from: the apprehension felt by the educationally backward people of Telangana that they may be swamped and exploited by the more advanced people of coastal area .... The real fear of the people of Telangana is that if they join Andhra they will be unequally placed in relation to the people of Andhra and in this partnership the major partner will derive all the advantages immediately, while ‘Telangana itself may be converted into a colony by the enterprising coastal Andhra’ (Government of India 1955: p. 105, emphasis added).

In tune with this perception, it thus recommended: it will be in the interests of Andhra as well as Telangana if, for the the Telangana area is constituted into a separate State, which may be known as the Hyderabad State, with provision for its unification with Andhra after the general elections likely to be held in or about 1961, if by two-thirds majority the legislature of the residuary Hyderabad State expresses itself in favour of such unification (ibid.: p. 107).

present,

This recommendation was set aside by the national leadership of the Congress at the behest of the coastal Andhra leadership as they the former by using their long-term and strong association with them.12 What added to this move is the politico-ideological demand of the Left for a unified state on the basis of language. The support for the Vishalandhra demand came from the Left in Telangana region as well. As a result, the support for Telangana state was virtually reduced to a minority with only a section of the Congress leaders backing it.

persuaded

III The difference in the historical background and developmental trajectories between backward Telangana and rich coastal Andhra in the state is a fact that is not merely of historical importance but also continues to inform the contemporary political processes. Broadly, three phases could be identified in the articulation of the tensions inherent in the regional unevenness. The first phase happened in the form of resistance to the formation of Andhra Pradesh state in

1956. The second phase was the year-long movement for Telangana statehood in the late 1960s which was followed by a similar demand in Andhra and Rayalaseema regions in the early 1970s. The third phase is the present articulation of the demand which could be traced to the late 1990s. In the first phase, the resistance to the merger of Telangana with coastal Andhra was largely limited to the educated class and a section of the Congress party. They were apprehensive that the advanced Andhraits would corner most of the opportunities in education, and politics, thereby depriving the Telanganaits of their due share. This opinion was expressed through an agitation against non-mulkhis (non-locals) in the early 1950s. A dominant section of the Telangana Congress leadership and socialists, who were a significant force in Telangana till 1960s and who shared this apprehension, opposed the merger. However, the pressure of the Andhra Congress leadership, supported by the Communists, was so overwhelming that the Congress High Command, despite the recommendation of the SRC and open stand of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru against the unified Telugu state,13 had to take a decision in favour of the formation of the Andhra Pradesh state. In response to this, the objections raised by the Telanganaits were so strong and persuasive that they had to be taken cognisance of by the Congress leadership. The result of this was the ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ between the Congress leaders of Telangana and Andhra to provide safeguards which would protect the interests of the backward Telangana.14

employment

The strong agitation for Telangana statehood that emerged in the

late 1960s has to be seen in the context of gross violation of the ‘Gentleman's Agreement’ in the decade following the formation of the state of Andhra Pradesh. The regional council, which was formed for the development of Telangana, was reduced to a farce and there was gross violation of Mulkhi rules. In fact, the entire political process came to be dominated by powerful men from the Andhra region and the Telangana leaders were only ‘to play the supporting role’ (Sheshadri 1970). The 1969 Telangana agitation was initiated by and participated

in overwhelmingly by students and the employees. 15 The crucial issue in this phase was the favouring of Andhraits in education and employment in violation of mulki rules. It was only later that professional politicians from the Congress entered the movement and gave it an explicit political direction by taking over the leadership of

the Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS). Though the movement initially was by and large based in urban areas with students and middle classes constituting the main support base, it spread to the rural areas in the later phases. This is evident in the fact that the TPS won 10 parliamentary seats in the Telangana region in the 1971 parliament elections.16 Because of the high-handedness of the Congress High Command and the political compromises of the TPS leadership, the movement could only achieve few concessions even though it went on for more than a year. What is significant to note about this movement are the

contradictory consequences it brought to the politics of Telangana. A clear

social polarisation of the emergent social forces in the political arena can be observed in this connection. While the students from upper caste landed social background got polarised around the established electoral parties, the lower caste students (the first-generation literates entering into the portals of higher education) gravitated to the radical anti-feudal politics of the emergent CPI (ML) and catalysed its growth and expansion. This is one of the reasons for the CPI(ML) groups’ sensitivity to the Telangana demand which is in sharp contrast to the rigid stand of the CPM which has been led by the coastal Andhraits. Though the Telangana demand is continued to be raised by certain sections of the intelligentsia and political opinion in the later period, it is only from the mid-1990s that we see an increased visibility to and mobilisation on this issue, largely due to the efforts of the CPI(ML) groups and civil society associations. The wider popular support to the demand for Telangana has to be seen against the backdrop of the Chandrababu Naidu regime and the neoliberal policies initiated by it. The decline of public employment leading to frustration among the educated unemployed, privatisation of Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs), neglect of agriculture leading to farmers’ suicides in Telangana and conversion of Hyderabad into a real estate haven for the coastal Andhra speculators are the major developments that affected Telangana under this regime. It is against this background that the formation of Telangana Rastra

Samithi (TRS) in 2001 by a dissident from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has to be appreciated. With the entry of the TRS, an explicit political articulation of the Telangana issue and the deepening of the social support for the demand could be noticed. The electoral outcome in the 2004 elections in terms of defeat of the TDP and victory of the Congress–TRS alliance demonstrates this.17 Though it is incorrect to characterise the TRS’ politics as a movement for the realisation of a

separate Telangana as it has largely confined itself to elections and lobbying in the corridors of power as strategies for the realisation of this demand, it is its ability to garner the social forces generated by the civil society activism to its side in the electoral arena which contributed to its electoral success.18 What could clearly be noticed during the decade-long articulation of the Telangana demand since the mid-1990s is a clear shift in the discursive terrain. This cannot be attributed to any single homogenous agency. It is a result of the convergence of a variety of groups civil society associations, writers’ groups, cultural organisations and political parties19 on the need for the Telangana state, despite the differences in their political positions and discursive strategies. If the multiplicity of organisations engaged at the grass roots with the Telangana issue has been instrumental in spreading the message of Telangana, then multi-dimensional engagement— political, social, literary and cultural— is demonstrative of the expanse and depth it has acquired in popular imagination. What unites these organisational and discursive efforts, is their critique of the hegemonic linguistic principle — language being the ‘sole’ basis for retaining the Telugu state of AP and for denying statehood to Telangana. They have sought to expose the shallowness in the claim for holding the two regions together on the assumption that Telugu-speaking people are one imagined community; it is the exposure of the vacuity of the concept of Vishalandhra that has been the aim of these grass-roots efforts. At a deeper level the historical fact that these two regions have been under different political systems for almost two centuries20 resulting in the differences in terms of historical trajectories, political economy of development, social structure, cultural–literary formation and distinct regional identities has been highlighted in the discourses on Telangana. It is this discursive critique we will now turn to.

comprising

Broadly, three trends in the discursive articulation on Telangana

can be identified: one, the discourses that emphasise the political second, discourses that attempt a critique of the economic and third are those that aim at constructing the identity of Telangana as an imagined community in opposition to the Vishalandhra identity. Political discourses on Telangana have been fairly simple and straightforward. They have varied from emphasis on the political marginalisation of the Telangana leadership to a critique of state policy that led to the undermining of the rights of the Telangana people in

factors; backwardness;

the Telangana region itself. The opponents have tried to brush aside the Telangana demand by characterising this as an expression of the selfish personal ambitions of the Telangana political leaders. Though the marginalisation of the local people in education and employment are important factors but unlike the 1960s movement, the present one has much deeper social roots and density in terms of social and cultural imagination. Therefore the political reductionism implicit in the above discourse fails to capture the dynamics of the present movement. There is a strong trend in the discourses on Telangana which voice the theme of backwardness. It is argued that Telangana has remained backward because of its merger with Andhra with: (a) Andhra settlers occupying the fertile lands of Telangana, (b) Andhra capital dominating the industry and real estate in the urban centres in Telangana, and (c) controlling the resources in Telangana for their benefit through the use of governmental power.21 What is emphasised here is that the logic of ‘internal colonialism’ that led to the reduction of Telangana into a colony of coastal Andhra.22 The obvious pointer is that as long as Telangana remains part of the unified state, it would not be able to develop and the solution to it is separate statehood to Telangana.23 What is lost sight of because of the political and economic

determinism of the above discourses is the deeper processes of

transformation

in the popular everyday commonsense consciousness. The most formidable challenge to the linguistic idea of Vishalandhra, seen as the most desirable framework for the Telugu-speaking people, is available in this commonsense transformation. What is amazing about this phenomenon which, following the spirit of the argument of Benedict Anderson (1983), can be characterised as the creation of an imagined Telangana community. Going by the Andersonian perspective discussed in the first section,

the Telugu nationality should have been a reality because it has the two important ingredients— common language and print capitalism— that go to forge nation as an imagined community. Print capitalism in Andhra, in its more than a century of history of expansion, has created a standardised print language out of the dialects of Krishna, Guntur and Godavari districts. Of course, what facilitated popular support to it are the social reform movements and literary renaissance of the late nineteenth century and the subsequent political movements, i.e., the nationalist and communist movements in the Andhra region which were intellectually dominated by the leadership coming from these districts.

The fact that all the vernacular newspapers have been owned and controlled by the Andhra elite has only fastened this process. was bestowed on this officially by the political regimes ever since the AP state was formed in 1956 through the public education system (through textbooks and teacher training, etc). Print media, radio and other official channels have played a significant role in paving the way for the process of standardisation of Telugu language and forging adherence of literate class to linguistic uniformity and homogeneity. The conspicuous proliferation of what can be called ‘visual’ in the form of cinema since the 1970s 24 and the television since the 1980s25, dominated almost entirely by the Andhra entrepreneurs, has furthered this process. N. T. Rama Rao (NTR), a popular film actor and an icon created by the coastal Andhra dominated film industry, established the TDP and the party came to power in 1983. It may be recollected that NTR sought to project the frequent interference of the Congress high command into the affairs of the state Congress and government as a loss of Telugu self-respect and alternatively the TDP’s victory in 1983 election was seen as the restoration of Telugu pride. NTR’s discourse of the injured Telugu self-respect was not only reminiscent of the Vishalandhra slogan of 1950s but also a replay of it. In the context of popular discontent against the bankrupt Congress rule in the state, the TDP could successfully ignite the popular imagination and win the 1983 elections.26 The rise of NTR to power in the state through the cultural–nationalist rhetoric of Telugu pride and self-respect could act as a catalyst in the linguistic cultural homogenisation process.

Legitimacy

capitalism

Against this background, the demand for Telangana assumes

importance as a counter-instance to the theoretical thrust of Andersonian

argument. The crucial question is: Why, despite all the ingredients for the formation of a nationality on the basis of Telugu language, the state has seen a series of challenges to the very idea of Vishalandhra and a subterraneous process that challenges the legitimacy of the idea and asserts the Telangana identity. Further, given the importance of the NTR phenomenon in AP politics, it is necessary to ask: Why a state, which saw such an assertion of Telugu identity in the 1980s in the form of the TDP’s rise, apparently transcending the sub-regional identities asserted during the 1960s, is once again witnessing a strong assertion of Telangana identity within a decade? What are the sources that give the Telangana identity an advantage over Vishalandhra identity which enjoys the resources of print, visual and electronic capitalism?

In a significant sense, the Telangana assertion could be seen as a to the above process as it challenges the very idea of standardised Telugu language27 and exposes the hegemonic design implicit in the homogenisation process through which the dialects of the advanced coastal districts of Krishna, Guntur and Godavari have been privileged as the standard Telugu. The Telangana movement sharply focuses on the dialect–language distinction between Telangana and Andhra and problematises the idea of possibility of unity on the basis of language. The immediate provocation for this comes from the popular cinema dominated by producers, directors and actors from these districts, which make fun of the Telangana dialects,28 which are generally spoken by marginal characters, comedians and villains. The celluloid presentation of Telangana society and culture, characterised through the idiom, body languages and images of these characters, is seen as a clear of their contemptuous dismissal of the people and culture of Telangana.

reaction

demonstration

As stated earlier, the present movement, articulated by a variety of

civil society organisations, differs from the 1969 movement in depth and reach. What informs the present articulation of the Telangana issue is the deep distrust by the common people, informed largely by their everyday experience, at the idea of a unified Telugu state. The TDP regime under NTR brought intensity to this idea through his political play of Telugu pride and self-respect. However, what happened dialectically in his political regime was the Andhraisation or dominance of economy, politics and society by the Andhra elite. The massive in-migration from coastal Andhra and development of landed and capital interests by Andhraites in Telangana, encouragement to adopt green revolution technology, the neglect and displacement of the traditional tank system by bore-well irrigation in Telangana leading to the decline of agriculture and displacement, all of these induced by state policy has had a drastic impact on the social and economic ecology of Telangana. The transformation of agri-culture into agro-business resulted in a crisis in the agrarian countryside and impoverishment of the small peasantry in Telangana leading to large-scale out-migration from Telangana villages to far off places in search of work. The rise of the Telangana identity politics in the 1990s is a reaction to

the process of Andhraisation in the garb of Telugu self-respect. If the 1960s Telangana movement was a reaction to the violation of Mulki

rules, then the 1990s movement could be read as a reaction to the TDP’s Andhra rule. The clue to this can be found in the cultural expressions and modes articulating the Telangana issue. It is saddening to note that the political and economic arguments and discourses on Telangana are extremely imitative and only replicate those already present in the mainstream parliamentary and developmental discourses. The way Telangana is seen in these discourses can be characterised as instrumentalist, for they emphasise that Telangana would bring jobs, irrigation and developmental projects to locals. The response to this from the political regime and the opponents of the Telangana demand is quite predictable: allocate more development funds and that will solve the problem. In contrast, the strength of the Telangana movement is drawn from the cultural sphere. 29 It has given rise to an upsurge of the cultural production in the form of song-performance and of course, fiction. In these resurgent folk cultural forms of expression, Telangana is as both worthy of celebration and also mourning. 30 The dialectic of mourning and celebration, sense of loss and presence and despair and hope contrast Telangana with coastal Andhra in interesting ways. While expressing anger at the insult and marginalisation caused to the Telangana language and people’s culture, the task of celebrating its richness and of restoring respectability to it is also highlighted. While the decline of traditional agriculture and crafts is mourned invoking idyllic images of their presence in rural Telangana in the past, what is being celebrated as worth remembering about Telangana is its sense of community that is counter-posed to the unbridled individualism of coastal Andhra. Telangana stands out as an abode of idyllic harmony with nature seen in opposition to commercialisation, profit seeking and over exploitation of nature represented by coastal Andhra. If the social and political discourses, reflecting the concerns of modernity lament for the Telangana lagging behind coastal Andhra in different modern spheres like education, agriculture, irrigation, industry, etc., the folk-cultural celebrates the traditional livelihood patterns like artisanal occupations as appropriate and the move away from that is seen as a deviation caused by capital and greed and therefore mourned, as presented in a song by the famous poet Goreti Venkanna, as a loss.31 If more than a century of colonial modernity has wiped out the traditional life patterns in coastal Andhra, then despite the the traces or ‘fragments’ still remain as expression of continuity

configured

transformation,

and hope in Telangana. What the cultural movement in Telangana has resurrected is to bring the fragment to bear upon the social whole and to enlarge it to signify the Telangana identity. What the artistic cultural expression of song-performance effects is

an invocation of a collective historical memory that is capable of forging an ‘imagined community’ of Telangana. 32 Cultural performances, like for instance the Telangana Dhum Dham, are an important activity of the cultural organisations, enacted as grand spectacles to spread the message of loss that Telangana suffers because of the social and cultural dominance of Andhra region. They have been a principal mode of communicating the cultural need to recover the lost identity. It is rather here in the cultural domain that popular classes search for and identify the authentic voice of Telangana. Telangana, in contrast to Andhra, has historically seen the importance of cultural practice as a necessary accompaniment of political activity. Given the low literacy and continual presence of folk cultural forms, the song-performance has been a major mode of popular communication in Telangana.33 It is the subterraneous cultural transformation and articulation

brought about by the cultural activism through activities like Telangana Dhum Dham (see Ramulu 2006) that is the strength of the Telangana movement, which during the last decade has grown from strength to strength, where the vision of an alternative democratic and people’s Telangana is located. This expression moves forward dynamically despite the bankruptcy of the electoral politics in Telangana. The Telangana movement, seen from the perspective of cultural could be read as an engagement with the problematisation of the language–territory–market relation that is taken for granted in the explanation of nationality question and its justification as a legitimate framework.

politics,

IV The Telangana demand raises an important question: can the people be held together merely on the basis of language even when they do not imagine themselves as a community? The case of Telangana in fact shows the power of historical memories and the social and political differences vis-à-vis a common language. The periodic articulation of the Telangana demand demonstrates the disrupted trajectory of the formation of the Telugu nationality and the failure of the idea of Vishalandhra— the integrated Andhra or unified state— to be the basis of an imagined community.

The Telangana movement brings out two important issues to the fore. One is that during the last five decades, since the linguistic states’ reorganisation, there have been questions raised about the continual relevance of the linguistic framework. The movements for new states have brought forth new issues and fresh perspectives to the fore which are expressions of popular aspirations. These movements reflect the problems related to lopsided economic development and neglect, political marginalisation and cultural neglect of the backward areas and their life patterns, and social practices and dialects. These are stark in the states which have been carved out by merging regions from the two distinct historical backgrounds of princely and colonial India.

problems

As shown in the case of Telangana, there are deeper cultural politics

involved in the demand for separate statehood. In the dominant these movements are treated as expressions of the frustration of disgruntled politicians, factional conflicts within the dominant party —in most cases it was the Congress— and the lack of development. In other words, the causes are identified by placing primacy on the party political and economic factors. The deeper sources of the identity articulation related to historical memory and cultural specificity are either ignored or underplayed.

paradigm,

The response to these movements thus has been, especially during

the period of Congress dominance in Indian politics, one of suppression coupled with promise of special administrative and economic and political rearrangements in the form of replacing the chief ministers and increasing the representation to the agitating regions. As a result, the deeper aspirations underlying such demands have been left unaddressed. The main thrust of the Telangana movement lies in the fact that it problematises the nationality concept that privileges language as the basis for states’ reorganisation in India. The Telangana question clearly demonstrates the power of historical memories and distinct cultural formations in shaping regional identities and the need to take cognisance of them in the (re-)organisation of the states rather than just conforming to rigid linguistic framework. In other words, what is seen unfolding in the Telangana movement is not limited to the specific case of Telangana but has wider significance. The recognition of this fact would further the democratisation process in India.

packages

Annexure The famous song ‘Palle kanneeru peduthundo’ by Goreti Venkanna, which is sung by cultural troops cutting across political affiliations, has been issued as a cassette and CD. A small section of the song is presented here to illustrate the argument:

Palle kanneeru peduthundo kanipinchani kutrala Naa thalli bandhi ayipothundo kanipinchani kutrala Kummari vagulo thummalu molisenu Kammari vagulo dummu regenu Pedda badisha moddu barinan\di Saalela moggam saduliriginavi Chethi vruthula chethulirigipaye naa pallellona Ayyo grama swarajyam ganga lona paye ee deshamlona Madugulanni aduganti poyinavi Baavulu savuku daggarayyinavi Vagulu vankalu yendipoyinavi Saakali poyyilu kopolipoyinavi Pedda boru poddantha nadusthundo balisina doraladi Mari peda raithula bavulendukende na pallellona Eedulanni masi boggulainavi Eetha kallu bangaramayyinadi mandu kalipina kalloo thagina mandi kalla nindoosulayinavi Challani beeru whishkilevadu pampe na pallelloki Are bussuna ponge pepsi kola vache na pallellloki “palle” (The village is weeping. In unknown plots, the mother is being bonded Thumma [thorn] trees have grown in the potter’s furnace Dust has covered the blacksmith’s chimney The big barisa [chisel] has gone rough The weaver’s shuttle is broken The hands of the artisans are broken in my villages The village’s freedom is drowned in the Ganges

The small ponds ran dry The wells are near to death The brooks and other water sources ran dry The stoves of washer community have fallen down The big bore of the rich men is running for the whole day But, the poor peoples’ wells have run dry The toddy trees became waste sticks The toddy has become invaluable thing The people who drunk the mixed toddy with chemical Their eyes are filled with dust Who sent the chilled beer and whisky to my village Who sent cold pepsi cola into my village)

Notes 1. Similar demands for statehood in Vidarbha, Marathwada, Gorkhaland, Purvanchal, Bundelkhand and Harit Pradesh have long been articulated by mass movements in these regions. For an analysis of the Harit Pradesh demand, see Singh (2001). 2. The literature on nationality question in India is vast. For an overview on it see, Karat (1973); Guha (1982); Alam (1983); Vanaik (1988). 3. For an analysis of belated or ‘second’ way transition to capitalism, see, Kaviraj (1984). 4. The Congress accepted the principle of linguistic provinces and passed a resolution to that effect in its Nagpur session in 1920. 5. For a historical account of the nationality crystallisation in India, see Karat (1973). 6. For a recent analysis of the relationship between the capitalism and nationality identities, see D. N. (1989). 7. For an activist account of the specificity of Telangana, see Sundarayya and Chattopadhyay (1972); Reddy (1973 and 1992). Also, see Pavier (1981). 8. For a graphic presentation of this scenario, see Rao (1977). The roots of resistance to the merger with Andhra region could be traced these experiences. 9. For an analysis of the regional differences in political and social see Srinivasulu (2002). 10. For an account of the literary and cultural developments that form the context of the emergence of Telugu linguistic identity in the Madras see Ramakrishna (1993). For a historical account of the Telugu identity formation and the role of literature, see Nagaraju (1995).

linguistic

articulation, presidency,

11. It stated: the theory of ‘one language one state’ which is neither justified on grounds of linguistic homogeneity, because there can be more than one state speaking the same language without offending the linguistic principle, nor practicable, since different language groups, including the vast Hindi-speaking population of the Indian Union, cannot always be consolidated to form distinct linguistic units (Government of India, 1955, p. 46). 12. The major difference between the nature of political struggles in the two regions has be noted: the Andhra region, being part of the colonial rule, was drawn into the nationalist movement where as in Hyderabad, the struggle was for responsible government and civil rights. Because of the fact that Andhra was part of the anti-colonial struggle, Congress leaders here had stronger connection with the national leadership compared to the leaders of Telangana. 13. It appears that a section of the national leadership of the Congress was not very favourably disposed to the idea of Vishalandhra. The instance which is often quoted by the supporters of Telangana movement is the statement of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru characterising the idea of ‘Vishalandhra’ as an expression of ‘expansionist imperialism’. Indian Express, 17 October 1953, cited in Jayashankar (2004: 2). 14. The ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ was signed in Delhi on 20 February 1956 by the leaders representing Telangana and Andhra. For a discussion on it, see Narayana Rao (1973). Some of the important terms and guidelines for the future party

leadership and governments of the state to protect the interests of the less

developed Telangana were as follow: (a) the implementation of Mulki rules in service matters in Telangana; (b) establishment of regional council for the development of Telangana; (c) the sale of agricultural lands in Telangana should be controlled by the Regional Council; (d) creation of more educational and irrigational facilities for the Telangana region; (e) If the chief minister is from one region, then the deputy chief minister should be from other region; the distribution of the cabinet positions to the Telangana and Andhra should be in the proportion of 40:60 and the former should be allocated two of the following prime portfolios of home, finance, revenue, planning and development, commerce and industry; separate provincial Congress committee for Telangana up to the end of 1962. 15. For an account of the 1969 Telangana movement see, Forrester (1970); Gray (1971).

16. Despite the larger appeal and implications of the movement, the dominant perspective has viewed the Telangana movement in terms of the concern at government employment almost to the exclusion of substantial concerns of other sections of society like farmers, working class, etc. See Parthasarathy, Ramana and Rama Rao (1973). 17. For an analysis of the 2004 assembly and parliamentary elections, see Srinivasulu (2004); also in Wallace and Roy (2007). 18. A major limitation in the perspectives on Telangana is the failure to between the politics of movement and electoral politics. Most of the analysts interpret the popular support for the Telangana movement in terms of the electoral fortunes of the TRS, the visible political voice of the demand in the electoral domain. This view is narrow and incorrect for the following reasons: first, the Telangana demand cannot be reduced to the TRS because it has been articulated by a wide variety of organisations, some of which differ with the TRS; and second, the electoral presence and performance of the TRS has largely been influenced by and in fact, consequent upon popular opinion and mood created by the civil society associations and cultural organisations. 19. With the exception of the CPM, all the political parties including the CPI have expressed their support to the Telangana demand. This support is of course with differences in emphasis. For a critical evaluation of the CPI (M) stand on Telangana, see Ashok (2008). 20. The coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema districts were handed over by the Nizam to the British in 1766 and 1800 respectively. Since then, there had hardly been any interaction between these two regions and Telangana region which remained under the Nizam’s rule. It was only with the emergence of Communists and the Congress in the Hyderabad state that interaction between the political elite of these regions became possible. Sundarayya, while arguing in favour of Vishalandhra, mentions this fact without recognising its implications for the Vishalandhra project (Sundarayya 1990: 3). 21. The above two arguments formed the core of public discourses on Telangana and articulated through a wide range of media and modes of communications like public meetings, songs, newspaper articles, booklets, etc. For instance, the well known Telangana spokesman K. Jayashankar in his book presented a detailed statistical account to emphasise the fact of uneven development of the two regions as the basis of the demand for Telangana state. See Jayashankar (2004). 22. Some of the Telugu pamphlets and booklets have been bold enough to push the argument of internal colonisation. For instance, Telangana Abhivrudhi: Midhya– Vasthavam (Telangana’s Development: Illusion and Reality), Telangana Vidhyavanthula Vedika, Hyderabad, 2006.

middleclass

differentiate

pamphlets,

23. Recently, the economist Ch Hanumantha Rao in his paper, ‘Regional Smaller States and Statehood for Telangana’, has also argued in favour of small states as a viable framework for regional development (Rao 2009). available at http://telanganautsav.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/telangana-movement-beyond-electoral-considerations-ch-h/(accessed 10 June 2010). 24. Andhra Pradesh is one of the few states leading in the production, and exhibition of films. As far as the production of regional films is concerned, the Telugu film industry occupies a leading position along with the Tamil industry. 25. Presently, there are around a dozen TV channels with specific focus on news, cinema and women issues. 26. Multiple messages were sought to be read into this political event which was an electoral contest between the Congress and TDP: Centre versus States; Hindi versus Telugu; national versus regional; insult to Telugus versus assertion of Telugu self-respect. 27. There has been a proliferation of pamphlets, booklets, anthologies of short story, essay and song to show and celebrate the differences of language and idiom between Andhra and Telangana regions. This has had a effect on the social and political discourse in Telangana. 28. It is not only Telangana dialect but also the dialects of northern coastal Andhra and of Rayalaseema that are also made fun of and scorned at. While the protagonist is shown to be from the advanced region, the comedians and villains are shown to be from the backward Telangana and Rayalaseema regions. The contrast is obviously highlighted through the medium of language and etiquette. 29. The cultural movement in Telangana, championed by Praja Natya Mandali, Telangana Sanskrutika Samakya, Telangana Dharuvu Kala Brundamu, etc., and personified by the balladeers like Andhesri, Gaddar, Goreti Venkanna and Rasamayi Balakrishna, among a host of other song-performers, has played a crucial role in accessing cultural resources to shape the Telangana identity. It is this cultural movement which has been crucial in undoing the impact of the visual capitalism. 30. See Annexure. For the text of the song and its translation, see Kumar (2009). 31. Unfortunately, the discourse on Telangana continues to be dominated by political and economic determinism. The power of the above cultural transformation is yet to be taken cognisance of in the political articulation of the Telangana movement. 32. Telangana emerged as a major theme for the mainstream commercial cinema in the 1990s and some of them, like Ose Ramulamma, became major successes at the box office. It is the commercial cinema which, to some

Disparities, distribution

demonstrative

extent, seems to have understood the importance and power of Telangana folk culture, the evidence of which could be seen in its adaptation of folk themes and songs. 33. In Andhra, cinema has totally replaced it; it is the record dance culture imitating cinema which is found here.

References Alam, Javed. 1983. ‘Dialectics of Capitalist Transformations and National Crystallisation: The Past and the Present of National Question in India’, Economic and Political Weekly , 18 (5): 29–46. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Ashok, Tankasala. 2008. ‘CPI(M) Basha Prayuktha Rastrala Vaikari: Asalayina Sutramaina Yantrika Avagahana’ (Linguistic State Approach of CPI(M): Proper Principle but Mechanical Understanding), Vaartha , 30–31 January and 1–2 February, Hyderabad. D. N. 1989. ‘Indian Big Bourgeoisie and the National Question: The Formative Phase’, Economic and Political Weekly , 24 (9): 454–56. Forrester, Duncan B. 1970. ‘Sub-regionalism in India: The Case of Telangana’, Pacific Affairs, 43 (1): 5–21. Government of India. 1955. Report of the States Reorganisation Commission. Delhi: Government of India. Gray, Hugh. 1971. ‘The Demand for a Separate Telengana State in India’, Asian Survey, 11 (5): 463–74. Guha, Amalendu. 1982. ‘The Indian National Question: A Conceptual Frame’, Economic and Political Weekly , 17 (31): 2–12. Harrison, Selig. 1956. ‘Caste and Andhra Communists’, The American Political Science Review, 50 (2): 378–404. Jayashankar, K. 2004. Telangana Rastram: Oka Demand (Telangana State: A Demand). Dodavarikhani: Mallepalli Rajam Memorial Trust. Karat, Prakash. 1973. Language and Nationality Politics. Mumbai: Orient Longman. Kaviraj, Sudipto. 1984. ‘On the Crisis of Political Institutions in India’, to Indian Sociology , 18 (2): 224–26. Kumar, Kiran. 2009. ‘Songs of Tears and Forces of Voice’. Unpublishes MPhil. Dissertation, IFL University, Hyderabad. Nagaraju, S. 1995. ‘Emergence of Regional Identity and Beginnings of Literature: A Case Study of Telugu’, Social Scientist, 23 (10–12): 8–23. Narayan Rao, K. V. 1973. The Emergence of Andhra Pradesh, pp. 301–303. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan.

Contributions

Vernacular

Parthasarathy, G., K. V. Ramana and G. Dasaradha Rama Rao. 1973. ‘Separatist Movement in Andhra Pradesh: Shadow and Substance’, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 (11): 560–63. Pavier, B. 1981. The Telangana Movement 1944–1951 . Delhi: Vikas Publishers. Ramakrishna, V. 1993. ‘Literary and Theatre Movements in Colonial Andhra: Struggle for Left Ideological Legitimacy’, Social Scientist, 21 (1 and 2): 69–85. Ramulu, B. S. 2006. Telangana Rastram: Nadusthunna Charitra (Telangana State: Contemporary History). Hyderabad: Vishala Sahitya Academy. Rao, Ch Hanumantha. ‘Regional Disparities, Smaller States and Statehood for Telangana’. http://telanganautsav.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/telangana-movement-beyond-electoral-considerations-ch-h/ Rao, Mandumula Narsing. 1977. Yabbbai Sammaschharala Hyderabad-Gnapakalu (Fifty Years of Hyderabad: Memoirs). Hyderabad: Narsinga Rao Smaraka Samithi. Rao, G. N. 1985. ‘Transition from Subsistence to Commercialised Agriculture: A Study of Krishna District of Andhra, C 1850–1900’, Economic and Political Weekly, 20 (25 and 26): 60–69. Reddy, Ravi Narayan. 1973. Heroic Telengana: Reminiscences and Experiences. Delhi: Communist Party of India. ———. 1992. Na Jivan Pathamlo (In the Path of My Life). Hyderabad: Musi Publications. Samuel, John. 1993. ‘Language and Nationality in North-East India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28 (3/4): 91–92. Seshadri, K. ‘The Telangana Agitation and the Politics of Andhra Pradesh’, Indian Journal of Political Science , 12 (1): 3–16. Singh, Jagpal. 2001. ‘Politics of Harit Pradesh: The Case of Western UP as a Separate State’, Economic and Political Weekly , 36 No. 31: 2961–67. Srinivasulu, K. 2002. ‘Caste, Class and Social Articulation in Andhra Pradesh: Mapping Differential Regional Trajectories’, Working Paper No. 179. London: Overseas Development Institute. ———. 2004. ‘Political Articulation and Policy Discourse in Elections, Andhra Pradesh, 2004’, Economic and Political Weekly , 39 (34): 560–63. Sundarayya, P. 1990 (1946). Vishalandhralo Prajarajyam (People’s Rule in Vishalandhra). Vijayawada: Prajashakti Book House. Sundarayya, P. and Harindranath Chattopadhyay.1972.Telangana People’s Struggle and Its Lessons. Calcutta: Communist Party of India (Marxist). Vanaik, Achin. 1988. ‘Is There a Nationality Question in India?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 (44): 2278–89. Wallace, Paul and R. Roy. (eds). 2007. India’s 2004 Elections: Grassroots and national Perspectives. Delhi: Sage.

8 Competing Imaginations: Language and Anti-colonial Nationalism in India Tharakeshwar V. B. Language Nationalism and Anti-colonial Nationalism Nationalism in Europe is predominantly based on language, which itself arose in the context of developments in the field of print technology and print capitalism (Anderson 1983). However in the Indian subcontinent, we witness different communities getting envisaged/imagined on the basis of various other issues/factors. It is not that language identities and accompanying nationalism (generally called as linguistic nationalism, and sometimes called in post-1947 terminology as subnationalism, regionalism) did not have any presence here. During the colonial situation in India, language-based identities took shape due to the activities of the colonial state, with missionaries in the area of print technology working with language elites, trained in European model of education, chipping in. However, as Partha Chatterjee (1986, 1993) and Sudipta Kaviraj (1998) would tell us, these language-based identities were not in a position to wrest power from the colonial authority, which was a supra-language power. So a new anti-colonial nationalism, which we today identify as Indian nationalism, arose. It is this anti-colonial nationalism that became a triumphant discourse during the 1940s; of course it had to contend with religion-based nationalism which eventually led to the formation of two nation states. There were other strands in the nationalist discourse too which were competing for hegemony and could not succeed. The Congress which was spearheading the nationalist movement did envisage the challenges that a language-based nationalism/identity/ imagined community could pose to it and tried to address it from 1920s onwards. This finally lead to the reorganisation of Indian territory on the basis of language in 1956. This chapter is concerned with the language-based imagined community and other competing

Competing Imaginations

imaginations during that period in Princely Mysore, which was not under direct colonial rule. Such an exercise would help us in understanding the fissures that are haunting the language-based state formation within the Indian Union today. Contemporary Fissures in Kannada Identity In Karnataka, a state within an Indian nation state which was the result of a negotiation between Indian nationalism and Kannadabased language identity, we hear now and then, though there are not any concerted efforts or movements— demands for a separate north Karnataka state (erstwhile Bombay presidency and parts which were transferred to Karnataka from Hyderabad Nizam’s territory), special status for Hyderabad Karnataka, Tulu-naadu (Tulu is the spoken along with Kannada and Konkani in coastal regions of Karnataka) and a separate Coorg state (which actually from independence till 1956, had a separate government of its own). Such voices which are raised today are not only the result of contemporary socioeconomic and political factors but also of the historical forces that shaped Kannada identity in a particular way during late nineteenth and early part of twentieth century.

language

Constraints of Language Nationalism By looking at the context of Karnataka and Kannada literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, i.e., prior to transfer of power to newly formed India and Pakistan in 1947, I would say that Kannada nationalism, though it emerged and succeeded in imagining a Kannada community, could not articulate itself in terms of a nation or nation state for the geographic region, which it identified as its own. It had to be content with playing second fiddle to Indian nationalism. This was due to the historical–political situation in which the region was caught up. The polity of the spaces that the Kannadigas inhabited shaped their imagination of the future political possibilities. Thus the peculiar situation in which the region that Kannada claimed as its own during the colonial period, constrained its imagination and consequent articulations. It could never articulate a nation state of its own. In that sense, Kannada nationalism failed to arrive at its designated arrival point (that is, if we accept the trajectory of European nationalism as the designated path for any nationalism). This essay would examine the context in which Kannada nationalism

nationalism

Tharakeshwar V. B.

took shape, and the context in which it played second fiddle to Indian nationalism. The essay does not directly look at Kannada identity in the post-1956 era; it tries to historically trace reasons for some of the anxieties that Kannada identity is fraught with today. If we take up the preconditions enunciated by Anderson for a to emerge, then all those preconditions did exist in Princely Mysore/Karnataka and a community called Kannadigas was being imagined, through the construction of the history of Mysore; the history of Kannada language, Kannada literature and Karnataka; the standardisation of Kannada script and language; translations that prepared the language and the people to negotiate with modernity.1 However, at the same time, in the context of cultural nationalism, we see in Kannada literature a certain kind of pan-Indian community is also being imagined. So there were two communities being imagined, each one claiming to be a nation.

nationalism

Sudipta Kaviraj refers to a similar situation in Bengal of the nineteenth

century. In Bengal, according to Kaviraj, this Bengali identity which he calls ‘regional’, was later subsumed by the larger national identity. He accounts for this ‘gerrymandering of the boundaries of selfhood or collective identity’ thus: If the Bengali jati (nation) is an unlikely candidate for successful struggle against the might of British imperialism, the search for a viable nation has to look in other directions. Bengalis did not constitute the stuff of a good nation not because they were lacking in sentiments of solidarity, but because they could not provide a credible opposition to the British empire (1997: 318, italics in original and the words in parenthesis mine).

Relation Between Kannada Nationalism and Indian Nationalism However, in Karnataka, the Kannada identity was more vocal and did not get easily subsumed under a pan-Indian national identity. The question of need for devising a credible opposition to the British empire did not arise at all in Princely Mysore as it was not under direct British rule. Even when it arose, with the visibility of pan-Indian nationalism in Karnataka (that is after the 1930s), talk of Kannada nationalism continued to exist alongside Indian nationalism. This led to repeated clarifications from Alur Venkatarao, the prominent leader of Karnataka nationalism regarding the relationship between

Kannada nationalism — which he calls ‘Karnatakatwa’ (Karnatakism) or ‘Karnataka Rashtriyate’ (Karnataka nationalism) — and the Indian national movement launched by the Congress. The kind and range of imagery used to define this relationship is very interesting: Karnataka is a lens through which we look at India and the world …. Indian culture is internalised in Kannada culture and Kannada culture is internalised in Indian culture. Karnataka is a living part of an organic India, Karnataka devi (the goddess of Karnataka) is the daughter of Bharata devi (the goddess of India) … Indian culture is also Karnataka culture … Karnataka culture has been nourishing Indian culture since ages and it is a unique culture … Karnatakism is not against nationalism and nationalism that is against Karnatakism is not nationalism … The feeling that I am first Indian and then a Karnatakian is wrong. There is no question of first and second in this, they are not two opposing things … Karnataka is the first to save India from the danger of a foreign rule and for it India should be grateful to Karnataka forever … Kannada language and land is our inner courtyard and India is our outer courtyard in the map of the World … Bharati devi is the utsavamurthy2 of the world and Karnataka devi is the utsavamuthy of Bharati devi … (Venkatarao 1999: 190–99).

While looking at the above description of the relationship between Karnataka and India by Venkatarao, we have to keep in mind that it was written as ‘Karnatakatwada Sootragalu’ (formulas of Karnatakatwa) in 1957 after independence and the formation of Karnataka state with the unification of Kannada-speaking regions. So it can be argued that it was inevitable for Venkatarao to accept the existing political formation and assert Kannada nationalism within it, and also define the relationship in such a way that it does not question the existing accepted political order. However even earlier, he was not against the Indian national movement. He participated in the non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhi; he served as the vice-president of the local Congress Committee but resigned stating that he did not share the views of Gandhi opposing the insertion of social reforms into political struggles against the British (Venkatarao 1974: 166–67). What is interesting in the above quote and in his formula of Karnatakatwa is that he presents a system involving three concentric circles: one is a global order, the other is India and then Karnataka. However, he is not setting up a hierarchy here. For him, they are concentric: Karnataka is in the middle, surrounded by India and then

the world. It is only by firmly locating oneself in Karnatakatwa that a Kannadiga can look at India and the world. Karnatakatwa is the lens through which we can realise the essence of India and the world. The concrete realisation of a world order happens only through India and one encounters India only through Karnatakatwa. In one of his English letters written in 1929, he defines Karnatakatwa like this: From my experience of public life in Karnatak [sic] and also from my experience in other fields, I have come to the conclusion that no movement political or otherwise is possible unless there is this Karnatakatwa in us. By Karnatakatwa, I mean the sum total of all our feelings and duties towards Karnatak (like Hindutwa). So it is that from the political field, I turned to this less ambitious but more solid work. My Karnatakatwa is somewhat different from ‘Pravincialism’ [sic] (Venkatarao 1999: 9, words in parenthesis are in original).

He clearly defines Karnatakatwa as a commitment to the land and its people and compares it with Hindutwa. He dismisses the idea that it is provincialism or regionalism. For him, it is a religion on which the Kannada nation should be built. This becomes clearer if we look at how he defines the essence of the world and India in particular. His notion of the essence of the world and India is quite interesting: The World culture is Sanatana culture that defies any dating, a ubiquitous culture. It has two forms: one is its general form and the other is a specific form. Our great saints have promoted both the forms and both are found in our India. India, that gave space to all castes, religions, sects, races and nationalities without any discrimination, is the sign of this general form. … Our saints have molded this general essence into a specific form by establishing a specific religion, tradition and system of rituals. It is the responsibility of all Indians to protect this specific form of India. This specific form is a model that the whole world can follow. … Only those who don’t accept the general form are our enemies. Those who don’t accept this specific form are not our enemies. This specific form can be termed Hindutwa or Hinditwa, the name is not important but the meaning is (Venkatarao 1999: 190–91).

His problem with Indian nationalists in Karnataka was that some of them did not support his Karnatakatwa and they thought that it was against the Indian national struggle. He further says that if they had not fought for Karnatakatwa and the reunification of Kannada-speaking

regions during the colonial period, then there would have been no Karnataka in post-independent India (ibid.: 12–13). This statement, though coming from the vantage point of the post-reunification of Karnataka in 1957, clearly shows the commitment to Kannada nationalism that certain elite groups had during the colonial period. Venkatarao gives an important place to literature in the task of evolving Kannada nationalism: Literature is the life-force that sustains the nation. Literature is not just a discourse. … Unless there is an awakened consciousness about the language there can be no awakened consciousness about the land (1999: 198).

For him, it is not just enough to have a political reunification of the Kannada-speaking regions; the precondition is cultural unification. This task of cultural reunification can be best carried out by literature. To support literature, new institutions are needed. So he supported the formation of Mysore University, and made an attempt to have a university for entire Karnataka. He also played a key role in the activities of Vidyavardhaka Sangha of Dharwad and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat. He resigned from Kannada Sahitya Parishat in 1938 protesting against the attitude of the members of Princely Mysore who he felt were not heeding to the voice of the members of north Karnataka. It is worth mentioning here that the first attempt to resolve the tension between Kannada nationalism and Indian nationalism happens in poetry in 1928. Kuvempu (K. V. Puttappa) in his poem, which is today recognised as the Naada Geete (state anthem of Karnataka), uses kinship terms to resolve the issue of two mothers that the Kannada literature envisaged — that of Bharatha Maata and Kannada Maata. When confronted with two mothers, the poem calls one the grandmother and the other a mother, i.e., Kannada Maata becomes the daughter of Bharatha Maata (Kuvempu 2000: 106). Literature and litterateurs, especially B. M. Srikantia, played a key

role in Kannada cultural nationalism. However, there is a difference between Alur Venkatarao who hails from the erstwhile Bombay presidency (i.e., today’s north Karnataka) and the litterateurs of Princely Mysore region in their conception of Kannada nationalism. In Princely Mysore, people like Srikantia, who contributed much through their writings and activities towards cultural nationalism, were not so comfortable with political reunification. This brings us

to the question of the then existing political entities and their with the choices made by different social groups.

relationship Princely State and Presidency Regions In Princely Mysore, which was a modern state (nation) in all practical senses, in spite of a monarchy and the interference of the Madras presidency headed by the British, people like B. M. Srikantia couldn’t think of a state without the King of Mysore. Their loyalty to the King was unquestionable and in fact Srikantia is often remembered by his title Rajasevasakta (an ardent server of the King). Though people like Srikantia were for cultural nationalism, the political reunification of Kannada-speaking regions posed a challenge to them as it meant either bringing Princely Mysore under a new political entity called Karnataka under colonial rule or as a sovereign nation without a monarch. The people of north Karnataka, like Alur Venkatarao, who were for both cultural and political reunification of Karnataka were ready for either option — bringing Kannada regions under a single colonial administration or fighting against the colonial rule for a sovereign nation called Karnataka. The former choice would have brought about the reunification of Karnataka, a task that might have continued to become a struggle for freedom from colonial rule. The latter choice would have brought both reunification and freedom together. People like B. M. Srikantia would have agreed with the idea of a political reunification under the rule of the King of Mysore. However, this was not acceptable to the Kannada nationalists of north Karnataka who were simultaneously engaged in the struggle against the British, by aligning with the Indian National Congress. However, litterateurs like D. V. Gundappa became more vocal about the demand for responsible government in Princely Mysore after the 1920s, although this demand did not gain much force then. Even the Congress did not demand the removal of the King, but expected that the King be more lenient towards the Congress. It was because of this factor that the Mysoreans never felt the direct impact of colonial rule, nor did they feel that the ruler was oppressive, though the King was expected by the colonial state in Madras Presidency to curb the national movement in Mysore. However, this national movement itself had not gathered much face. The demand for responsible government in Princely Mysore acquired currency only on the eve of the independence of India.

The backward class movement in Princely Mysore also sought to distance itself from the Indian National Congress, dubbing it as a Brahmin lobby. They were loyal to the King of Mysore as he implemented reservations in public sector as demanded by the backward class movement, though Brahmins opposed this move. The implementation of reservation was along the lines recommended by the Miller Committee appointed by the King. Thus the King had the support of this Backward Class movement till the 1940s, when the movement and the political party carved out of it merged with the Indian National Congress. This backward class movement was not so particularly interested in the reunification of Karnataka, and was certainly looking at Congress with suspicion. When it came to cultural nationalism, none of these groups hesitated to be a part of both the imagined communities — Kannada and India, but sans the political dimension of these imagined communities, as these groups wanted to stay well within their existing political order or the one that they desired. Opposition to State Reorganisation on Linguistic Basis in Princely Mysore Here it is apt to mention that on the eve of reorganisation of states on linguistic basis, the dominant land-owning backward class in Princely Mysore, the Vokkaligas, opposed the merger of north Karnataka (both Bombay Presidency region and Hyderabad Nizam region) stating that Mysore, which was supposed to be a developed state, would have to bear the burden of these relatively underdeveloped regions. This is also viewed as the question of dominance in the new political system, as Lingayats — another land-owning dominant community — would become the largest caste in the new state if the states are organised on the basis of language. This undercurrent of caste gets played out now and then in issues such as having the headquarters of the railway zone in Hubli, having the bench of the Karnataka High Court in Dharwar, north Karnataka being cold to the Cauvery river water sharing dispute between farmers of Mysore and Tamil Nadu etc.

community

numerical

Kannada, English, Sanskrit and Other Indian Languages Thus though there was a notion of a community called ‘India’ operating in Kannada literature, it was limited only to cultural nationalism and

did not, at least in Princely Mysore region, translate into a political one. As I have argued elsewhere (Tharakeshwar 2002), the Kannada elite strategically needed a certain common cultural pool for enriching Kannada cultural nationalism vis-à-vis the west and it necessitated being part of the imagined community of India too. The increasing number of translations from Sanskrit during this period indicates this — nineteenth century is full of not only translations from English, but also from Sanskrit. The kind of relationship that Kannada and Sanskrit had earlier was

also remapped with the encounter of Kannada with colonialism. It is said that in the pre-colonial period, the relation between Kannada and Sanskrit was one of dominance of one culture (Sanskrit) over the other (Kannada); and Kannada tried to negotiate with it by appropriating Sanskrit cultural elements — not through direct translations but through adaptations from Sanskrit — so as not to acknowledge the debt to Sanskrit.3 The relationship between Sanskrit and Kannada again underwent a change in the colonial period. B. M. Srikantia and others believed that Sanskrit was the language of our ancestors, the Aryans. Even Alur Venkatarao subscribes to this view; for him, ‘Sanskrit is our sacred language’ and ‘it should become the language of our scholars’ (1999: 198). D. V. Gundappa was no exception to it. Thus the Kannada elite, who was trying to challenge the hegemony of Sanskrit till then, though for various religious reasons, on encountering colonialism; stopped seeing Sanskrit as a hegemonic language on encountering colonialism; it became their own language, the mother of Kannada language. So we find an attempt by the Kannada elite to strike an alliance with Sanskrit and a pan-Indian community to face the challenge posed by the colonial culture. This alliance comes to be imagined through images drawn from family, and through the use of kinship terms as we see in the case of Kuvempu. It is not only the question of having a strategic alliance with an Indian community and Sanskrit that gave a fillip to the notion of an Indian community. Translations from texts from other languages that were part of the Indian nationalist discourse also helped put that discourse into circulation. Since the beginning of the twentieth century we witness pan-Indian nationalist — mainly from Bengali and Marathi — texts getting translated into Kannada. Texts such as Bankimchandra’s novel and novels from Marathi got translated into Kannada. Though there was a political necessity for these texts in north Karnataka, these texts were also read in other regions. Thus a new subject position — that of a pan-Indian subject — also gained currency.

B. M. Srikantia (1983) comes out with an interesting scheme of multiple languages for the people of Kannada-speaking regions and for India in a speech delivered in 1911 on ‘Developing the Kannada Language’. He argues that Kannada would be the right choice for the language of education in Karnataka for farmers (Vokkaligas), children and for women. For the purpose of politics (Raajakaarya, which also refers to issues pertaining to the king), for supra-linguistic congregations, and for issues related to Indian state, Srikantia English (ibid.: 246). To make a few tentative remarks on the relationship between Kannada nationalism and Indian nationalism, let us define the of nationalism. I would agree with the formulation of Anderson that nation is an imagined community. However, I would further qualify that since nationalism strives to achieve the nation — which is a geographical region with marked boundaries, claiming that the region has ‘a specific culture’ since ages — it needs its own modern political entity called the nation state. The basis for constructing the specific culture with its own history could be different in each case: if it is mainly language in Europe, it could be different in different places. As Partha Chatterjee would argue, nationalism in India is driven primarily by colonialism. Or it could be religion in the case of the formation of Pakistan, apart from colonialism. The question is: though the imagined communities based on languages evolved in India, why did not a full-fledged nationalism, which eventually could claim a nation and a nation state for a particular linguistic region that it claimed as its own, evolve in India? Sanskrit, which was a dead language or had a limited use in the present context, was associated with the notion of the Indian nation. And an alien language like English fused the elites of different linguistic regions, though they constituted a marginal group in terms of numbers. This is quite contrary to the principle that Anderson states; it is the standardisation of vernacular languages and emergence of literature in those languages coupled with the development of print capitalism that sowed the seeds of in Europe. In that sense, it was a popular move which shaped the imagination of the population. However in India, it was either a ‘dead language’ like Sanskrit or an alien language (that too the language of the coloniser) that played a key role in Indian nationalism. Hindi came to be associated with Indian nationalism only in the 1930s and even today, this language too is contested as the national language.4 It was the English-knowing elite who spearheaded nationalism and mediated between the masses and the nation that was emerging.5

advocates concept

nationalism

The explanation provided by Sudipta Kaviraj in the context of nineteenth century Bengal, that for a viable alternative it was necessary for the Bengali elite to forge a larger identity to oppose the mighty coloniser, does not satisfactorily explain the situation in Karnataka. First of all, what happened in Karnataka was not a gerrymandering of the boundaries of ‘self’. For the Bengali elite, there was not much of a difference between a Bengali ‘self’ and an Indian ‘self’ — only the boundaries used to change but the content remained the same. But our analysis has shown that in Karnataka, the boundaries of Kannada and India were clearly demarcated and are two distinct identities though they perceive a relationship between the two which are not antagonistic but rather complementary. The task of imagining a Kannada ‘self’ was carried out alongside with the construction of the Indian ‘self’, and the task was far from over even in the middle of the twentieth century. However, in Bengal, the question seems to have been resolved in the nineteenth century itself. By looking at the context of Karnataka, mainly Princely Mysore, and Kannada literature, I would say that Kannada nationalism, though it emerged and succeeded in imagining a Kannada community, could not articulate itself in terms of a nation or a nation state for the geographic region, which it identified as its own. Thus the peculiar situation in which the region claimed by Kannada nationalism as its own was caught up during the colonial period constrained the articulation of Kannada nationalism. It could never articulate a nation state of its own. Competing Imaginations of Communities This point of similarity, difference and relationship between Kannada nationalism and Indian nationalism, which were imagining Kannada and Indian communities respectively, begs another question. If there were other communities, apart from Kannada and Indian being imagined, or if old communities were re-imagining themselves in the context of modernity, then what kind of relationship did these communities have with Kannada nationalism and with Indian nationalism? Though I have not taken up this question for detailed examination, and although I am not competent to elaborate on this issue, I wish to make a few tentative remarks. Certain pre-colonial communities like the Lingayats were trying

to reshape the community in the context of modernity. I am not suggesting here that this happened because these communities were

enumerated by the colonial state. Though it was the new historical challenge/opportunity thrown up by the rapidly changing scenario brought about by colonialism and modernity that might have been the driving force behind the new imagination that was reshaping the community, it is not simply one of the colonial state apparatus enumerating the existing caste/communities. Though I would agree that these communities did try to align with the new power (colonial state) that was emerging, it was not simply a case of collaboration. I would rather see it as a community trying to re-imagine itself in the context of the changed socioeconomic scenario. Any community in order to survive has to reinvent its boundaries, content and symbols in order to keep pace with the challenges thrown from outside it. Moreover, a community might change itself because of the dynamics of contradictions that exist within it or as a response to the changes happening outside its fold. Many a times, the reshaping of the communities would be the result of both these forces — internal dynamics as well as external changes.

sociopolitical

In the case of new communities, it is not just language and nation-

based communities that were emerging; other communities like the backward classes were also emerging at this point of time. In Princely Mysore, with the changed socioeconomic scenario, certain castes and religions like Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Kuruba and Muslim, formed a kind of alliance to push themselves towards modernity. This alliance gave rise to a new community — the backward classes, at least in the political sphere. In order to pressurise the state in Princely Mysore, they formed a broad political base. There may not have been any corresponding cultural homogenisation that occurred with this political alliance of these castes and religion. However, we can say that at least this group behaved like a political community for all practical purposes in its relation vis-à-vis the state and also the Brahmins, who had garnered a majority of the positions in the state machinery and the new institutions that were coming up in the context of modernisation of Princely Mysore.6 It would be interesting to see what kind of relationship these other communities which did not mark a new geographical region as their own and claim ownership of it, had with the communities that were marking a specific geographical region as their own and claiming its ownership, such as the Kannada community and the Indian As mentioned earlier, the backward class movement did not favourably look upon the Indian national movement led by the

significant

community.

Congress, as it suspected it to be a part of ‘Brahmin conspiracy’. D. V. Gundappa writes clarifying that nationalism in princely Mysore is not a Brahmin conspiracy (Gundappa 1994). With regard to Kannada nationalism, which was led mainly by the literati, the backward classes had no role to play, though they were not hostile to the ideals of Kannada nationalism. Here we are discussing as if these communities were clearly demarcated from each other. However in reality, it is not so; the Kannada community would encompass backward classes and others within its fold. Indian community too would, at least in definition, encompass backward classes in its fold. Or an individual of the backward class, might believe in the discourse of Indian or Kannada nationalism. So the boundaries of these communities were not mutually exclusive but overlapping/coexisting. The Lingayat community, which was initially cold to the Indian national movement and the Kannada movement, later on started participating in both these movements. Likewise, later on towards the end of 1930s, the backward class movement merged with the Indian National Congress and actively participated in the struggle for responsible government in Princely Mysore. Can we say then that the discourse of nationalism (both Kannada and Indian) hegemonised other discourses that were challenging it earlier? Or is it that these communities thought that their entry into the nationalist movement would alter the discourse and tilt it towards them? If we look at how Kannada nationalism and Indian nationalism responded to these communities, then that might also give us some hint about the kind of relationship that they might have had. Elsewhere I have tried to show, while analysing the canonisation of B. M. Srikantia’s English Geetagalu, that the English-educated elite which was in the forefront of the nationalist movement successfully tried to coopt others into the movement by negotiating with these communities through a discourse of Kannada literature and tradition that would accommodate them (Tharakeshwar 2002). This brings us to the question of what was the ‘Other’ that this dominant discourse constructed for itself to fashion the nationalist self? Let me here also look at the question of the ‘Other’ as discussed in some of the writings on colonialism and nationalism in India.

nationalism

Multiple 'Others' for Kannada 'Self' If we look at the emergence of Kannada identity, a Kannadiga subject position, as Alur Venkatarao recollects in his memoirs, it all started

when they went to study in Pune (Poona). Pune was the centre of higher education for the people of today’s north Karnataka and coastal Karnataka during those days. People who would generally identify themselves when they are in their home town by community/caste identities, are ascribed a more collective identity by the people of that place, when they go out to a different place. The Marathi people started calling people who had gone to Pune for higher studies from Karwar, Bellary, Dharwad as ‘Kaanadiyappas’. Suddenly, people who thought that they were different from each other in terms of caste/culture were put together as being one on the basis of language. Thus when an identity was ascribed to them, they took up that subject position and constructed a discourse that would strengthen their position vis-à-vis the perceived injustice inflicted on them by others. Thus the Kannada ‘self’ in today’s north Karnataka originated by keeping the Marathis as the ‘other’. Similarly in Mysore in the 1890s and 1900, the ‘Mysore for Kannadigas’ slogan came up as a response to a situation where more and more Tamilians were taking up new government jobs. Since 1881, the Princely Mysore had adopted new governing structures like Legislative Assembly. In modern administrative structures, there was a mass recruitment drive which benefited the people who were educated in the European model. The people of Madras presidency, especially Tamil Brahmins, had an advantage in this regard and thus took up these positions. This resulted in demand for jobs in the government for Kannada-speaking educated youth. Thus it was vis-à-vis the Tamilians that a kind of Kannada solidarity emerged in Mysore in late nineteenth century. The British tried to refashion their ‘self’ when it encountered what

they perceived as ‘Indian culture’. In that process, it constructed an ‘other’ — ‘the Indian’ — in a manner which is well identified now as Orientalist discourse. While doing so, it not only drew sustenance from the resources that were available within Anglo-Saxon culture but also from Greco-Roman resources. In the same way, the nationalist elite in Princely Mysore drew not only from the resources available in Kannada but also from Sanskrit by casting it as Indian and keeping the west as the ‘other’. However, for construction of a ‘self’, the ‘other’ need not be a single one. A ‘self’ gets fashioned when it encounters what it perceives as other cultures, and it need not always be a unitary culture that it encounters. Scholars have also talked about how for the nationalist ‘self’ in India, it was not just the west that was the ‘other,’ but also Muslims and so on.

Javed Alam tries to show, by reading the late nineteenth century Bengali texts of Bankimachandra and Vivekananda, that for the modern Indian ‘self’, which was based on religion, the ‘other’ became Islam as representing non-West, while they tried to prove that Hindu religion was modern in its tenets (Alam 1999).7 In the poems of B. M. Srikantia, we see how he hails Queen Britannia, the elder sister of India, who came on request to rescue the nation which was dominated by the ‘Muslima Kula’ (the clan of Muslims) by winning them over and uniting the nation. Thus in the context of Mysore also, (though not as overtly as in northern India) the nationalist discourse had Muslims as the ‘other’, not to mention the translations of Galaganatha from Marathi in north Karnataka, which explicitly depict Muslims as villains.8 In fact, it is part of a common narrative that existed in the nationalist writing in India to depict Muslim rule as an alien rule. Sudipta Kaviraj, while talking about the depiction of Muslims as villains in Bankimachandra’s fiction and Hindu kings as heroes fighting them says, ‘These episodes can also be taken symbolically, non-literally, in which case, of course, when he (Bankimachandra) pointed his finger at the Muslim he may have actually meant the British’ (1997: 319). Javed Alam refuses to read this as a stylistic device of Bankimachandra or as a symbolic representation of the British and says: ‘with the extended history of domination (extending to the pre-colonial period), the foreigner now becomes not only the British but also those, like Muslims, who had made India their home’ and sees it as the construction of the Muslim as the ‘other’ in nationalist discourse (1999: 104). In B. M. Srikantia, as we have seen, it is the Muslim who is treated as an enemy and strangely the coloniser is seen as an ally who helps in getting rid of this enemy. This is not to suggest that the discourse fashioned by Srikantia — Kannada nationalist discourse — does not have West as the ‘other’. What I am trying to suggest here is that this discourse has multiple ‘others’. This point will become clearer as we explore its implications further. Sudipta Kaviraj talks about an external ‘other’ and an internal ‘other’ of modernity. He says that the external ‘other’ was the coloniser and the internal ‘other’ was the metropolitan proletariat, while talking about the understanding of the coloniser in the second stage of (Kaviraj 1998: 326).9 Kaviraj also talks about a distinction emerging between high and low culture. He is quick to point out that this distinction ‘was no new thing in Indian History; but the new distinction was not between high and low in the same register;

nationalism

rather, it became two incommensurable registers resisting mutual translation’ (Kaviraj 1997: 322). He further argues that Gandhi tried to articulate his resistance in such a manner that it was intelligible in both the registers though he did not ‘become the creator of a culture of mutual translation’ (ibid.). With the standardisation of language, a distinction between language of the people and the language of the elite emerges within Kannada. And also we see that in the notion of modern Kannada literature as conceived by B. M. Srikantia, a similar distinction is posited between popularly read/listened (folk) texts and the new literature that was emerging. So the modern ‘self’, that was being fashioned then, not only had the coloniser and also the Muslim as the ‘other’, but also other groups as the ‘other’. What we see here are multiple ‘others’. Partha Chatterjee (1994) calls this aspect of nationalism as elitist in its approach and calls the groups that get constituted as internal ‘others’, as fragments left out of the nation, when it arrived. It would be easy to reach the same conclusion here that the ‘self’ that was fashioned in Kannada literature did not include non-elite groups and they were relegated to being fragments of the nation. However, I would not subscribe to this fully in the context of Princely Mysore. Politics of Space and Politics of Equal Rights For example, the backward class was able to enter the institutions of the modern state that were then emerging through a popular So they can never be considered as mere fragments of a nation. M. S. S. Pandian (1999), who has worked on a similar context in Tamil Nadu where anti-Brahmin movement led by E. V. Ramaswamy was prominent during the colonial period, says that the movement denied any classical or Indian/Tamil past and was seeking equality — a more democratic notion of citizenship than inventing a classical past — which is why it was looking for a golden age in the future. Perhaps the backward class movement in Mysore was also working towards a similar goal and that is why, we don’t find them taking recourse to literature to construct a glorious past. Here it would be appropriate to mention the text by Swami Dharma Theertha, History of Hindu Imperialism (1941), where he also constructs a nationalist discourse that presents Brahmins as the ‘other’. So I would not consider these groups, which were left out of the discourse of nationalism, as evident in Kannada literature, as mere fragments of a nation, or as subaltern groups without any voice. I would say that

movement.

they had an active agency which tried to configure the nation and the state in a way that was different from the way the Brahmin elite was configuring it. The context is not simply one of the coloniser versus the colonised; it is the context of multiple discourses, each having multiple ‘others’. Here I would reiterate my earlier point that the discourses produced by other non-nationalist or nationalist non-elite groups are also translations of the colonial discourse. However, as they have a different politics to perform and a different subject position to offer to their subscribers, this translates into a discourse different from their elitist counterparts. So these discourses and the attendant notions of imagined communities gave way to a particular discourse which was able to edge them out in the race for hegemony. Conclusion Thus though the competing notions of nationalisms and imagination of communities have lost the battle for hegemony, they still keep staging a comeback; they come back not to challenge the hegemony of the Indian nation state or the states, which enshrine the language nationalism but to change the contours of it. While addressing these staging of comebacks, is essential to keep in mind not only the role of contemporary socioeconomic, political compulsions/factors that might trigger the staging but also the factor that these voices were there even during the colonial days. If there are challenges today for special status within a linguistic

state or new demands for new linguistic states or non-linguistic states, all these are not just today’s imaginations — some of them at least have their origin in pre-state reorganisation era. Some of these identities were competing with the triumphant anti-colonial nationalism as well as language-based nationalism during the colonial days for hegemony but could not succeed in achieving it.

Notes 1. For a detailed analysis of this emergence of Kannada identity during the nineteenth century, see Tharakeshwar (2005). 2. Utsavamoorthy is the idol that is taken out in procession from the temple once a year or whenever there is a need, and represents the installed idol that is in the temple. Here Venkatarao is using it to denote that the concrete manifestation of the world to us is visible only in the notion of India, and in

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

turn, the manifestation of the essence of India and access to that is possible to us through Karnataka. It is appropriate to probe what is meant by Kannada here. The appropriation of Sanskrit texts or emergence of literature in Kannada in the nineth century is not simply a story of Kannada versus Sanskrit but one of Jaina religion trying to reach out to the aristocracy and mercantile class of the Kannada-speaking regions. One of the strategies adopted by these writers was to borrow from Vedic/Sanskrit literature and change it to suit either the needs of their religion or the needs of their own time. Similarly in the twelfth century, Veerashaiva religion used Kannada to reach out to the artisan class in an oral form. However later, since the fifteenth century, Brahmins have also used Kannada effectively to propagate both Bhakti and Vedic traditions. So the pre-colonial relationship between Kannada and Sanskrit is not a simple case of Kannada versus Sanskrit, where the latter was hegemonic and the former was challenging that hegemony. For the relationship between Hindi language nationalism and Hinduism, see Rai (2002). Sudipta Kaviraj (1998) has discussed this diglossia that prevailed in the colonial period. On the socio-political context of this period, see Chandrashekar (1985, 1995); Manor (1977); Hetne (1978); Nair (1994). Also see Pandey (1990) for the construction of ‘other’ in the context of religious communities and communalism in colonial India. For his complete collection of novels, see Galaganatha (1999). The early phase is a kind of cultural nationalism, where the west is seen as a single entity and the second phase is marked by the entry of Gandhi and the knowledge derived from Marxism, indicating a refusal to consider European modernity as a homogenous process.

Reference Alam, Javed. 1999. India: Living With Modernity. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Chandrasekhar, S. 1985. Dimensions of Socio-Political Change in Mysore: 1918–1940. Delhi: Ashis Publishing House. ———. 1995. Colonialism, Conflict and Nationalism — South India: 1857–1947. Delhi: Wishwa Prakashana. Chatterjee, Partha. 1987. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? London: Zed Books. ———. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Dharma Theertha, Swami. 1992 (1941). History of Hindu Imperialism . Madras: Dalit Educational Literature Centre. Galaganatha, Venkatesha Tirako Kulakarni. 1999. Galaganatha Kadambari Samputa (Complete Novels of Galaganatha), 6 vols. Hospet: Kannada University Press.

Gundappa, D. V. 1994. Divigi Kriti Shreni (Complete Works of D. V. Gundappa), 10 vols, ed. H. M. Nayak. Bangalore: Department of Kannada and Culture. Hettne, Bjorn. 1978. Political Economy of Indirect Rule: Mysore 1881–1947. London: Curzon Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 1997 (1995). ‘On the Structure of Nationalist Discourse’, in T. V. Sathyamurthy (ed.), State and Nation in the Context of Social Change, pp. 298–335. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1998 (1995). The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kuvempu. 2000. Kuvempu Samagra Kaavya (Complete Poetry of Kuvempu), vol.1, ed. K. C. Shivareddy. Hospet: Kannada University Press. Manor, James. 1977. Political Change in an Indian State: Mysore 1917–1955. Delhi: Manohar. Nair, Janaki. 1994. ‘Contending Ideologies? The Mass Awakener’s Union and the Congress in Mysore, 1936–1942’, Social Scientist, 22 (7/8): 42–63. Pandey, Gyanendra. 1990. Construction of Communalism in Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pandian, M. S. S. 1999. ‘Nation from Its Margins: Notes on E. V. Ramaswamy’s “Impossible” Nation’, in Rajeev Bhargava, Amiya Kumar Bagchi and R. Sudarshan (ed.), Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy, pp. 286–307. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rai, Alok. 2002 (2001). Hindi Nationalism. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Srikantia, B. M. 1983. Sri Sahitya (Complete Collected works of B. M. Srikantia). Mysore: Mysore University Press. Thambanda, Vijay Pooncha. 2004. Conflicting Identities in Karnataka: Separate State and Anti-State Movements in Coorg. Hospet: Kannada University Press. Tharakeshwar V. B. 2002. ‘Colonialism, Nationalism and the “Question of English” in Early Modern Kannada Literature’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hyderabad. ———. 2005. ‘Translating Nationalism: The Politics of Language and ’, Journal of Karnataka Studies, 1 (1): 5–60. Venkatarao, Alur. 1974. Nanna Jeevana Smritigalu. Dharawada: Manohara Grantha Maala. ———. 1983 (1919). Karnataka Gata Vaibhava (Kannada — The Golden Past of Karnataka). Bangalore: Directorate of Kannada and Culture. ———. 1999 (1957). Karnatakatvada Vikasa (Kannada — The Development of Karnatakatva). Bangalore: Kannada Sahitya Parishat.

Community

Part IV Culture and Identity: Reorganisation in the East and the North East

9 Revisiting the States Reorganisation Commission in the Context of Orissa Nivedita Mohanty India is a country with enormous diversities, and so are its various regions that also demonstrate the principal characteristics of pluralism. With an insight into the unique nature of the country, the States Reorganisation Commission or SRC (1953–1956) was assigned the responsibility of preparing a blueprint for a healthy federation on the linguistic basis having a strong bond with the centre, thus upholding an ideal image of India of unity in diversity. However while pondering over the case of Orissa — when the dismembered Oriyas are seeking support to secure their linguistic rights as minorities, when within its political boundaries separatist activities are evident and when the large tribal population is showing signs of restiveness — one wonders whether a remapping on a new paradigm is desirable or perhaps inevitable. Fifty years after the SRC submitted its report, one observes that

numerous unresolved issues exist today, and are still emerging within the federal units as well as in their relation with each other. It is worth examining if the problems are unfolding due to inherent short comings in the Commission’s recommendations or in their implementation or because of both. The changing pattern of the society today has created conditions that perhaps call for fresh guidelines in order to conform to our desired goal — to hold the nation together through a successful democracy where the equation between rights of individual selfdetermination and the vision of nation building is free from conflict. This chapter seeks to analyse the SRC in the context of the above issues pertaining to Orissa. The study however warrants that the Oriya movement of the nineteenth and twentieth century prior to the SRC is placed in its perspective. A Brief Outline of the Oriya Movement The British occupied mainland Orissa in 1803. Earlier, in 1765 they had taken over the north-eastern territories of Orissa under the Diwani of

* Nivedita

Mohanty

Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. In 1766, after the French had been defeated and the Deccan Subedar had handed over the Northern Sircar to the British, the region was placed with the Madras Province. The southern Oriya-speaking tract, Ganjam, as a part of the Northern Sircar thus remained with Madras. Western Orissa, including Sambalpur was taken over in 1818 from the Marathas and was included in the Central Provinces. Northern Orissa, i.e., Singhbhum and other adjoining areas including Seraikella and Kharswan, remained in the Chotanagpur Division under the Bengal province. In 1916, Seraikella and Kharswan came under the Orissa group of princely states. The mainland Orissa was divided into hill states and coastal area. The hill states/princely states, with a large number of adivasi (the tribal people) population under the jungle chiefs, enjoyed quasiindependence through a separate contract entered into with the British. Coastal Orissa, renamed Cuttack Division, was now included in the Bengal Province. As a result of this arrangement, Bengali-speaking people with their earlier exposure to the British administration and education readily found themselves suitable for appointment to various government posts in Orissa. Acting as an intermediary between the British officials and the local Oriyas, these employees were in an advantageous position to enhance their influence in the land gradually and they seized this opportunity for building up a sub-colony within a colony. Their desire to establish a permanent suzerainty in the land of Orissa however a jolt when the spread of education produced a new class of qualified Oriyas. A simple solution to this emerging threat from the perspective of the Bengali overlords would be to declare the sons of the soil also as Bengali by establishing that Oriya was not a distinct language; it was only a dialect and a variant of Bengali. They would therefore plead that the official language, the vernacular medium of the schools, ought to be Bengali. Serious attempts were made in executing this plan through publications, public meetings, in schools, and also at personal and government levels by influencing key British officials. This tactic however met with a strong retaliation from the Oriyas. Known as the Language Agitation, it galvanised efforts from all over Orissa and snowballed into a strong voice against this move. Eventually, the intended annihilation of the Oriya language was fully thwarted. The Language Agitation in its wake led to the promotion of the language, literature, education, press, journalism, and in short, a regenerated Orissa appeared on the horizon. Fifty years before Gandhiji conceived of the provincial division of the Congress on

received

Revisiting the

States

Reorganisation Commission

*

the linguistic basis in 1920, Orissa had thus fought to consolidate its linguistic identity. The movement for protecting the language and culture took birth in the heartland of Orissa and spread rapidly to the Oriya-speaking areas scattered in other provinces (Mohanty 2005). In all these places, systematic plans had been made to replace Oriya by respective main languages of the provinces; this played havoc on the socioeconomic traditions of these forced diaspora. It was realised that the exploitation they were subjected to as minorities in all those larger provinces would be stopped only if these outlying areas were amalgamated with mainland Orissa. The next stage of the movement was thus for a united Orissa under one of the existing provinces. The demand for separation came later. The agitation in Sambalpur in the late nineteenth century resulted in its union with Orissa in 1905. The Utkala Sammilani, founded in 1903, quickly commanded the stature of the national assembly of the Oriyas and fought for reinforcing the movement in an organised manner. The Bihar–Orissa Province was created in 1912. The creation of a separate province for the Oriya-speaking people materialised in 1936. However, many areas which were perceived as genuine Oriya-speaking tracts continued to stay outside the province. Consequently, on the eve of the formation of the province there was a fierce controversy in Orissa regarding whether a truncated unit was at all acceptable as the foremost goal of the Oriya movement was the unification of all Oriya-speaking territories. The amalgamation versus separation debate yielded nothing except sharpening the emotional and political split among its leaders. This schism had had been present since 1920 when the two sides differed in their views with regard to prioritising the regional and national issues. Nevertheless, the anguish of remaining separated continued among Oriyas of all groups and it provided a fillip for the unification movement even after the province came into being. The frustration of remaining scattered heightened during 1948–1949

when the princely states of Orissa were merged with the province but the two important states of Seraikella and Kharswan were handed over to Bihar. The States Reorganisation Commission and the Oriya Movement In December 1953, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed the SRC to prepare for the creation of states on linguistic lines. The formation

of the SRC with a thrust on language excited the Oriya-speaking people all over the country. The Oriya movement resurfaced with a new hope of accomplishing the unification goal. The response and reaction in Orissa vis-à-vis SRC passed through various phases. The initiative to create awareness among the people, especially in the

outlying Oriya-speaking tracts, was taken by the Utkala Sammilani. The Sammilani sought to strengthen its status of a national forum for the Oriyas. Within two weeks of the formation of the SRC, the Utkala Sammilani treasurer and the ex-chief of Kalahandi Pratap Kesori Deo, who was also the Member of the Orissa Legislative Assembly, appealed through the newspapers for donations to the Desa Misrana Fandi (Amalgamation Fund) that had been formed to work towards the fulfillment of the aspirations of the Oriyas. The Utkala Sammilani redefined its focus and the modus operandi. It sought the cooperation of all parties and groups in Orissa in order to carry forward the Oriya aspiration. The movement per se was to be taken forward through constitutional means and a well documented representation was to be prepared for the SRC. Regarding its demand for the dismembered tracts, the Utkala Sammilani decided to draw special attention to the former princely states of Seraikella and Kharswan.1 The president of the Sammilani was also the chief of Ganatantra Parishada, a new party, comprising primarily the former rulers of the princely states. Ganatantra Parishada was a major opposition party in the provincial legislature. The timing of the foundation of the SRC came in handy for this party to establish its own credibility in Orissa. It identified its political goal with the amalgamation cause. At this stage of the movement, the Utkala Sammilani indeed became the forum where all parties including the ruling one, and people from all segments of the society joined whole heartedly. Meanwhile, the formation of the Utkala Sammilani at the district and branch levels in Orissa and in the Oriya-speaking outlying tracts had begun. Even on the eve of the formal appointment of the SRC, the secretary of the Utkala Sammilani chaired a meeting on 27 December 1953 held at the Sasana Sahi in the Srikakulam district, which was beyond the southern border of Orissa. Representatives from all over the district came and a 40-member branch committee of the Utkala Sammilani was formed. It however decided to meet soon to chalk out its campaigning strategy.2 Sensitive to such activities of the Utkala Sammilani, the people to the cause of the Oriyas in the neighbouring provinces reacted. The Andhra Mahasabha Boundary Committee member Sanyasi Rao

opposed

stated that Koraput and Ganjam, the two southern districts of Orissa, belonged to Andhra.3 The Chief Minister of Bihar Srikrishna Sinha complained during the Congress Working Committee meeting at Congress Nagar in Kalyani on 23 January 1954 that the activities of the Congress leaders from Orissa, including Harekrishna Mahtab and Radhanath Rath, had created tension in Bihar which needed to be stopped immediately.4 On 20 January 1954, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh during his visit to Sambalpur in connection with the Hirakud Dam project, told the press that the border territorial issues could be resolved only by mutual agreement between the concerned parties. He pointed out that Madhya Pradesh had also some claims on other provinces.5 Thus, the grievances due to the territorial divisions and distribution among the provinces in eastern India had not disappeared with the country attaining its independence. Claims for territory by provinces had figured prominently during and after the election of 1952. Bengal celebrated the greater Bengal Day on 24 December 1952. They also held the Prabasi Banga Sahitya Sammelan at Cuttack where the following lyric was sung: Banglar Mati Ek Hoe Geche Utkal Simanaya … Banga Tahar Anga Misala Baitaranir Jale.6 (the land of Bengal has joined the border of Orissa … Bengal has mingled herself in the water of Baitarani).

These words raised an apprehension in the minds of the Oriyas as it articulated Bengal’s claim for Mayurbhanj and north Balasore from Orissa. The river Baitarani that flowed through north Orissa had these regions on the northern side of it. If the Bengal border touched the river Baitarani, these region of Orissa would obviously be included in Bengal. Bengal also claimed Manbhum, Santal Parganas, portions of Purnea and Dhalbhum (East Singhbhum) from Bihar and suggested that the rest of Singhbhum might go to Orissa. Bihar retaliated by proclaiming that not a single grain of dust would be given to Bengal; instead Bengal ought to transfer the south Medinipur to Orissa.7 Bengal and Orissa’s claim on any territory from Bihar was refuted (Sahaya 1952). In the south of Orissa, the Union Labour Minister V. V. Giri came to Berhampur to campaign for the transfer of Berhampur to Andhra. The Telugu-speaking people in their agitation for a separate province

of Andhra proposed that the River Rushikulya be made the natural boundary line between Andhra and Orissa; this would imply Orissa losing a large portion of its territory.8 In the Assembly sessions in Orissa following the election of 1952,

Godavaris Misra, the stalwart of the Oriya movement in the 1920s and 1930s and now representing the Gantantra Parishad, raised the issue of outlying Oriya-speaking tracts. He suggested that a strong resolution be passed articulating Orissa’s demand on Seraikella and Kharswan. It was proposed that the state government of Orissa move the Supreme Court of India in a suit under Article 131 of the Constitution of India. An expert opinion from the judiciary in Orissa was sought in this connection and when it was pointed out that for such a move, the request of the Government of Orissa needed to be made to the President of India,9 the idea was dropped. Since the President Dr Rajendra Prasad himself hailed from Bihar, the apprehension was, the representation would be a fruitless effort. The general feeling, also hyped by the media, voiced slogan that grave injustice had been done to Orissa for which Mahtab, who was the Premier of Orissa during the transfer of Seraikella and Kharswan to Bihar, was largely responsible. To quote a few lines from a poem ‘What have I done?’ published in a journal in Orissa:10 I handed over Orissa to Andhra, Sold Singhbhum to Bihar, Offered Bastar at the feet of Shukla (the then Chief Minister of MP).

With the feeling that the unjust provincial boundaries needed to be realigned in order to preserve the language, culture and the historical connection, the Oriya movement took off undeterred by the reactions of its neighbouring provinces. However, the most painful memory that continued to haunt the Oriyas was the loss of Seraikella and Kharswan. The unfeasibility of seeking their transfer through any legal procedure disturbed them further. The prime attention of the Oriya movement henceforth was directed towards these two former princely states. At this point, some support from Bengal could be garnered for this cause. ‘Orissa’s claim of Seraikella and Kharswan was justified’ said some editors and journalists from Calcutta and promised to support Orissa’s case. A luncheon meeting at the Grand Hotel on 5 February 1954 was arranged by Dr Kalidas Nag, Member of Parliament. He had asked Surendra Mohanty, who was also a Member of Parliament, to provide a comprehensive picture

competitive

of Orissa vis-à-vis Singhbhum and Seraikella and Kharswan, to the leading newspapers of Bengal.11 Seraikella and Kharswan in Troubled Waters

The federal branch of the Utkala Sammilani in Singhbhum known as the Singhbhum Utkala Sammilani organised a series of public meetings to give direction to the Oriya movement in this region. A public meeting was called under the auspices of the Singhbhum Sammilani at Seraikella on 7 February 1954. R. N. Singh Deo, who was the president of the Utkala Sammilani and the Member of Parliament from the Ganatantra Parishad, came to preside over the regional meeting. He was to join the birthday celebrations of his younger brother, late Subhendra Narayan, who was a great Chhau dance exponent. Singh Deo was the second son of the former ruler of Seraikella and had gone over to Bolangir–Patna as the adopted son of his maternal uncle. He was accompanied to this meeting by the Kalahandi Maharaja, Pratap Keshari Deo who was the deputy leader of the opposition in the Orissa Assembly. Godavaris Misra also came along to this meeting with Shyam Sundar Misra, who was a member of the Servants of India Society. There were many young leaders from Orissa and from different parts of Singhbhum and Dhalbhum who participated in this meeting. R. N. Singh Deo in his address on 7 February requested the people to work devotedly for the amalgamation movement and exhorted them to articulate their case strongly before the Commission. However, halfway through the meeting there were disturbances and violence was unleashed on the congregation, and the attack mainly being directed towards the dignitaries from Orissa. Godavaris fell down, and the Kalahandi Maharaja along with several others were severely injured and needed immediate medical care. The subsequent meetings of the Sammilani at Gamharia, Rajnagar, Seraikella and Kharswan had to be called off. Messages were wired to the President, Prime Minister, Home Minister and to all the prominent newspapers as well as to the governors and chief ministers of Bihar and Orissa on 8 February 1954 to the effect that: The inhabitants of this area cannot represent their case freely before the States Reorganisation Commission unless the area is brought under the administration of the Union Government and the people are vouchsafed those conditions of freedom under which alone would it be possible for the citizens of this area to represent their case.12

The incident invited all-round condemnation. The Parliament Member Lanka Sundaram criticised the happening at Seraikella and said that ‘the SRC was not a Boundary Commission; it was an Commission. The Government of India ought to protect the so that they submit their impartial and independent views’. 13 Parliamentarians including Sucheta Kripalini and N. C. Chatterjee of Bengal wrote to the Prime Minister criticising Bihar’s conduct in Seraikella, Kharswan as well as in Manbhum. 14 Sambalpur observed an all-party protest meeting on 14 February, Sunday at Balibandhaghata where Sraddhakar Supakar, the then opposition leader of the Orissa presided. Supakar proposed that the Government of India into the incident of 7 February and should unite Seraikella and Kharswan with Orissa as early as possible. He said that Bihar’s rule over Seraikella was like the British rule on gun point. ‘The 7/2 incident in Seraikella was an insult to the Oriyas’, wrote the Oriya daily The Samaja. As an expression of strong protest several leaders including politicians, educationists, lawyers, journalists and doctors held a public meeting at Cuttack on 18 February which was attended by 10,000 people.15 The outcry was against the assault and the humiliation suffered at the Seraikella meeting and the feeling expressed was that the union of Seraikella and Kharswan needed to be done forthwith, and that this did not require any recommendation from the SRC.

investigating witnesses

Assembly, enquire

Around this time, the Bihar chief minister made a statement in the

Bihar Assembly on 15 February 1954 to the effect that the violence at the Seraikella meeting was incited by the hooligans brought along by the organisers of the Sammilani.16 R. N. Singh Deo referred to the Bihar chief minister’s version as ‘partisan and propagandist’. A entitled, ‘Rape of Democracy’ was prepared by him with detailed accounts and photographs of the happenings at Seraikella and was distributed among the Members of the Parliament.

booklet

As a rejoinder to the statements made by Singh Deo, a monograph

on ‘Facts of Seraikella and Kharswan’ was prepared by Baldev Sahay, President, Bihar Association, that countered the justification of the Oriya claim for the de-merger of Seraikella and Kharswan. Referring to the incident of 7 February, he wrote, ‘Whatever the truth might be, the significance of what took place is clear, i.e., the pro-merger is led from outside, and that the local people were out to frustrate the stage-shows and maneuvers of the Oriya pro-mergers.’17 The chief of Seraikella wrote to the Home Minister K. N. Katju

about this incident and requested him to set up an enquiry committee to investigate into the anti-Oriya campaign by the Bihar government. 18

Demonstrations and protest meetings were held by students in schools and colleges all over Orissa, by the Sammilani members at different places and also by various Oriya Associations even in the remote in Orissa and in dismembered tracts. The protests from the Oriya quarters against Bihar’s machinations to quash the Oriya movement became increasingly loud and clear.

villages

Language and Literature: Interest and Conflict

Reconstructing the boundaries of the federal units on language basis was the focus of the SRC. To impress the SRC about one’s linguistic identity and the desired geographical outline thereof often led to conflicts between ambitious groups, and on occasions literature became a vehicle of confrontation. For instance, Debaki Nandan Sarma, who was a famed writer and an officer in the Education Department of Bihar, compiled a book of 76 rural lyrics of Seraikella and Kharswan entitled Seraikella Kharswan ke Gramyagit (the village songs of Seraikella and Kharswan) which was published from Patna. The compiler in the 16-page preface interpreting the grammar, the meaning and the essence of the words and of the lyrics which were Oriya lyrics said that they were closer to Hindi, Bhojpuri and Magadhi. The Samaj dated 1 April 1954 quotes him: immigrant Oriyas from Orissa including the royalty speak among

themselves in mixed Oriya; the employees of Tisco even speak in broken Hindi. The adivasis speak Hindi while communicating with non-adivasis. Even the queens of the royalty who came from the western regions speak Hindi. So in the Seraikella tradition the queen’s language is Hindi (Ranibhasa or queen’s language as opposed to the Rajbhasa or the mother tongue of the ruler, the king/the official language of his state).

He added that Seraikella and Kharswan represent an amalgam of Arya and non-Aryan traditions and attributed the harmony to the efforts of the Kudmi Mahatos. As a rejoinder to the writings of Sarma, Raghunath Purohit from Wardha wrote in his article entitled, ‘The Attack on the Oriya Language and Literature’ that Hindi was being thrust as the language, Hindi hegemony was intending to obliterate the of the Oriya language in the border areas.19 Udayanath Bhuyan wrote from Ganjam that these lyrics were sung in the villages in Orissa and also in the dismembered Oriya areas in the south such as Tarala, Tikali, Manjusa and were not influenced by the Hindi language. With regard to Telugu, one faculty member of Puri College was criticised in the public meeting at Sambalpur for writing an article in the college

national existence

magazine to the effect that Telugu ought to be introduced in the entire territory beyond the southern border of Puri. Significantly, an outcome of this apparently trivial language war

was the extent of attention that Oriya language and literature started receiving around this time. The literary activities were enhanced. Public meetings and birthday celebrations were held to the contributions of literary giants such as Phakirmohan Senapati and Gangadhar Meher. Rich and early literary traditions of Orissa in the writings of Adikabi Sarala Das and Upendra Bhanja were in the form of literary sessions by the littérateurs of Orissa. There was a spurt in publication of literary journals with creative writers enriching all aspects of literature through their writings. At this time (1955), the Oriya novel Amrutara Santana by Gopinath Mohanty received the Sahitya Akademy award. Literary meetings were held to celebrate this event. There was also great interest and discussion on the Oriya script and its improvisation. The government decided to use Oriya as the official language as early as possible and initiatives were launched to the Oriya typewriter. The Utkala Dibas, the anniversary of the formation of the Orissa province (1 April) was celebrated with much enthusiasm in 1954. The newspapers and the journals published special articles, including those from the Oriyas living outside the state, on the occasion. It was essentially another phase of the Oriya Nationalism when Orissa’s cultural heritage was revisited focusing on the strong linguistic identity and the historical connection of mainland Orissa with its dismembered tracts. Literary sessions were also conducted by eminent writers from Orissa in the outlying Oriya tracts. On 13 April 1954, on the occasion of Visuba Milana which is a meet held every year at Cuttack during the time of the new year according to the solar calendar and which is organised by the Oriya daily The Prajatantra, eminent scholar and linguist from Bengal Dr Suniti Kumar Chhottopadhyay was invited to grace the occasion. In his address, he said that the Oriya language was the elder sister of Bengali language. It maintained its unique originality without being diluted. He also discussed at length about the greatness of Upendra Bhanja and Adikabi Sarala Das and appreciated Phakirmohan’s command over the language which he said needed to be emulated.20 The words of Dr Chottopadhyay were in sharp contrast to the address of Dr R. L. Mitra in 1868 which had sparked off the Language Agitation in Orissa.

commemorate

remembered

introduce

literary

The Aspiration for Amalgamation of the Oriya-Speaking People

Orissa being the first linguistic state in the country, there was a sense of euphoria in Orissa which symbolised the fact that Orissa was the example of the framework which was sought to be replicated through the SRC. It was firmly believed that the Commission would also rectify the past mistakes with regard to Orissa’s boundaries (Map 9.1). Thus, in spite of the experience of 7 February, the hope Map 9.1: Map of Orissa and Various Outlying Oriya-speaking Areas

Source: The Samaj, 1 April 1954.

was not lost for accomplishing the amalgamation, especially of Seraikella and Kharswan. At this juncture, when written representations and petitions were

prepared in Orissa and sent to the Commission followed by the Commission’s visit and interviews, the neighbouring provinces — Bengal and Bihar — also started seriously working out their respective strategy for consolidating their claims on Orissa as well as on each other’s territory. For Bihar, it was not an easy time either. Jaipal Singh Munda had brought the adivasi politics to the fore at the national level. Through his Jharkhand Party, he thundered for the unification of the adivasi lands spread in the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh and the creation of a separate province of Jharkhand. It would mean Bihar losing its southern territory either with the formation of the Jharkhand province, or a large chunk of it with Orissa taking away Seraikella, Kharswan and the Singhbhum Sadar. Bengal placed its claim on a portion of Bihar’s eastern territory. Bihar was however hardly willing to concede to any of those claims. Instead, it demanded Darjeeling, Malda, Dinajpur from Bengal and the two former princely states of Gangapur and Bonai from Orissa in its memorandum to the Commission. Bengal appeared to support Orissa’s cause against Bihar. This had also been attempted during the period of merger in 1948–1949 with an eye on Tisco. Taking advantage of Orissa’s emotional commitment to Seraikella and Kharswan that was heightened by the recent occurrence of 7 February, Bengal now extended its hands of cooperation to Orissa with the obvious intention of preventing any claim for the transfer of Medinipur to Orissa and seeking its support eventually for annexing Dhalbhum to Bengal. In order to work out a mutual understanding regarding the territories between Bengal and Orissa, the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee president Atulya Ghosh came to Puri for a discussion with the Orissa Congress on 30 April and 1 May 1954. It was agreed upon that in their respective representations to the SRC, they would not claim any territory from each other.21 A memorandum from the Government of Orissa was sent to the SRC in May 1954, which was prepared by Radhanath Rath, the then Minister of Finance, Education and Welfare. 22 The demands excluded, as per the agreement with Bengal Congress, the Oriya-speaking areas from Bengal. The Utkal Congress Committee’s separate memorandum was also in line with that of the Government of Orissa.

The Utkala Sammilani, in its five-language memorandum on the other hand, included areas such as Jhargram, Kharagpur, Narayanganj, Dantun, Mohanpur, Nandigram, Tamluq, etc., from Bengal. The claims for the Oriya-speaking areas from Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and in the south from Andhra Pradesh, that was in the making, were the same as those presented by the Government of Orissa and the Orissa Congress. The President of the Utkala Sammilani R. N. Singh Deo enclosed a personal letter and also a copy of the resolution passed on 25 October 1953 in the Utkala Sammilani session held at Manjusa. There was apprehension in Orissa that as in retaliation to the act

of Utkala Sammilani, the Bengal Congress would now demand north Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Dhalbhum and also Seraikella and Kharswan. The Samaj, dated 27 May 1954, wrote that the Utkala Sammilani’s claim was justified considering the historical, linguistic and cultural connections of these territories with Orissa; nevertheless as the agreement was made in the Puri meeting between the Congress leaders from Bengal and Orissa in the presence of R. N. Singh Deo and apparently with his consent, the change of stand by the Sammilani was not in the right spirit. The Ganatantra Parishad submitted its memorandum to the SRC on 22 May 1954. The memorandum entitled, ‘The Case for Transfer of the District of Singhbhum to Orissa’ gave a comprehensive picture of Orissa’s historical, geographical, and cultural connection with Singhbhum. Commenting on the O’Donnell Committee’s (1932) the note read, ‘We are constrained to observe that the Committee was prejudiced against the Oriya claim and approached the question with its own predilections and thus was instrumental to an unjust vivisection of Oriya land.’ The demand now included in the was for the integration of the entire Singhbhum district with Orissa province. As regards the tribal population, it pointed out that in Orissa the tribes accounted for 25 per cent of the tribal population after the integration of the princely states with Orissa, whereas in Bihar they constituted only 13.91 per cent. Separating Singhbhum from Bihar and ceding it to Orissa therefore would not be against the interest of the tribal people as had been concluded by the O’Donnell Committee. In case of Dhalbhum, if interested parties were unwilling to part with it because of the industrial town of Jamshedpur, then at least the southern region of Dhalbhum which was entirely Oriya speaking, should be transferred to Orissa.23

decision

memorandum

A host of memoranda from various associations and individuals were also despatched. The historical document of the ruling Singh family in Singhbhum and its connection with Orissa were elaborately dealt with by Tikayet N. N. Singh Deo (1954) in ‘Singhbhum, Seraikella and Kharswan Through Ages’ with a foreword by the eminent historian and the Member of Parliament Dr Radha Kumud Mookerji, and was sent to the Commission. Of significance was the independent memorandum submitted by Nilankantha Das, a great scholar and one of the frontline leaders of the Oriya movement and of the Orissa Congress. His interview with the O’Donnell Committee would have made a difference with regard to Singhbhum. He was however unable to avail this opportunity because the Committee had been boycotted by the Congress. He presented a copy of the same memorandum now to the SRC.24 The members of the Singhbhum District Board passed a resolution

for including Singhbhum, Seraikella and Kharswan with Orissa and Dhalbhum with Bengal, and sent the same to the SRC. The Dhalbhum Oriyas however vehemently opposed this suggestion. The Oriyas at the Changudi Sasana, which was in Andhra, held a meeting and resolved that as the Changudi Sasana village and six maujas (groups of villages) around were Oriya-dominated area they were to be included with Orissa; a representation was sent to the Commission accordingly.25 With the written representations already sent, there were serious

preparations now to influence the people to articulate their views in front of the Commission during the interviews. The campaigning in the dismembered Oriya tracts was taken up with intensity by the mainland Oriyas, the Utkala Sammilani and the local leaders. The focus was however on the Singhbhum Sadar and Seraikella and Kharswan. A delegation of journalists from Orissa visited Seraikella and Jamshedpur between 10–18 June 1954 in order to asses the exact when news started arriving about the anti-Oriya movement in these outlying areas in Bihar. 26 The first thing they reported during their field studies was that the Oriyas in Singhbhum were not allowed to be Congress members by the Bihar Provincial Congress Committee, which denied their access to the higher authorities of the Congress.

situation

They also reported that in Seraikella, Hindi was being forced on all

Oriya schools. The middle and high schools were shifted to the areas where Bihari officials lived. Many schools were closed down. Fivehundred Oriya employees were dismissed without any compensation and cultural centres were destroyed. For example, one of the cultural

centres the Ajaya Club was taken over and the funds of about one lakh rupees of Srikalapitha were seized. The Bijoylakshmi Kalapitha was founded as the competitor institution which was supported by the government. The Bihar government began the governmentsupported Chhau (a mask dance) festival as the Chhau Mahotsava, thus attempting to isolate and marginalise the royalty and the age old royal tradition. The high profile Oriyas were falsely implicated in litigation and mercenaries from Chaibasa and Jamshedpur were hired to disturb meetings organised by Oriyas. The signature campaign by the Oriyas was thwarted. Two persons in the Handibhanja village for instance, who were conducting a signature campaign, were terrorised. The memorials, letters and appeals from Oriyas to the SRC Commission were not allowed to go out. Every communication with outside was scrutinised. The Bihar government constituted two advisory committees to help people to face the SRC. The members nominated were all Biharis. The adivasis were pressurised to go against Orissa. To impress upon the SRC the cultural and linguistic changes in Seraikella and Kharswan, the Oriya names and even the writings on the epitaphs were erased or replaced by Hindi. The people were scared to come out of their home after 10 pm. Oriya agitators put in jails in Bihar were tortured. They were made to sleep on ice and thrashed. The common song in Seraikella during these days was:27 Sunlo Odia Sunlo Bangali Bihar ka Sauwal Mazfarpurka lathi Mungher ka Barccha Patna ka Talwar (Listen O’ Odia Listen O’ Bengali Bihar’squestion/proposition Muzafarpur’s stick Munger’s spear Patna’ssword)

The confrontation between Orissa and Bihar in southern Bihar had always focused on winning over the adivasi support, the reason being that in the adivasi regions the Oriya-speaking people formed the second majority, next only to the adivasis. However, Orissa had a major disadvantage vis-à-vis Bihar as the administrative machinery of the Bihar government could influence the adivasis and neutralise the Oriya movement. In addition, the Jharkhand movement under the charismatic leadership of Jaipal Singh Munda was exploited by Bihar in thwarting the credibility of Orissa’s claim in southern Bihar.

Orissa decided to use its own adivasi strength for countering the anti-Oriya movement and thwart Jaipal’s claim on the territories from Orissa. The All Utkal Adivasi Congress was founded in 1951. Sonaram Soren of Mayurbhanj, who had led the agitation against the merger of Mayurbhanj with Orissa in 1949 and was arrested, worked in tandem with Jaipal Singh and the Adivasi Mahasabha. After his release, he went into hiding in Ranchi with the intention of starting his agitation all over again from outside Orissa. The Government of Orissa sent feelers to him requesting him to return home and join politics where he would have a great scope to work for the adivasis. Sonaram Soren returned to Orissa, got elected in 1952 and was offered a berth in the ministry (Routray 1986: 78–80). The plan was to weaken the Jharkhand movement in Orissa and also to attract the adivasis of Singhbhum who thought their counterparts were better off in Orissa. Soren led the All Utkal Adivasi Congress meetings in all the northern and northwestern regions of Orissa and soon became a powerful voice and an icon of the adivasis in this region. A series of public meetings and demonstrations were organised to

influence the adivasis. On the eve of one such meeting at Rairungpur on 9 July 1954 for instance, a big procession was led by Sonaram Soren with the slogans ‘Singhbhum to be amalgamated with Orissa’, ‘Singhbhum is an inseparable part of Orissa’.28 When Jaipal arrived to attend a meeting in Rajgangpur the next day, he was shown black flag with the slogans ‘we do not want Jharkhand’, ‘the Bihar agent and the Missionary agent Jaipal go back’. ‘Utkala Mataki Jai, Jai Utkala and Jai Adivasi’ were other slogans which accompanied anti-Jaipal slogans.29 Sonaram Soren wrote an article in The Samaj dated 24 July 1954 titled, ‘Why should the Adivasis of Singhbhum Integrate with Orissa?’. He wrote that a large number of similar tribes of Singhbhum and having the same common language, also lived in Orissa. In traditions, culture, food, lifestyle, dress and in rites and rituals the adivasis of Singhbhum were the same as their counterparts in Orissa. He cited numerous examples of the Oriya and the adivasi interdependence. He quoted the Ho leader Dolmanki who had written to Gopabandhu Das in 1920 that the adivasis of Singhbhum were similar to Oriyas in their dress and rituals and traditionally enjoyed a close bond. They did not have any cultural connection with the Biharis and Bengalis. Sonaram added that the mother tongue of the Bhuyan and the Gond was Oriya. In rural Singhbhum, the Bengalis or the Biharis were not seen, he added.

language,

There were articles by scholars and historians, including that of Kedarnath Mohapatra, that Orissa was referred to as Jharkhand in medieval literature. Soren gave the statement that indeed Jharkhand could be an integral part of Orissa: ‘If an effort was made to take an inch from Orissa towards a separate Jharkhand, it would be resisted with the last drop of blood’, he said in a general meeting at Baripada. 30 Jaipal was accused of paying attention to the interests of Bihar and of other non-adivasi elements. Five adivasi members of the Bihar Legislative Assembly voted for joining Orissa. They were suspended from the Jharkhand Party. With the indication that adivasis of Singhbhum were tilting towards Orissa, the Kudmis were approached to support the cause of Bihar. One government official was appointed to carry on the anti-Oriya campaign with a booklet named ‘Odisa Kabua’ (Odisa not needed), which said that no power on earth would take away Singhbhum from Bihar.31 The Oriya paper also reported that Bihar was trying to collect signatures from the people of Singhbhum against Orissa under duress. In Kolhan, forms were distributed in Hindi which the Hos did not read and some of their leaders were influenced to collect the signatures.32 One of the anti-Oriya meetings held at Kuchei village in Kharswan on 6 December 1954 was chaired by the adivasi leader Sadhu Charan Soy. In that meeting, Oriya businessman Jagadish Prasad Sahu and the Kharswan prince Yuvraj Singh criticised Orissa’s expansionist policy. They resolved to protest against Orissa’s claim on Seraikella and Kharswan and demanded Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar from Orissa.33 In February 1955, the Commission went to meet the people in

different parts of Singhbhum before coming to Orissa. They went from

Chaibasa to Kharswan and Seraikella on 8 February. During this period, attempts were made by officials from Bihar to prevent the proOriya group from coming and meeting the Commission. However, most of the associations/fraternities, including the Singhbhum Utkala Sabha, Singhbhum Utkala Congress, Kharswan Praja Mandal, Singhbhum Tanti Sabha, and Chakradharpur Municipality appeared at the interviews. Individual interviews of the chiefs of Seraikella and Kharswan with the Commission also took place. The Kharswan chief was reportedly against joining Orissa. Tarapad Sarangi and Mrutyunjay Das were the eminent leaders from Dhalbhum who met the Commission in Jamshedpur. They pointed out that Bengal had no right over any part of Singhbhum. On 13 and 14 February 1955, the Commission met representatives

from various groups such as the Utkala Sammilani, Utkal Pradesh Congress Committee, Parliament Members, Ganatantra Parishad, Hind Sevaka Samaj, Communist Party, women representatives and representatives from the Madhya Pradesh at Cuttack. Government representatives included Radhanath Rath and Sonaram Soren.34 The Commission visited south Orissa on 18 February where they met the adivasis who gave their views in favour of Orissa. Utkala Sammilani and the Utkala Hitaishini Samaj appealed for the return of the extensive Oriya-speaking territory which was still in Andhra. Discontent yet Hope for a Change

The SRC report was released in October 1955. It sent shock waves throughout the Oriya-speaking world. The report did not have anything to offer to Orissa; in particular, Seraikella and Kharswan remained where they were. Surendra Mohanty, a Member of Parliament, brought a copy of the report to Cuttack and set it on fire in a public meeting held at the Sriramchandra Bhavan (Supakar 1982: 209). The Chief Minister Nabakrushna Choudhury stated in the Orissa Assembly that the recommendations of the SRC were a great threat to Orissa. The Orissa Assembly also expressed its formal disapproval and requested the central government for reconsideration. One and a half lakh copies of the chief minister’s address were printed at the Rashtrabhasa Press at Cuttack and were distributed.35 A memorandum on the SRC report with reference to Seraikella,

Kharswan and Singhbhum was prepared and submitted to the Government of India by Pattayat Bhupendra Narayan Singh Deo of Seraikella in November 1955. The 10-page memorandum along with a map and census figures from 1920 to 1940 says that the opinion of SRC with regard to Seraikella, Kharswan and Singhbhum ‘does not spring from any logic but is fallacious. From wrong premises they have drawn wrong conclusions and tried to justify wrong decisions by dubious logic’ (Singh Deo 1955). Moving a motion in the Lok Sabha, R. N. Singh Deo said on 23 December 195536: The SRC Report is more political than judicious. Its chief characteristics are lack of clear principles, policy of appeasement of the strong and influential, neglecting the claims of the weak and its recommendations are vitiated apart from the fact that it is full of inconsistencies and contradictions…Our main grievance is that it has not only dismissed Orissa’s claims on most superficial and unreasonable grounds, it has not only summarily rejected our claims, but it has completely ignored even to consider our claims.

He pointed out that the Commission had done a blatant injustice to Orissa by denying even an inch of land to her, ‘For God’s sake, please do not drive the people of Orissa and the Oriya-speaking tracts to take to the agitational approach for redress of their grievances.’ Niranjan Jena from the reserved seat of scheduled castes of

Dhenkanal said: ‘There are certain principles which are formulated by the Commission to strictly observe and follow them, but in the case of Orissa how far these principles have been applied, I doubt.’ His first point of argument was against the chairman of the Commission, who due to his long association with Bihar, refrained from taking any part in the investigations on the territorial disputes between Bihar and Orissa. Jena added, ‘it is to be observed how far it is justified on principles’. B. C. Das from Ganjam said in the same motion that: The SRC has laid much stress on the O’ Donnell Committee report, but ignores the limitations under which the report was written. There was at that time no formal Government to put up the case of Orissa. There were other provincial governments which put every spoke on the wheel to release as little of their territory as possible. The Congress was boycotting the Committee and outside the Congress there were not many Oriya leaders of eminence to put up the Orissa case. The regions claimed by Oriyas were officered by non-Oriyas who came from the majority language groups which had acquired vested interests in the Oriya regions. In such circumstances all relevant facts could not be brought before the O’Donnell Committee, so whatever Orissa got was the minimum that could be spared to it.

He suggested setting up a boundary commission to examine Orissa’s claim on Seraikella and Kharswan and the Sadar subdivision of Singhbhum; Phuljhar and other predominantly Oriya areas in Madhya Pradesh and other portions in the south such as a part of Mandasa, Jalantra, Budharsing and Udayakhand. A prominent leader T. Sanganna, representing the scheduled tribe reserved seat from Rayagada–Phulbani in Orissa said on 22 December 1955 that: The adivasis in Orissa as well as on its border areas are Oriya in language and culture … Coming to the southern border of Orissa state namely — the adivasi areas in the Orissa–Andhra border, I can say that adjustment of boundaries resulting in the transfer of adivasi areas from Andhra state to Orissa state is inevitably necessary at an early date in the larger interest of the adivasi as a whole.

When the debates were going on in the Parliament, one witnessed considerable restlessness in different areas in Orissa as well. In Orissa, Parlakhemundi experienced a violent clash between the Telugus and Oriyas.37 In a large-scale public meeting at Puri, Godavaris Misra criticised the SRC for flouting the principle based on languages. He castigated the Government of Orissa for the weak stand taken against the report. Murari Tripathy called upon the youth and the students to join the Utkala Sebaka Bahini which was formed by the Utkala Sammilani, and asked them to work for attaining the goal. ‘If the decisions were not revised, the issue would be dealt by the Oriyas on the Badadanda (the Holy road in front of the Jagannath Temple)’, he said.38 The Congress President Dhebar visited Orissa during the first week of January and assured the people that justice would be done to Orissa.

southern

Despair and Violence

The Oriyas nurtured the hope that the SRC recommendations concerning the Oriya cause would be revised following the feedback received from the Parliament and the Orissa Legislative Assembly. However the verdict of the Government of India, which was made known on 18 January 1956, showed only the status quo ante towards Orissa. Regarding Orissa’s claim on the portion beyond the northern border inside Bihar, the report in its paragraph 625 read, ‘Language by itself does not, in our opinion, provide sufficient justification for breaking up a district’, and, ‘above all, in view of the recommendations which we make for the transfer of part of the Manbhum District to West Bengal, the transfer of Seraikella subdivision, or any part there of, to the state of Orissa will convert the Dhalbhum subdivision in the east into an enclave which will not be physically contiguous to the rest of Bihar’. The argument appalled the Oriyas; to them it appeared that it was

a preconceived decision meant primarily to compensate Bengal and minimise the damage to Bihar. The Provincial Congress Committee reacted sharply to the recommendations and resolved in its meeting that: While still appealing to the public in and outside Orissa to pursue peaceful and constitutional methods for the redress of our grievances … the Committee feels its imperative duty to register its emphatic protest against the injustice that is sought to be perpetrated against Orissa by rejecting her minimum claims … the Committee feels that it will not be

possible to hold any office of trust and responsibility by the members of the Congress on its behalf.39

Along with the resolution, the legislators, the Parliament members and ministers tendered their resignation to the Utkal Congress President Biswanath Das. On 19 January, The Samaj published a news item that the Provincial

Congress had called for the resignation of all its members from the Legislative Assembly and Parliament. The Chief Minister Nabakrishna Choudhury and the president of the Congress in Orissa Biswanath Das went over to Delhi carrying their resignation letters. Confident of the support of the ruling party, leaders from all over Orissa called upon the general public, including the students, to join their protest against the SRC recommendations. The ‘Boundary Agitation’ started on 19 January 1956 with strong demonstrations in Puri. The fire of agitation quickly spread all over the province, and train and bus services were disrupted and offices, including the were closed. On 20 January, two big processions were taken out on all the main roads in Cuttack that ended in a congregation of 10,000 gathering at the Municipality ground. The poet Birakisore Das composed an inspiring poem for the occasion which was sung by Adaita Ballabh Ray. Leaders from all walks of life addressed the students and the youth and praised them for taking a leading role in the agitation. The president of the meeting Jadumani Mangaraj, the firebrand leader of the Oriya movement in the 1930s, requested the students of Ravenshaw College and Raja Bagicha School to give up fasting and join active demonstration. It was declared that the agitation would continue until the grievances were redressed; if needed it might take recourse to violent means. Eminent social worker and leader Sarala Devi, while exhorting the students to continue the movement, also suggested that as a tactical step it was necessary to stop the supply of ores and minerals to the industries in Bihar. This, she felt, would leave the chief minister of Bihar and the prime minister of the country with no choice but to concede. 40 Several student leaders also made fiery speeches at the meeting. The Boundary Agitation thus assumed the stature of the movement for Orissa’s national cause. Although an appreciable size of a police force was brought from outside and deployed to maintain law and order, the radio station at Cuttack was seized. Orissa was cut off from the outside world due to disruption of road, train and even air services because of severe protests.

secretariat,

There were confrontations between the police and the agitators in Puri, Sambalpur and Cuttack. On 22 January, a young student Sunil De succumbed to police firing at Cuttack. During his funeral procession, the chorus was ‘Sahid Sunil Kare Pukar, Jawaharlal Hosiyar’.41 At Puri, a young student Benga Pania lost his life and another young man Harihar Mohapatra, who had been seriously injured in police firing, died shortly after in February. 42 The Utkal Congress Committee appealed for peace and discipline. There was an all-party meeting at Berhampur on 23 January. A number of legislators from the ruling party, and Bodhram Dube, Member of Parliament, resigned. Police excesses, curfew and promulgation of section 144 were condemned by all parties in Orissa. There were wide-scale arrests made the next day of those who broke section 144. Student leaders including Sarat Patanaik and Manmoham Misra were arrested from Cuttack and 260 students and young men were arrested in Puri on 24 January. It was estimated that property valued around 3 crores (30 million) was destroyed at the Puri railway station. Hereafter, appeals were made to the students to withdraw from the agitation; the principal of the Ravenshaw College exhorted them to join their classes. The repressive measures adopted by the administration and the arrest of students made the Ganatantra Parishad and the Socialist Party join hands in order to carry on the agitation. They arranged a meeting on the Kathajori river bed under the aegis of the Utkala Sammilani on 25 and 26 January 1956. They formed a Satyagraha Committee to carry on the protests. They demanded a judicial tribunal or a plebiscite for deciding on the contested areas with Bihar. Their leaders including R. N. Singh Deo, Sarangadhar Das, Sarala Devi and Godavaris Misra were among those who were arrested on 29 January for breaking the section 144.43 On 30 January, the students were released from jail and joined their classes. With this, the Boundary Agitation practically lost its steam. However outside Orissa, for example in Calcutta, Seraikella and Singhbhum, there were protest processions, demonstrations and picketing throughout the month of February. As a counter-move, several Oriya teachers were thrown out of the high schools in Chaibasa and Singhbhum.44 There was now a demand all over Orissa for the Congress Party to take up the rein of leadership and continue the agitation. However, the ministry that had announced its mass resignation continued to be in power with orders from the prime minister. It was seen as a case of betrayal in the eyes of the people. The ruling party

was severely criticised for trying to abandon its responsibility towards the Oriya cause. There were allegations and counter allegations on the floor of the Orissa Assembly and in the media. The Home Minister G. P. Pant accused the opposition, mainly the former rulers, for instigating the people and spreading violence. All the agitations and expressions of anger notwithstanding, the net result of the movement at this stage appeared to be a complete disaster from the point of view of the Oriyas. The SRC continued to evoke a negative image in the minds of the Oriya-speaking people; they were convinced that the Commission was prejudicial to their cause. The territories that were considered culturally and historically an integral part of Orissa were allowed to stay outside the mainland by SRC, much the same way as was done by its predecessor, the O’Donnell Committee. The SRC, in spite of generating hopes of trust, ignored all the evidences in favour of the arguments made for the Oriya cause. It also seemed to have been biased in favour of the more influential provinces. The nature of collecting evidences and hearing the petition was also suspect; the chairman was absent while investigating the border disputes, where Bihar was involved. The SRC seemed to have contradicted its own stand on many A strong example of this was the argument articulated by the SRC that Dhalbhum which was a part of Bihar province would become an enclave and that Bihar would not have any access to it if connecting region like Manbhum went to Bengal and Seraikella and Kharswan went to Orissa. It was overlooked that Dhalbhum was still connected to Bihar by land without Seraikella and Kharswan. As to the impracticability of Dhalbhum being an enclave, it was pointed out that the Sankara tract and Debhog, the two enclaves of Oriya tract in Madhya Pradesh, were not returned to Orissa.45 History was repeated; Orissa’s due was once again completely ignored. From today’s vantage point, it would appear that the of the SRC were almost predictable. They could not have been otherwise given the fact that the leaders of Orissa were no match for their counterparts from the neighbouring provinces in terms of the influence one held over the seat of power in Delhi. In a way, the conception of SRC itself left much to be desired; it was perhaps not designed to possess an impartial and rational decision-making capacity.

linguistically,

occasions.

recommendations

Oriya-speaking People as a Minority in Jharkhand The aspiration of the Oriyas for unification having melted away with the report of the SRC, it was imperative that the outlying Oriyaspeaking people would have to continue as a minority. Placing them in this situation for the ‘administrative convenience’ of the federal structure, it is pertinent to analyse the specific safeguards meant for the linguistic minorities and their level of implementation. It is essential to understand the prevailing socio-political conditions vis-à-vis the response of these people to their historical connection to the mainland. As the scope of the present chapter would not permit accommodating all the tracts, one may look into the case of Orissa’a outlying areas only in the north, now in Jharkhand. The districts in Jharkhand that have a considerable population of Oriyas are Purbi Singhbhum (erstwhile Dhalbhum), Paschim Singhbhum, Seraikella–Kharswan, Gumla, Ranchi and Simdega. The major grievance of the Oriya-speaking people here had always

been the neglect of their language by the authorities. A conscious effort to suppress the Oriya language was further intensified following the SRC report. For instance, in Seraikella and Kharswan the position of Oriya schools came down — the number of pure Oriya primary schools were reduced to seven and mixed schools to 28 by 1958. Five schools of pre-merger days were abolished and 13 switched to Hindi medium. This happened even with the population ratio of 3:1 of Oriya-speaking against Hindi-speaking (Singh Deo 1964: 3). The SRC’s recommendations that a state would be bilingual if there was a substantial minority constituting 30 per cent of the population and the same principle also holding good at the district level, were overlooked. On the other hand, the census figures continued to mislead in showing a steady reduction of the Oriya-speaking people. In the villages situated in the interior, Oriya schools at the primary level completely disappeared. In the more urban areas, the individual efforts of the Oriyas could keep the schools running in spite of the fact that Oriya teachers were not appointed and textbooks were not available. In Seraikella at present, there are only two Oriya primary schools. One of them is in the Seraikella town where Oriya-speaking people constitute 60 per cent of the population. The Seraikella Municipality is taking an initiative now to have an Oriya high school there. Most of the brahmin villages in Singhbum have struggled to keep the Oriya schools running so that their children could receive education in Oriya.

completely

The village Guhiapala, for instance, which is the seat for the famed Atharvaveda Paippaladin settlement where 200 families live, runs its own Oriya-medium school. The young boys who continue with their study of the Paippaladin Samhita after their early training at the village receive only a small scholarship to study in their special institute at Puri. The village is well known for the rare documents of 20 Kandas (books) of Paippalada Samhita. These are written in the Oriya script and stand as the pristine symbol of a remarkable variant of the vedic tradition. The death of the Oriya language here would mean the end of a vedic legacy, a great heritage of our country. With the formation of the Jharkhand province, the hopes of the

Oriyas were rekindled. Oriyas now saw a chance for the survival and the growth of their language and culture. People from Oriya-speaking villages started submitting representations for making avenues to study in Oriya, at least at the primary level. For that to happen, teachers are needed, school buildings have to be provided and the grants-in-aid to the school has to be regularised. To have a glimpse of a sample, one representation was made to the District Superintendent of Education, Jamshedpur, by village Botala under Dumria block. The representation dated 10 December 2007 was signed by more than 200 Oriya-speaking people of this village. The memorandum said that though the village has more than 70 Oriya-speaking families, it is not possible to teach the children in their mother tongue because of the absence of any Oriya teacher at the primary level. The representation, a copy of which was marked to the Vice-Chairman of the Minority Linguistic Commission, requested for an Oriya primary school teacher in Botala. On 19 August 2005, the Utkal Association of Jamshedpur presented to the Chief Minister Arjun Munda a memorandum for ‘Recognition of Oriya as Second Language in Jharkhand and Solution of the Problem of Oriya Linguistic Minorities’. The Association, formed in 1934, continues as the most active mouthpiece for the Oriya cause in Jharkhand. With 2 per cent of the Oriya-speaking people in the entire Jharkhand and 10 per cent in the Oriya-dominating districts, and with more than 10 per cent in Seraikella and Kharswan alone, these people believe that they are entitled to the rights of a linguistic minority in Jharkhand. Appealing for justice to the linguistic minorities, the memorandum dwelt on the ancient connection of the Oriyas with the area, which is their home land. It went on to elaborate on the closeness of the Oriyas with the adivasis and the Moolvasis (indigenous inhabitants) of the land

available

who share the food habits, dress and important religious and cultural festivals such as the Ratha Yatra of Lord Jagannath and the Chhau with them. It referred to the unfairness in the figures of Census, generated by the non-Oriya enumerators during the time of undivided Bihar, which has recorded an inaccurate and reduced number of the Oriya-speaking people. It mentioned the present large Oriya in the industrial belt of Hazaribagh, Bokaro and Dhanbad. The memorandum added that one-third of the Jharkhand land is deeply attached to the Oriya language and culture; Oriya is the lingua franca between different communities. The memorandum said:

traditions

population We, therefore, request you to declare Oriya as a second language along with other constitutionally recognised languages and take immediate necessary steps to resolve our long-standing problem particularly: a. Availability of Oriya textbooks on non-language subjects for classes 1 to X, b. Appointments of Oriya primary and secondary teachers proportionate to their population in the districts and as per guidelines of the Minority Commission, Government of India, c. Implementation of all previous agreements between the government of undivided Bihar and Orissa on the problems of Oriya Linguistic Minorities, d. Establishment of an Academy of Oriya Language, e. Representation of Oriya linguistic minorities in district educational and planning committees, f. Grant of financial aids to all cultural Oriya organisations of Jharkhand like Utkal Association, Jamshedpur.

In a meeting at the Utkal Association premises on 28 September 2005, the chief minister promised to declare Oriya as the second official language. However, his ministry fell before this dream could be realised and the issue was put in the back burner once again. The declaration of Santali, Bengali and Urdu as second official languages on the anniversary day of Jharkhand on 15 November 2006 frustrated the Oriyas further. There was wide media coverage about the Oriya disappointment. ‘The decision came as a shock’, said the Utkal Association president Rabin Satpathi.46 Similarly, the Baharagora legislator and senior BJP leader Dr Dinesh Sarangi voiced his serious concern over Oriya being ignored by the new government. He welcomed the chief minister’s announcement for according the second official language status to the three languages. ‘However,

exclusion of Oriya language’, he said, ‘which is spoken by more than 2 per cent of the people (as per the latest census report) in the state, does not show the government intentions in good light.’ He also hinted that the leaders would be forced to launch a vigorous agitation if the government did not accord the legitimate rights to Oriya. ‘We hope that such a situation would not arise. We would make a representation before the government and also warn of the simmering resentment against the decision’, said Dr Sarangi.47 An ultimatum was submitted to the government by the Utkal Association to this effect that unless remedial measure were taken on or before 26 January, there would be agitation and hunger strike in front of the Legislative Assembly.48 On 6 June 2008, the Utkal Association of Jamshedpur presented a memorandum to Naveen Patnaik, the chief minister of Orissa, for taking up their cause and negotiate with his counterpart in Jharkhand for making Oriya the second official language of Jharkhand and also to provide support for the Oriya schools that struggle to survive. The Utkala Sammilani has launched initiatives in the last couple

of years to start Oriya classes at the primary level in the outlying tracts. One such step in this direction is to employ local women to teach. This they believe will sustain the system, even though the pay is a small pittance of Rs 750 per a month. With Orissa government’s backing, the project has taken off. The Oriya region in Jharkhand is the repository of numerous works of Oriya literature. Consistent and close interaction of the literary organisations of mainland Orissa such as the Orissa Sahitya Akademy with the Oriyas here is perceived to be essential. The Oriya-speaking people in this outlying tract have continuously made serious efforts against heavy odds to preserve their language and develop their literature. These efforts to protect their identity have kept the Oriya culture alive here and has prevented total extinction of a part of Orissa’s rich heritage. Rooted to their past history, the demand of these people by and large is not for a change in the present entity. Instead, the focus is on obtaining their legitimate rights within the state of Jharkhand. It would appear that the responsibility of safeguarding the linguistic rights of the Oriya minority earlier by the Bihar state and then by the new Jharkhand state has not been discharged with full responsibility. The government at the centre needs to have an effective plan and policy for protecting the interest of the linguistic minorities. The state government of Orissa also has to shoulder the

administrative

implementation

responsibility of supporting education in Oriya for minorities outside its borders. An effective cultural map is desirable in the present situation side by side with the existing political one where adequate care could be taken of the people who are minorities here due to historical accidents. Given a multilingual and composite culture in the state of Jharkhand, upholding of legitimate linguistic rights reinforced by the constitutional provisions in articles 350 and 350A and also by the Fundamental Rights is vital. This would nullify any fissiparous tendencies while safeguarding the genuine interest of the smaller language and cultural groups. The Divisive Forces: An Insight It has already been seen earlier in the chapter that the forces for unifying the Oriya-speaking people across the borders of the present political entity have been operating for a long time and have continued even in the wake of the SRC verdict. It is also important to look into the divisive forces within the present political outline of Orissa that seem to be becoming more active in recent times — one of the demands being to constitute a new provincial unit comprising, what is claimed to be, a distinct homogenous linguistic group. Koshala Raj

The divisive force that the state encounters on its western part is in the form of the demand for a Koshala Raj. The territories identified for constituting a separate Koshala Raj state include 11 districts of Orissa. They are: Sambalpur, Bolangir, Jharsuguda, Deogarh, Bargarh, Sonepur, Boudh, Koraput, Sundergarh, Noapara and Kalahandi. The region is a mineral-rich forest belt and accounts for almost 30 per cent of the population of Orissa. The Koshala Party and the Koshala Ekta Manch have been formed to lead the separation movement with support from all parties of western Orissa. Regional organisations, such as the Western Orissa Jana Jagaran Parishad, the Orissa Sanskriti Samaj and the Western Orissa Liberation Front have joined the newly formed organisations to intensify the movement. In 2005, a conference was held at Sambalpur where a deadline of 15 October — 100 years after Sambalpur was united with Orissa on the same date in 1905 — was set for the formation of the new state.

This would set one to rethink whether the movement for the formation of a new state is persuaded by vested political interests or this represents a genuine case of distinct identity that would thrive and blossom better if separated from Orissa, without upsetting the larger interest of national integrity. The movement for Koshala Raj is to establish the hypothesis that the people of the western part of Orissa possess a language, culture and historical traditions that are very different and distinct from those of the coastal people. It is argued by them that the language here is not a dialect of Oriya as some of the ‘Oriya’ intellectuals have been articulating. They contend that some of the Sambalpuri words can be traced directly to Sanskrit. The language is endowed with a rich vocabulary and has a distinct style; it is as strong as the Oriya language. The roots of the language are identified with the early adivasi settlers who were followed by the non-adivasis. The intermixing of these two groups led to the development of a language which became ‘Sambalpuri’. Hence the protagonists of the Koshala Raj movement pin their logic on the language issue and conscious efforts are made for its growth. They strongly reject the terminology of the ‘Oriya Identity’. In reality, there are distinct words in the region which are used in

the spoken language and which constituted the oral literature. The written language is the same as Oriya. The great poets of the area, including Gangadhar Meher, contributed richly to Oriya literature and language. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the western part of Orissa has contributed to the make up of the Oriya culture and traditions as much as the other part. Revisiting history of hundred years, it would surprise any serious observer that Sambalpur that led the pro-Orissa amalgamation movement against the Central Provinces on the basis of language and cultural affinity around the end of the nineteenth century, would now highlight their differences with Orissa on the basis of the same attributes. The newspaper Sambalpur Hitaishini acted as the voice of the

Oriyas since 1889 in their movement for unity. Raja Sudhala Dev of Bamanda state was the champion of the cause of Oriya identity and was a great patron of Oriya literature. He was nominated to be the first President of the Utkala Sammilani. However, his sad and sudden demise did not let it happen. Gangadhar Meher is the poet laureate who hailed from western Orissa and is a household name in the entire state. Chandra Sekhar Behera was the young leader who was Gopabandhu’s counterpart in Sambalpur and brought Congress

and Gandhi to the region. He fought to safeguard the Oriya language

at the time of the great language crisis and fought for the unification of Sambalpur with Orissa. He was among the frontline leaders of the Utkala Sammilani. The question then would be: why in the first place did the separatist

movement begin? It appears that the movement was directed to challenge the overlordship of the coastal people who are called ‘Oriyas’ as distinct from ‘Sambalpuris’. The roots for such a psyche could be seen from the very inception of the union. The simplicity of the people of the region was taken advantage of by the coastal people. It was felt that the inflow of the coastal people to the Sambalpur region created a situation akin to the one when the Bengalis from Bengal landed in Orissa. Referring to such a development, Sir Reginald Craddock said in the Parliament debate of the House of Commons in 1934–1935 that the Oriyas from Cuttack came there and ousted the local ‘Brahmins’.49 The divisive tendency took deeper roots when the Eastern States Union was formed by the princely states of Orissa in 1947–1948 to fight for a separate political unit instead of merging with Orissa. Some of the states of the Eastern States Union are presently the districts of western Orissa. Most of the districts claimed by the Koshala Raj leaders had constituted the unit called Sambalpur and its 18 forts when the British had taken over the region from the Marathas. A natural cohesiveness therefore grew among these tracts as a result of their past sharing of the same administrative unit.

primarily

Subsequently, during the working period of the SRC and the

Boundary Agitation of 1954, Sambalpur actively participated in the amalgamation movement for getting the outlying Oriya areas back with Orissa. It is known that the Oriya areas in Madhya Pradesh have a natural affinity with western Orissa. Besides, the Singh royalties in Singhbhum, Seraikella and Kharswan have long-standing marriage alliances with Sambalpur’s former ruling family as well as with the rest of the former princely states of western Orissa. In spite of these facts, cries for ‘Wapas Chalo Madhya Pradesh’ (Let’s go back to Madhya Pradesh) could be heard from some quarters during this time.50 The agitation during the Hirakud Dam construction protesting against the displacement of the people was led by the former chief of Bolangir– Patna R. N. Singh Deo. A genuine cause, it was also a move to gain some mileage for his party, the Ganatantra Parishad, against the ruling Congress Party. The concept of Koshala Raj was played into the minds of the people during this time, drawing reference to the epic time when the Koshala had included the western Orissa.

The people of western Orissa felt aggrieved that the government’s main focus was on coastal districts while their region remained largely neglected. The western Orissa Development Council, by the government in 1998, did not appear to be effective. The people of this region continued to suffer from abject poverty and deprivation. With the reshuffle in the Indian federation by the of three new provinces in 2000, the movement for the Koshala Raj thus intensified. It appears that the collective memory of the Oriya movement in the nineteenth and twentieth century got faded with time, while the individual identity of the Koshala Raj with a political over-tone has gained a wider appeal.

constituted formation

One may justifiably conclude that the feeling of alienation seems

to have arisen primarily from a sense of deprivation and exploitation at the hands of the people from the coastal Orissa which is the power centre of the state. However, the ambition of the high profile has also contributed to the movement for separation. Be that as it may, the responsibility lies with the administration to nurse the past injury and ensure that the people of this region are taken into confidence and feel themselves as a part of the mainstream. A part of this effort can be seen with better communication facilities over road and rail being built. The Western Orissa Development Council has now been vested with more power to bring about further growth of the area. One is also witnessing rapid industrialisation in Jharsuguda, part of Sambalpur and in Bargarh, which however does not exclude the perils that come with it. Nevertheless, the western part of Orissa now seems to be a happening place and several places, not just Rourkela, are showing up prominently in the industrial map of Orissa. The plan of constructing an airport near Jharsuguda ought to go a long way in consolidating the numerous constructive projects. With such developments, the people of the area could perceive themselves as a part of the mainstream in Orissa on account of the economic and political equality that they have gained vis-à-vis the coastal area. The other, a contrasting scenario, could be a strong sense of separate identity, again born out of the all-round growth.

politicians

Adivasi

Orissa is characterised by the presence of adivasi concentrations in its southern, western and northern parts; they constitute 24 per cent of Orissa’s population. According to the 1981 census, 8.35 per cent

of the number speak their own languages. The rest have mostly adopted Oriya. The two adivasi language groups in Orissa belong to the Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic categories that are again divided into sub-groups. They are mainly Kondh, Gond, Kisan, Oraon under the Dravidian group and Juang, Munda, Savara, Gadaba, Bonda, Mundari, Ho and Santali in the Austro-Asiatic group. These people lived mostly in the hills and forests and at different period, came under the Hindu rule who in turn owed allegiance to the monarchy in the coastal capital. Oriya being the official language of the centralised rule, they all came under the Oriya banner. For instance, there is a song in the folklore among the Didayi group of the Munda stock in Orissa that says that the Didayi, Kandha, Bonda and Chelia are all ‘Odias’ (Panda 1989: 48). There was a friendly co-existence and no one thought of a language barrier. There was no attempt to liquidate the indigenous languages by the rulers. Nevertheless, not being the official language, the growth of these languages was no doubt restricted; such a tendency was also seen in many other parts of the country. The SRC worked on the federal divisions of the country on the basis of the already recognised languages in the Constitution which did not include any adivasi language. When the demand for the adivasi state of Jharkhand was made to the SRC, it was turned down on the basis of the absence of any single recognised adivasi language holding a majority. The Jharkhand movement, although it seems to have been

motivated to some extent by the formation of the Orissa province, had

never made language the indicator of its identity. They were multiple linguistic groups and sub-groups who claimed Jharkhand on the basis of geography, history, economic considerations and cultural traditions. In fact, any single linguistic identity would have been its undoing. The weight of linguistic distinctiveness however has not been

lost sight of. There have been much development of the adivasi scripts have been formulated, literature has been growing. For example, Santali, whose script was invented by Raghunath Murmu from Orissa in 1925, is already included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Mundari, Kudukh, Ho and many others are in line for similar status. The adivasis also have their All India Tribal Writers Forum; they are attempting to establish their respective linguistic identities. What if their aspiration culminates into demanding political units with marked out territories on the basis of language? Jaipal had indicated the presence of inherent unsettling forces during the SRC debates in the Parliament on 26 July 1956. He had said:

languages;

Take my own language Mundari … my language has a 14-volume dictionary …. The point is this and it is a fact that there are more people who speak the Mundari language than Kashmiri or even Oriya or some of the other languages. Supposing that had been one of the recognised languages, how are you going to solve this problem of the reorganisation of states on a linguistic basis for the Mundari-speaking people? ... You will have to disrupt several states all over the place … Therefore I oppose this question of reorganisation on a purely linguistic basis.51

The adivasis who were the earliest settlers in the Indian subcontinent have been dispersed all over. A Munda in Orissa or a Munda in north-west may actually be working towards a common linguistic identity; he has however imbibed much of the local culture and has also contributed to its growth where he has settled. Today, it is important to revisit the position of this large number of the indigenous population in Orissa whose legacy to the eclectic culture of the land is as significant as those of the Hindus. The development of these people on par with other progressive sections is the priority of the administration. Kandhamal is perhaps a sad example of our policy of exclusion and

the politics of convenience; they feed disruptive forces. The genesis of the Kandhamal violence could be traced to the issue of identity mobility. Before the British brought Kandhmal under their control, there was the Pana community who had integrated with the Kandhs of the land. They are, according to F.G. Bailey, the Kandh Panas, distinct from the Pana community who migrated later. The Panas in Kandhamal speak Kui which is the Kandh language, have adopted Kandh culture and practice their rites and rituals. They belong to the scheduled caste and since 1990 have been demanding to be enlisted as a scheduled tribe in order to qualify for special benefits. This is resisted by the Kandhs and there were flare-ups in 1994. The Kandhs have formed their Utkal Kui Samaj and have floated a Kui-Lipi/Kui scripts and are fiercely conscious of their status as sons of the soil (Mahapatra 2005: 113). The Kandhs are animists, but a great deal of conversion to Hinduism has taken place. The Panas are largely Christian converts. This local yet a very crucial issue was isolated for a long time. Over the years, the conflict for economic gain has assumed religious dimensions, ostensibly fuelled by vested interests. The nation-building vision has not considered the values of ‘the ancient aristocracy’ of India. The adivasi lands have been taken over for the growth of industries, river projects have displaced countless numbers and an invaluable cultural heritage of our country has been threatened. There appears to have been serious deficiency in matters

of compensation to the people whose home and security have been overrun. It is not true that the adivasis are inflexible about their traditions and resist every change. When the Tisco was founded, the adivasis worked devotedly for the growth of the industry. The light of the blast furnace was their supreme god, Sing-Bonga. The American engineer. W. O. Renkin who hired them for construction work, was venerated as the son of their local deity Rankini as he provided them with resources for food and shelter. The socio-political fabric may be properly planned where the ancient man does not become ‘rootless’ in terms of his own culture. There is an initiative today for the codification and authentication of adivasi customs. Literacy, education and other modern indicators of growth need to penetrate deeper into the adivasi society in order to bring them into the mainstream. However, the adivasi ought to be equipped to take his own decision based on rational thinking; he should not fall prey to the power hungry political parties. Appreciating their tradition and the richness of their culture would not only bring them closer to the urbanised population, it could indeed enrich the latter’s outlook due to the lofty ideals and thoughts enshrined in the ‘ancient aristocrats’ society and way of life. The Niyamgiri (Hill of Rules) has stood for countless ages as the symbol of our faith in nature, of our belief to live in harmony and with humility to nature’s supremacy. It is the temple of the ancients, no less precious than Konarka. If Niyamgiri falls to the cause of ‘nation-building vision’ through industrialisation, it would sow the seeds of irreparable divisiveness that would spell disaster for the land and its people.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

The Samaj, 13 January 1954. Ibid., 1 January 1954. Ibid., 4 January 1954. Ibid., 27 January 1954. Ibid., 21 January 1954. Niakhunta, Cuttack, December 1952, p. 34. Ibid., July 1953, p. 22. Niakhunta, Cuttack, December 1952, p. 29.

9. Opinion of Pitamber Misra, Advocate General, 24 August 1953:

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

If the President could make a reference under Article 143 regarding the question whether Seraikella and Kharswan have been validly integrated with Bihar in view of the Agreements executed by the Rulers of Seraikella and Kharswan in favour of the Dominion Government, that would solve the problem for Orissa. The Orissa Assembly by an unanimous Resolution may require the Government of Orissa to request the President to refer the question to the Supreme Court but how far the President will respect such request may be open to question, for Article 143 vests the President with a discretion in the matter and whether in the present circumstances the President will exercise the discretion in favour of Orissa is a matter which should be decided by the Government of Orissa and the Orissa Assembly (Notes on Seraikella and Kharswan, November 1952–August 1953, Personal files of Radhanath Rath, Archives, The Samaj). Niakhunta, Cuttack, July 1953, p. 15. Among the luminaries present were Bibekananda Mukherjee, editor of Jugantar and its director Sukomal Ghose; Sudhansu Ghose, editor of Hindusthan Standard; Jatindra Sarkar, joint editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika; Sudhansu Bakshi and Tamonas Banerje, editors of Rupanjali; Chapalkanti Bhattacharya, editor of Anandabazar Patrika; Professor Chhapra, editor of Roza-na-Hind; Major S. B. Dutta, the President of Calcutta Rotary Club and Debendra Nath Mukherjee, ex-Mayor of Calcutta Municipality Corporation (The Samaj, 8 February 1954). Rape of Democracy, published under the authority of the President, Utkala Sammilani, Cuttack, March 1954, p. 32. The Samaj, 10 February 1954. Ibid., 2 March 1954. The following list includes names of persons who were the signatories on the notice for the meeting: Swami Bichitrananda Das, Harihara Mohapatra, Chintamani Acharya, Dr Banabehari Patnaik, Dr Pranakrushna Parija, Bhikari Charan Patnaik, Nabakisore Das (UUC Secretary), Biswanath Pasait, L. K. Dasgupta, Bholanath Biswal, Raghu Rout, Madhusudan Mohanty, Syamsunder Misra, Rangalal Modi, Ramakrushna Pati, Sundarmani Patel, Banka Behari Das, Sobhan Khan, Artaballabh Mohanty, Biren Mitra, Lakhsmi Narayan Sahu, M. A. Ameen, Syamsunder Jena, Sriharsa Misra, Janaki Ballabh Patnaik, Gourchandra Rout, Chintamani Panigrahi, Prasana Kumar Nanda, S. N. Dutta, Lalit Kumar Ghose, Trilokya Nath Mohanty, Sarat Chandra Sarkar, Nirmal Chandra Mukherjee, Bharat Chandra Das, Baidyanath Nayak (The Samaj, 17 February 1954).

16. Rape of Democracy, p. 32; The Samaj, 16 February 1954. 17. Sahay,Baldev,Facts about Seraikella and Kharswan, Patna, 1954. 18. Letters by A. P. Singh Deo to Dr K. N. Katju, Minister of Home Affairs and States, Government of India, D.O.NO.M-I/54-18 dated the 12 March 1954. 19. The Samaj, 1 April 1954. 20. Ibid., 14 April 1954. 21. Ibid., 27 May 1954; Niakhunta, June 1954, p. 9. 22. Government Reports, a) The Case of Orissa for the Sadar and the Seraikella Subdivisions of Singhbhum district. b) Orissa’s claim to certain Contiguous Oriya Areas in Madhya Pradesh. c) Orissa’s claim to the Oriya areas in Telugu speaking region.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

The areas in question which were listed and sent to the SRC were the following: the entire Singhbhum district including Seraikella and Kharswan from Bihar; Phuljhar, Bindranuagarh, Malkhordha, Chandrapur from Madhya Pradesh; 1,600 square miles from the Visakhapatnam Agency and the other Oriya-speaking areas including Parvatipur, Kurupam, hill areas, entire Icchapur, some areas from Somepenth, Tikali and Patpatnam from the south. It suggested that Seraikella and Kharswan needed to be urgently transferred to Orissa through a mid-term report. The Case for Transfer of the District of Singhbhum to Orissa (A Memorandum submitted to the States Reorganisation Commission), Ganatantra Parishad, Orissa, 22 May 1954, pp. 13–18. The Samaj, 5 June 1954. Nabeena, 29 June 1954. The delegates included the representative of Hindusthan Standard; Bombay Chronicle; the joint editor of The Samaj, Sriharsa Misra; Utkala Sambadika Samgha’s general secretary Ramachandra Das and secretary, Narayan Ratha; Bhagaban Pati of Matrubhumi; Gorachand Ratha and Biswanath Mohapatra of Krusaka (The Samaj, 2 July 1954). Sarangadhar Das, Lok Sabha Debates, 19 December 1955. The Samaj, 10 and 12 July 1954. Ibid., 15 July 1954. Ibid., 20 October 1954. Ibid., 8 November 1954. Ibid., 12 and 19 July 1954. Abua Jharkhand, 2 January 1955. The Samaj, 12 February 1955. The Prajatantra, 21 January 1956. Lok Sabha Debate, 23 December 1955, SRC vol. v, pp. 1289–98.

37. The Samaj, 4 January 1956. 38. Ibid., 9 January 1956. 39. Orissa Legislative Assembly Proceedings, 29 February 1956, vol. viii, no. 3, pp. 23 and 39. 40. The Samaj, 20 January 1956. 41. Ibid., 24 January 1956. 42. Utkala Sahitya, 28 February 1956. 43. The Samaj, 30 January 1956. 44. Ibid. 45. The Sankara Tract — the five villages of Sankara, Rabo, Mahodi, Bharatpur and Rampur of the ex-state of Sarangagarh — are surrounded by the Ambabhopa police station of Sambalpur district. This tract is cut off from Madhya Pradesh territory on all the four sides with the result that one cannot reach the tract from Madhya Pradesh without having to cross Sambalpur district. The total population of these villages is 3,657 and their area is roughly 4 square miles containing 429 houses. The excise administration of these villages is being looked after by the Deputy Commissioner, Sambalpur since 1911. There has been no change in the status quo after the integration of Sarangagarh in Madhya Pradesh on 1 January 1948. The people of the area are therefore used to official transactions with the district of Sambalpur and its district’s officials. If the tract is transferred to Orissa, the Orissa Excise Acts and Administrative Rules, which cannot now be enforced as long as it is in Madhya Pradesh, could be introduced there for better excise administration of the tract. Administrative considerations arising out of the geographical compactness of the area with Sambalpur are a compelling reason for the transfer of this tract to Orissa. Bindra–Nuagarh and Debhog are contiguous to the Kalahandi district of Orissa. As a matter of fact, Debhog is an enclave of Madhya Pradesh in the Kalahandi district of Orissa. These two are purely Oriya-speaking areas having trade and economic relations with the neighbouring district of Kalahand. Their transfer to Orissa from Madhya Pradesh will be on linguistic, economic and administrative considerations. (‘Orissa’s Claim to Certain Contiguous Oriya Areas in Madhya Pradesh’, The Government Report presented to the SRC in 1954). 46. Hindustan Times, 17 November 2006. 47. Ibid. 48. Uditvani, 16 and 22 November 2006. 49. Parliament Debates, House of Commons, 1934–1935, vol. 299, pp. 484–85, 11–12 March. 50. The Samaj, 20 August 1954. 51. States Reorganisation Bill, 28 July 1956, SRC vol. vi, p. 1395.

justified

References Mahapatra, L. K. 2005. People and Cultural Traditions of Orissa. Cuttack: New Age Publications. Mohanty, Nivedita. 2005. Oriya Nationalism: Quest for a United Orissa, 1866–1956, 2nd ed. Jagatsinghpur: Prafulla. Panda, Pramod Kumar. Comp. 1989. Didayi, Tribal Language Study Series, vol. I. Bhubaneswar: Academy of Tribal Dialects and Culture, Harijan and Tribal Welfare Department, Government of Orissa. Routray, Nilamani. 1986. Mo Smruti O’ Anubhuti (Autobiography). Cuttack: Grantha Mandir. Sahaya, Baldev. 1952. Claims of West Bengal and Orissa on Territories of Bihar X’Rayed. Patna: Bihar Association. Singh Deo, N. N. 1954. Singhbhum, Seraikella and Kharswan Through the Ages. Calcutta: Author. ———. 1964. The Position of Education in the Merged States of Seraikella and Kharswan. Cuttack: Author. Singh Deo, Pattayat Sri Bhupendra Narayan. 1955. Memorandum on States Reorganization Commission Report, Re: Seraikella, Kharswan and Singhbhum. Calcutta: Utpal Press. Supakar, Sraddhakar. 1982. Maddhyama Purusha (autobiography). Cuttack: Lekhaka Sahajoga Samity (Writers’ Cooperative Society).

10 'Linguistc Provinces' to 'Homelands': Shifting Paradigms of State-making in Post-colonial *India Sajal Nag India’s freedom struggle was significant not just for its anti-colonial content but also because it gave birth to the concept of Indian nation by effectively integrating diverse regions of the country into an entity called India. However, post-colonial India witnessed violent subnational upheaval which demonstrated the strength of subnational identities as well. Pan-Indian sentiment and regional aspirations have always played an important role in the making of India.1 They were in fact coeval streams. Anti-colonial struggle unified all the regions and helped in putting up a powerful counter to the British. However, once independence was achieved, nation-building required that regions be reorganised on cultural basis and given adequate importance. Thus the period immediately after independence experienced an upsurge of subnationalist movements.2 Most of these movements demanded political autonomy for a cultural zone. To quell the uprising, the harassed Government of India on the one hand announced the formation of Andhra Pradesh and on the other appointed the State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) for the other belligerent groups for the other belligerent groups. The SRC not only cooled the tempers temporarily but actually raised the hope of the people. This chapter attempts to show from a historical perspective, that contrary to the belief that the SRC report was actually a textual commitment of India’s adherence to the principle of linguistic provinces, it actually was an attempt to depart from it. In fact, following a change in the Indian state’ think tank led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself, the SRC made out a case for composite multilingual provinces. But under political expediency, the SRC went against its own case and advocated linguistic provinces in mainland India. However for north-east India, our special reference zone in this chapter, where the demands were for multilingual and composite states, the SRC

Sajal Nag

rejected the same. The rejection of the demands created conditions for the emergence of demands for ‘homelands’ from a number of tribes in north-east India which the SRC had argued very strongly against in its text. What the SRC warned against was granted by the centre creating grounds for more such demands. The Making of the State Reorganisation Commission Report On 22 December 1953, Jawaharlal Nehru announced in the that a commission would be appointed to examine ‘objectively and dispassionately’ the question of reorganisation of the states of Indian union so that the welfare of the people of each constituent unit as well as the nation as a whole was promoted. Accordingly, under the resolution of the Government of India in the Ministry of Home Affairs No. 53/69/53-Public, dated 29 December 1953, the said was appointed under the chairmanship of Justice Fazal Ali whose objective was to:

Parliament commission investigate the conditions of the problem, the historical background, the existing situation and the bearing of all important and relevant factors thereon. They (the committee) will be free to consider any proposal relating to such reorganisation. The government expect that the commission would in the first instance not go into the details but make recommendations in regard to broad principles which should govern the solution of this problem and if they so choose the broad lines on which particular states should be reorganised and submit interim reports for the consideration of the government (Government of India 1995: i).

The tenure of the commission was up to 30 June 1955 which was subsequently extended to 30 September 1955. According to their terms of reference, the commission was at liberty to devise their own for collecting information and for ascertaining public opinion. The commission began by issuing a press note on 23 February 1954 inviting written memoranda from members of the public as well as public associations interested in the problems of reorganisation of states:

procedure The States Reorganisations commission after giving due consideration to the procedure that would be most suitable for the expeditious execution of the task entrusted to them have decided to dispense with a questionnaire. They invite members of the public as well as

'Linguistic Provinces' to 'Homelands'

public associations interested in the problem of the reorganisation of states to put their views and suggestions before the commission by submitting written memoranda on matters on which they feel they can assist them. The commission expects that wherever any concrete suggestions are made they will be supported by historical and statistical data and if any proposal regarding the formation of any new state or states is made, it will if possible be accompanied by one or more maps, as the case may be (Government of India 1995: ii).

The response was overwhelming. In fact, it seemed that the of the SRC gave an impetus to the autonomy movements. By the end of the deadline, the total number of documents that reached the commission was a staggering 1,52,250. The bulk of these communications ranged from simple telegrams, printed resolutions and such material reflecting the wishes and demands of particular localities to be included within one or the other unit. The number of ‘well prepared memoranda’ was about 2,000. Simultaneously, there were 9,000 interviews of people of a cross section of people which continued till July 1955 covering 104 places of the country extending to about 38,000 miles (611,420,000 km).

constitution

The SRC report began with a study of the history and structure of

the existing provinces of the Indian union which it concluded was a ‘result of accident and the circumstances attending the growth of the British power in India and partly a by-product of historic process of the integration of former Indian states’. It agreed that the British were guided by a two-fold purpose in the organisation of provinces in India: one, to uphold the direct authority of the supreme power in areas of vital economic and strategic importance and two, to fill the political vacuum arising from the destruction of the collapse of former principalities. Of these two, the first was the primary objective which obviously required suppression of traditional regional and dynastic loyalties. This was sought to be achieved by erasing old frontiers and creating new provinces ignoring natural affinities and common economic interests. The administrative organisation of these provinces was intended to secure their subordination to the central which inevitably led to the formation of units with no natural affinity. With the emergence of nationalism in the nineteenth century, another factor emerged in the consideration of reorganisation. The policy of balance and counterbalance began to override purely considerations in making administrative changes. Thus Bengal, which then included Bihar and Orissa, was divided with a

government

administrative

view to disperse revolutionary elements as well as to secure more manageable administrative units. The integration of Indian states saw, according to SRC, a

revolutionary change in them. First, 216 states having a population of

little over 19 million were merged into the provinces. Second, 61 states having a population of about 7 million were constituted into new centrally administered units and third, 275 states with a population of about 35 million were integrated to create new administrative units, namely Rajasthan, Madhya Bharat, Travancore-Cochin, Saurashtra and Patiala and Eastern Punjab States Union (PEPSU).3 Only three states namely Hyderabad, Mysore and Jammu and Kashmir survived these processes of integration. However, the internal structure of these states as also their relationship with the centre were cased into a new mould so as to fit them into the constitutional structure of India. ‘While factors such as linguistic and ethnic homogeneity or tradition were taken into consideration to the extent practicable in the process of integrating these diverse units with adjoining or constituting them into separate administrative units, the compulsion of the dynamic urges of time necessitated prompt A number of settlements therefore made in respect of these states had to be in the nature of transitional expedients’ (Government of India 1955: 5). Hence they too needed to be considered for reorganisation. The SRC also noticed that the existing status of provinces were discriminatory. To them, a peculiar feature of the Indian Constitution was the disparate status of the constituent units of the union. The recognised three categories of states and gave each category a pattern and status of its own. The status of the first of two categories of states, i.e., those specified in Parts A and B of Schedule I of the Constitution was based on the concept of federalism. Apart from the institution of Rajpramukh (prime minister), the main feature that distinguished Part B states from Part A states was the provision contained in Article 371 which vested in the central executive authority over the governments of these states for a specified period. This provision, though was not consistent with the principles federalism, did not however alter the basic relationship between states and the centre which essentially rested on the principle of a clear division of powers between the centre and the states. Part C states, which ranked lowest in the hierarchy, were administered by the centre on a unitary basis. The devolution of powers to the legislature and governments of some of these states under the Part C States

historical provinces decisions.

constitution

supervisory

Act 1951 did not detract from the legislative authority of parliament over these states, or from the responsibility of the union government to parliament, for their administration. Apart from the states of the union, there were also territories

specified in Part D of Schedule I which formed part of India. In respect of such territories, as also of any territory comprised within the territory of India but not specified in this Schedule, the central not only had full authority but also the power to make regulations.4

government

In the colonial period, even before the Act of 1935 was introduced,

which embodied the federal principle of governance, the status of various administrative units’ vis-à-vis the central government had differed from one another. By the close of the nineteenth century, there were three different forms of provincial governments in existence, namely those under a governor and executive council, those by a lieutenant governor and those administered by a chief commissioner. Many of the British Indian provinces such as Assam, Bihar and Orissa; the Central Provinces, the North West Frontier Province; and the Punjab and the United Provinces passed through one or both of these earlier stages before acquiring the governor and council form of government. A distinction was also made between ‘major provinces’ and ‘minor administrations’. In the first category were included the governor’s provinces, Lieutenant Governor’s provinces and the two larges chief commissionerships — Assam and Central Provinces whose chief commissioners were in practice entrusted with powers nearly as wide as those of Lieutenant Governors. All the other chief commissionerships were called minor administrations and were administered under the direct control of the central government, in the case of Ajmer-Merwara, British Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province, which were mainly administered through the home department. The Government of India Act 1935 recognised the circumstances in which it was formulated into three categories of component units — namely governor’s Provinces, federating Indian states and chief commissioner’s provinces. The classification was reflected in the grouping of states of the Indian union as Part A, B and C states except that not all former Indian states were now represented by Part B states; a number of them had been merged in the provinces or consolidated into centrally administered areas. However, departure from the old classification was the recognition under the Constitution of two categories of centrally administered areas, namely Part C and

administered

except

Part D territories, as against only one such category recognised under the1935 Act. At the time of the commencement of the Constitution, there were nine Part A states, eight Part B states and 10 Part C states. Since then, Parliament had by law established a new Part A state, namely, Andhra Pradesh, and merged one Part C states, namely Bilaspur, with another such state — Himachal Pradesh. Another feature of the states of the Indian union was that none of them represented a pre-existing sovereign unit. It was only in the case of former Indian states that the right of accession on a negotiated basis was conceded. Rulers of these states no doubt claimed a measure of sovereignty. However, this sovereignty was severely overborne by the paramountcy of the British Crown, not only in the field of external affairs but also in respect of internal administration. Whatever element of sovereignty of these rulers existed, it was surrendered by them to Government of India before the commencement of the constitution. Romanticism to Pragmatism: Shift from Linguistic Principle Although the colonial state too had favoured linguistic reorganisation of provinces, it was convinced of the impracticability of such reorganisation. The linguistic principle as an ostensible factor in territorial changes figured for the first time in a letter from Sir Herbert Risley, Home Secretary, and Government of India to the Government of Bengal, dated 3 December 1903 in which the proposal for partition was first mooted. Later in the partition resolution of 1905 and in the dispatch of Lord Hardinge government to the secretary of state dated 25 August 1911 proposing the annulment of partition, language was again prominently mentioned. The linguistic principle was however pressed into service on these occasions only as a measure of administrative convenience and to the extent it fitted into a pattern which was determined by political exigencies. In actual effect, the partition of Bengal involved a flagrant violation of affinities. The settlement of 1912 also showed little respect for the linguistic principles in that it drew a clear line of distinction between the Bengali Muslims and Bengali Hindus. The authors of the Montague-Chelmsford Report of 1918 examined the suggestion for the formation of sub-provinces on a linguistic and racial basis within the existing provinces, with a view mainly to providing suitable units for experiment in a responsible government. Although they rejected

general linguistic

the idea as impracticable, they commended the objective of smaller and more homogeneous states: We cannot doubt that the business of government would be simplified if administrative units were both smaller and more homogeneous and when we bear in mind the prospect of the immense burdens of in India being transferred to comparatively inexperienced hands such considerations acquire additional weight. It is also a strong argument in favour of linguistic or racial units of government that by making it possible to conduct the business of legislation in the vernacular, they would contribute to draw into the arena of public affairs men who were not acquainted with English (cited in Kluyev 1980: 111).

government

Twelve years later, on the question of factors which should govern redistribution of provinces, the Indian Statutory Commission stated: if those who speak the same language from a compact and self contained area, so situated and endowed as to be able to support its existence as a separate province there is no doubt that the use of common speech is a strong and natural basis for provincial autonomy. But it is not the only test — race, religion, economic interest, geographical contiguity, a due balance between country and town and between coast line and interior may all be relevant factors. Most important of all perhaps, for practical purposes, is the largest possible measure of general agreement on the changes proposed, both on the side of the area that is gaining and on the side of the area that is losing territory.5

The principle of linguistic provinces was part of the romanticism that was associated with idea of nation and nation building. The left leaning of the younger generation of nationalists like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose helped to uphold this principle. Bose was a member in the Motilal Nehru Report from which the SRC could envisage the potential areas which could be reorganised on linguistic basis after independence. Similarly between 1928 and 1947, the Indian National Congress reaffirmed its adherence to linguistic principles on three more occasions — at the Calcutta session held in October 1937, at a resolution passed at Wardha in 1938 and the election manifesto of 1945–1946 — on each occasion specifically speaking about Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala for reorganisation. However, the situation that emerged after independence and the crisis that the the new nation state confronted evaporated the The imagination of nationhood for India and the practice

romanticism.

of nation building proved two different domain altogether. The had not imagined that independent India would emerge as a partitioned India; that the princely states would decide to stay out of the idea of India and they would require to be integrated; that the parting with Pakistan would not be amicable; that partition would practically mean competition for grabbing of land; that there would be a communal holocaust coupled with displacement and the immediate task of rehabilitation of displaced would be such a gigantic problem, and above all, that the constituent nationalities would be so unreasonable and impatient for the reorganisation of the provinces. The transformation of yesterday’s romantic nationalists to pragmatic administrators was neither easy nor smooth. It was against this background that the leaders slowly began to shift from the idea of linguistic provinces as they visualised that its implementation would create more problems that it actually would solve. The paradigm shift was quite visible after independence. Speaking before the Constituent Assembly, the prime minister while conceding the linguistic principle remarked, ‘first things must come first and the first thing is the security and stability of India’ (Gopal 1947–1956: 256). A strong India had to be built before other things could be However, the agitating groups were not willing to wait; they felt Nehru was going back on his promises and principles (Nag 2000: 140). Nehru was sympathetic to the Andhra cause but was unwilling to make a start at that juncture, lest it would open a Pandora’s Box. He wanted to delay any decision by appointing commissions (ibid.). But the eventual grant of statehood to Andhra under duress only precipitated further crisis. An angry Nehru pleaded for ‘healthy nationalism … to counter these foolish and tribal attitudes as also provincialism’ (Brecher 1959: 257). In fact by now, Nehru had started to find virtues in the concept of composite states created by the British. The example of Hyderabad, where people spoke languages as diverse as Telugu and Urdu, appealed to Nehru as potential centres of composite culture in south India while Bombay had already developed as a cosmopolitan centre. Nehru felt it would be ‘vandalistic to throw away’ these gains (Gopal 1947–1956: 261). As a matter of fact, by 1955, Nehru was already thinking of creating large composite city states out of Bombay consisting of Gujrati- and Marathi-speaking areas including Vidharbha. This he felt would be the ideal way of having larger as well as fewer states. He even went to the extent of persuading chief ministers of Bengal and Bihar to agree to

nationalists

considered.

merge with each other to form one state (Brecher 1959: 489). Madras had agreed to include Travancore and Cochin. There was even talk of one large Dakshina Pradhesh consisting of all Tamil, Malayalee and Kannada-speaking areas. This was followed by the appointment, on the recommendation of

the Drafting Committed of the Constituent Assembly, of a Linguistic Provinces Commission known as Dar Commission for the purpose of enquiring into and reporting on the desirability or otherwise of the creation of any of the proposed provinces of Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra and fixing their boundaries, and assessing the financial, economic and administrative and other consequences in those provinces and adjoining territories of India. It was quite clear from the terms of reference of this commission that reconstitution of provinces solely on a linguistic basis was no longer taken for granted. The Dar Commission was obviously influenced by ideas of the prime minister and other influential ideologues of the post-colonial state. The Dar Commission in its report to the Constituent Assembly in 1948 expressed its opinion not only against any reorganisation of under the circumstance that existed then but also asserted that relying exclusively on linguistic principle for state creation was inadvisable. It wanted geographical contiguity, absence of pockets and corridors, financial self-sufficiency, administrative convenience, capacity for future development and large measure of agreement within its borders and amongst the people speaking the same language in its formation and non-imposition of the majority language on the minority of the area. When the Dar Commission Report failed to cool down the temper of agitating groups, Nehru installed another committee which was formed from within the Congress — the JVP Committee — comprising Jawaharlal Nehru himself, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattavi Sitaramaya. The JVP Committee, constituted by the Indian National Congress in its Jaipur session in 1948 to examine the Dar Commission Report and the new circumstance that arose after independence, sounded a note of warning against the principle of linguistic principle saying: (a) when Congress had approved of the principle it had not envisaged the practical problems and implications of such reorganisation; (b) The primary consideration must be the security, unity and economic prosperity of India while discouraging separatist tendencies in the polity; and (c) Linguistic provinces could only be applied after careful consideration of each individual case without creating administrative dislocation or internal conflicts.

provinces

The JVP Committee report was officially adopted by the Congress Working Committee in 1949. It sealed the fate of the idea of linguistic provinces. The report formed part of the election manifesto of the Indian National Congress in 1951. This was quite a contrast to its manifesto in the 1946 election. The manifesto of 1951 declared that the reorganisation of states would depend on the wishes of the people. The linguistic principle would apply but economic, administrative and financial consideration would also be taken into account. Hence when Andhra Pradesh state was created, it was because the Andhra Provincial Congress, the Tamil Nadu Congress and the Madras Government had agreed to it. However, it withheld support to the proposal of Karnataka state for want of agreement of the majority of the people of Mysore state. Before the state of Andhra was created, Justice Wancho was appointed to enquire into the financial and other implications of the decision. On 10 August 1953, the Andhra State Formation Bill was presented in the Lok Sabha and passed. The SRC was formed against this background when the romantic idea of linguistic principle of state formation slowly gave way to composite state systems under the emerging situation which saw violent uprising over the question of province formation and big nationality versus small nationality conflicts. Nehru was forced to say that small states make small minds and he was all for multilingual, multicultural formations. By now, Nehru had begun to see the virtues of large and composite state and he did not hide it. However, evolving nationalities would not hear any of it. Strangely, following the thinktank of the new nation, the SRC was all for composite states but in practice, it still adhered to the linguistic principle of state delineation with regard to most of India, except for north-east Indian states. This was a paradox. The SRC Report as the Sacred Text The SRC report agreed that the demand for the reorganisation of states is often equated with the demand for the formation of linguistic provinces. This is because the movement for redistribution of British Indian provinces was in a large measure a direct outcome of the phenomenal development amongst them of a consciousness of being distinct cultural units. When progressive public opinion in India therefore crystallised in favour of rationalisation of administrative units, the objective was conceived and sought in terms of linguistically homogenous units.

The SRC report felt that though the provinces of India were reorganised many a time from the colonial period, the time for redrawing the political map comprehensively and without delay had arrived. However it had considered the cost of change and the paramount question of unity and security of India, arguments both for and against linguistic states, importance of language for and other purposes and constitutional relationship between the centre and the states of the Indian union before making its and had come to the conclusion that ‘it is neither possible nor desirable to reorganise states on the basis of the single test of either language or culture but that a balanced approach to the whole problem is necessary in the interests of the nation.’ (Government of India 1955: 43). This was because Indian nationalism was ‘still to develop into a positive concept’ whereas culture-based regionalism centering round the idea of linguistic homogeneity represents values easily intelligible to the average Indian: ‘The Indian nationalism must acquire a deeper content before it becomes ideologically adequate to withstand the gravitational pull of traditional narrower loyalties.’ In other words, the SRC had noted the rise of regionalism in its vicious form and its devastative impact on nation building. ‘Undue emphasis on linguistic principle is likely to impede the rapid development of new areas’ (ibid.). In post-partitioned India, there was a partition phobia and every autonomy movement had begun to be seen as leading to partition of the country. The movements for separate provinces or separation from oppressive big nationalities by small nationalities or tribes were branded as ‘separatists’. In terms of practical problems, linguistic reorganisations had to depend on figures of the mother tongue given by the Census. The Census of India for 1951 though had already been completed and it was done according to what were known as ‘Census Tracts’. Therefore it was difficult to estimate the figures of mother tongue on a taluk or tehsil basis. Without this, delimitation of linguistic areas was difficult. Hence the SRC advocated multilingual and composite provinces instead of unilingual provinces saying:

administrative recommendations

potential

the multilingual units will prevent the utilisation of the machinery of the state for furthering programmes of linguistic exclusiveness and in favourable conditions may lead to tolerance and adjustment especially if the importance which is now attached to economic development diverts attention from the less important questions and barren controversies regarding languages and culture ... a composite state

which makes adequate provision for the protection of culture and the encouragement of local languages would help to prevent the growth of anti-national trends (ibid.: 45).

In its final proposal for reorganisation, the SRC conceded that the states of the Indian union were very unequal in size, population and resources and were even unequal before the law. It did see that the public opinion, both within and without the Part B and Part C states, had been severely critical of the present anomalous arrangement which often violated the principle of equal rights and opportunities for the people of India. If the states of the union were to be treated on equal footing and if the status of Part A states was the standard, then Part B and Part C states, must disappear. Similarly, if the states of the union were to enjoy a uniform status, then it was necessary that each state should be inherently capable of survival as a viable administrative unit. The SRC agreed that every state would have multilingual regions at its peripheries which might pose a challenge to the linguistic basis of state formation. It also agreed that beside language, there can be other bases of diversity which was a strong argument for a composite state. Indeed, most demand for linguistic states came from non-Hindi speaking states and there was argument/demand in favour of a Hindi-speaking state as a few large states, which were presumed to be Hindi speaking already existed. The clamour for their break up into smaller states was either on a sub-linguistic or regional basis. There were other problems associated with linguistic principle of state reorganisation which the SRC did not touch upon. Linguistic populations spawning large territories would mean that there would be huge states as opposed to smaller ones. The SRC was of course unequivocal in its opposition to the concept of smaller states. The Ambedkarian formula of one state-one language formula rather than one language-one state idea was also not given any consideration. There was hardly any reflection on the impact of such reorganisation on north-eastern states. In fact, the SRC reflected a serious loss of memory and public consciousness of the existence of north-eastern India while arguing or repudiating the concept of linguistic states. With its myriad language groups, some only few hundreds, linguistic could have created havoc in terms of reorganisation of state. It did not generate any debate on its own and essentially relied on the representations made to it. The recommendations were entirely based on the demands forwarded by various representatives of the people.

principle

As far as the north-east of India was concerned, the main discussion was around Assam. Surprisingly, there were no demands for linguistic states from north-eastern states which reflect the heterogeneity of the region. Assam as a multilingual composite state wanted to maintain the status quo and if possible, also desired inclusion of neighbouring areas like Manipur and North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). The SRC stated that from a historical point of view, Assam and north-east India had been naturally a meeting place of many tribes and races. Right through its history, there has been immigration into and settlement in the state from various sources with the result that till comparatively very recent times (that is to say up to 1931, when linguistic tabulations was last undertaken), Assamese was not in fact a language spoken by a majority of the inhabitants of the state. Assam also owed a great deal to capital and enterprise from outside the state and its tea, coal and oil industries have been built mainly as the result of such enterprise. The proposals presented to the commission from Assam were as follows. The Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, the local Communist Party and the Tripura State Congress Committee as well as the of Assam were broadly in favour of the status quo. Assam however would welcome the merger, if possible, of Coochbehar, Manipur and Tripura and closer connection with the administration of NEFA which was then constitutionally a part of Assam but from the centre. The West Bengal State Congress demanded that Goalpara be re-transferred to Bengal and tried to appropriate a movement in favour of Bengal. However, this demand changed the attitude of the local people who subsequently wanted merger with Assam. It did create bitterness between the two states. Another demand was that of Kamatapur state consisting of Goalpara, Garo hills, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar and Darjeeling. The SRC refused to entertain this demand for the same reasons. It was multitribal and composite in nature. A similar demand was that of Purbanchal Pradesh which was also composite in nature though the dominance would be that of the Bengali migrants. The eagerness of the Assamese to get rid of the Bengali districts during and after partition had already communalised the relationship between the two communities. With the appointment of SRC, a Cachar State Reorganisations Committee was set up in Cachar district of Assam. In an apparent empathy with the tribal constituents, it declared in a memorandum to the SRC that:

Government administered

with Cachar and Lushai Districts in despair under Assam, with the Nagas in revolt and effectively defying Assam’s authority in every

sphere, with Manipur and Tripura refusing to be the Cinderellas in a State ... the only positive course left open to the Commission is in our view is to suggest a separate administrative unit for these areas. It would be called Purbanchal Pradesh which would be a heterogeneous one with two divisions — one, comprising Cachar, tripura, Lushai Hills and Manipur and the other NEFA and Naga hills. It was an overambitious project given the anti-Bengali feeling in the north-east. The idea smacked of a kind of Bengali dominance and was rejected by the hill people as well as Tripura and Manipur who wanted full-fledged statehood (Chaube 1973: 121).

The tribal leaders of Assam had demanded the formation of a hill state. It too was a composite state comprising of myriad heterogeneous tribes who surprisingly agreed to come under one administrative unit. It just wanted separation from Assam and a separate federal existence. The demand was reiterated at the Tura Conference of the tribal leaders in October 1954 which contemplated the unification of all the hill districts mentioned in Part A of the table appended to the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution, including the Naga Hills district. Only the Naga National Council sought independence of the Nagas from Assam and India and wanted to remain aloof from the proposed hill state. As can be seen, all the demands were for a composite state and none wanted a linguistic province. However, despite the advocacy of composite state by both the SRC and Prime Minister Nehru, these were mostly rejected and rationalised as can be seen in section which follows. The SRC first dealt with the demand of the creation of hill state out of Assam. Under the Constituent Assembly constituted in November 1946, a committee on Aboriginal Tribes had been constituted under the chairmanship of Patel. This committee constituted a Advisory Sub-committee on the North East Tribal and Excluded Areas under the chairmanship of the chief minister of Assam Gopinath Bordoloi. The commission noted that except for the independence of Naga Hills, no demands for separate statehood — linguistic or otherwise — were made. The demand for a hill state was of recent origin. ‘There is no denying the fact that the demand for a hill state partly reflects the “separatist pull of the extremist party”’ (Government of India 1955: 187–88). Other factors which are supposed to have lent support to the demand were:

1. Suspicion and distrust of the people of the plains by the tribal people of this area. 2. The diversity of races and culture and the different levels of social, educational and political development in the different areas of this region which have prevented the tribal people from coming up to the level of the people from the plains. 3. Lack of communications in these areas which has made it difficult for the various tribes to come in close contact with the rest of India. 4. Economic backwardness of the region. In addition, the commission also recognised it as a ‘problem’ inherited from the colonial days. The British kept the tribals isolated and away from the non-tribals through various constitutional devices as a part of their ‘national park’ policy. By excluding all contacts between them and the inhabitants of the plain districts, the economic exploitation of the tribal people could be perpetuated undisturbed and unnoticed. The demand for a separate state is partly a hangover of this policy. After the departure of the British, there was now a growing awareness amongst the tribal people of their political rights as full and equal citizens of the Indian union which they did not have till this moment and indeed could not well have had before independence. The Inner Line Regulations policy was a deliberate policy of segregation between the plains and tribal people and it also created divisions even within the tribal people themselves. As a result of British and missionary influences, this created a new class which has so far remained quite distinct from the general population living either in the hills or plains. ‘The creation of new hills state will in our opinion accentuate these distinctions. It will therefore prove in the long run against the interests of the scheduled tribes’ (Government of India 1955: 192). Moreover, the commission felt that separation from Assam will add to the cost of administration and the coordination of policies and programmes between the state of Assam and the hill areas on the one hand and between the hill districts themselves on the other. Generally, it felt the United Mikir and North Cachar Hills and Mizo (Lushai) Hills were not in favour of a separate state and the District Council in the Lushai Hills and Karbia Darbar (Mikir Hills National Council) were in favour of the status quo. The agitation in favour of a hills state was therefore confined to Garo and the Khasi and

complete

Jaintia Hills. Owing to their geographical position, these two districts necessarily had a closer association with adjoining plains district than the rest of the hill or tribal areas; even in these two districts therefore, an influential section of opinion viewed with disfavour the formation of a separate hill state. The impression which was formed by the SRC formed as a result of their tour of the area was that a substantial body of public opinion, even in the tribal areas of Assam, had not, by any means, been converted to the view that a new hill state should be formed. Taking all these factors into consideration, the SRC had come to the conclusion that the formation of a hill state in this region was neither feasible nor in the interest of the tribal people themselves. The hill districts therefore should continue to form part of Assam and no major changes should be made in their present constitutional pattern (Chaube 1973: 187–88). There was also a discussion on the increase in the quantum of autonomy of the district councils like the Khasi-Jaintia and the Lushai whereas another opinion felt that as a body, the district councils had failed in its objective. The SRC did not want to go into this debate but wanted more emphasis on the development of infrastructure by them. It then moved on to another proposal for the formation of Purbanchal state. This proposal was raised earlier in 1948 too and was examined by the Congress but was not pursued. The scheme envisaged the constitution of Cachar, Tripura, Manipur, the Lushai Hills, the Naga Hills and the NEFA into a composite state. The demand was forwarded by the Cachar State Reorganisation Committee. The itself recognised that it would be a financially deficit state and would have international boundary on three sides. The genesis of the demand lay in the fact that a major part of Sylhet district was cut off and transferred to Pakistan during partition. The Bengalis in Assam, who used to feel that culturally and even geographically they belonged to Bengal, found themselves isolated and under an environment which was not congenial. The persecution of Bengalis and their language in post-independent Assam was cited as a cause of resentment. However, the SRC felt that the creation of Purbanchal state would mean one set of problems for another and therefore it was not an appropriate remedy for the grievances of the minorities. Next was the issue of Tripura a Part C state with a population of 639,029. According to the opinion of the SRC as a small state, Tripura could not stand by itself

committee

exchanging

its merger in Assam in our opinion can be supported among other reasons on the ground that it will be desirable to bring the entire border between India and Pakistan under single control that of Assam Government. Such merger will also make it possible to coordinate development in Cachar and the contiguous area of Tripura. The Bengali-speaking population in Assam after the merger will be a little more than one-fifth of the total population of the state. It should not be difficult for the Assam government to allay the apprehensions of the Bengali-speaking people by treating this area, which requires development, as a separate administrative division under a commissioner. The special position of Bengali in this division should be recognised for official and educational purposes. With safeguards, the merger of Tripura with Assam will achieve for its people the fulfillment of their aspirations of representative government at the state level without prejudicing their linguistic and cultural interests (Chaube 1973: 192).

As far as NEFA was concerned, the SRC rejected the proposal of Assam to integrate it fully with that state and felt that the current arrangement of the area being ruled by the President of India through the Governor of Assam with a separate cadre for the superior posts recruited on all India basis should continue. Similarly for Naga Hills too, it did not suggest any change and opined that it should continue to remain a part of Assam. Even the transfer of Tuensang district from NEFA was rejected. As far as Manipur was concerned, since Manipur refused to be part of proposed Purbanchal and the SRC was of the opinion that Assam should not be burdened with the additional problem of administering this border area, this erstwhile princely state should continue to be a centrally administered territory. However, it was also conceded that Manipur could not insist on its separate existence for a long time and hence it should be ready to join a larger unit of the neighbourhood. As a result of all these, the configuration of the new state of Assam

would include Tripura and a population of 9.7 million, and an area of 89,040 square miles (230,613,600 square kilometers). Linguistically it would be a composite state with even the Assamese not having any substantial majority. The new state which we propose will have important problems to tackle. This area has been subject to periodical floods against which protection will have to be sought in part by building irrigation or flood protection works not considered so far as flood control had to be handled as a regional problem. The road–rail system in north-east India was moreover admittedly unsatisfactory in relation to the growing needs of this area, including Manipur. The task

of economic development could be undertaken and substantial autonomy could be enjoyed by the various linguistic and racial groups only if two conditions were fulfilled namely, that the state of Assam is compact, rich and resourceful and that there existed within this state mutual tolerance and goodwill. Particularistic and ‘chauvinistic trends’ were bound to retard the progress of the state. They should therefore be discouraged in every way (ibid. 194–95). The SRC did not seem to adhere to the principle of linguistic in north-east India. It not only rejected the numerous demands for newer states but also recommended the merger of hostile areas to create a composite state of Assam where neither the dominant Assamese nor the challenger Bengalis would have majority. The tribals had to swallow their complaints and grievances against the Assamese ruling class and live within Assam. In fact, it was felt that the SRC had ‘approached their problem of a hill state with a prejudiced mind’ (Rao 1976: 346–47). The SRC said that the demand for a separate hill state emanated from the extremist with separatist tendency. This separatist tendency was thought to be a result of the British policy of divide and rule the hill and plainsmen through devices like Excluded Area and Inner Line Regulation which were being perpetuated by the Government of India as well. A critic found that ‘this is a familiar argument advanced by the politicians of the plains. The commission however forgot the point that there is a already Line System in Assam which has been devised by the people of the plains. The ‘Inner Line’ (the line, introduced by the colonial government as per provision of the Inner Line Regulations, Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation Act 1873, beyond which non-tribal were not allowed to enter the tribal state without a valid pass) was demanded (in the colonial times) and was still demanded by the tribal themselves. If there had not been the Inner line, the situation in the hill areas would have been explosive’ (ibid. 347). The SRC felt that individually or collectively, the hill district would not be able to command the resources, money, material and manpower needed to implement the development schemes. Therefore no hill state should be created. Two major considerations weighed with the SRC in its non-recommendation of the formation of a hill state: First, small states should not be created and second, that the security of the frontiers should not be risked. The rejection of the concept of hill state by the SRC fuelled stronger pan-tribal subnationalism. The autonomy aspiration grew stronger. The Chief member of the Garo Hills District Council Captain Williamson

cultural

provinces

Executive

A. Sangma convened a meeting of the chief executive members of all district councils in Shillong on 16 and 17 June 1954. B. M. Roy, the Chairman of the meeting in his address, stressed the need for the formation of a separate hill state and amendment of the Sixth Schedule. In the memorandum that was drafted on this occasion, it stated that the ‘the younger generation especially are feeling very unhappy and they see that they will in time be extinct. The fear of their future destiny naturally makes them feel that it will be far better for them to have a Hill State of their own’ (Chaube 1999: 122). The next step was the All Hills Tribal Leader’s Conference held in Tura from 6–8 October 1954. After the tour of the SRC, the Conference decided to form a Hills Tribal Union and elected W. A. Sangma as the Chairman and B. B. Lyngdoh as Secretary of its ad hoc executive body. The rejection of the hill state demand was not compensated for by the enlargement of the powers of the District Councils either. There was a strong sense of rejection among the tribal people when the SRC report was made public. On 28 August 1955, during his visit to Shillong, Nehru appealed to a delegation of tribal leaders for a calm and dispassionate consideration of the SRC report. The Conference of the Hill leaders met in Aizawl to express grave concern about the SRC’s inability to ‘to appreciate the aspirations and demand of the tribal people of this part of the country’ and reiterated the demand of bringing all hill areas under one administration. It was in this conference that the Eastern India Tribal Union (EITU) was formed in October 1955. The move to declare Assamese as the official language of Assam unified and further strengthened the Hill state movement. In June 1960, Captain Sangma called a conference of the leaders of all the hill parties on 6 and 7 July 1960 in which the All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC) was born, replacing the EITU. The conference vehemently opposed the move to impose Assamese language on the hill people. When the Assam government still went ahead with the proposal, the third APHLC conference in its meeting held between 16–18 November 1960, resolved that, ‘(the passage of the language bill) was a clear proof of the unfair attitude and firm determination of the Assamese community to avail themselves of undue advantages and thereby enhance their domination over the hill people and the rest of the people of the state of Assam. ... The only solution of the crisis was “the creation of a separate hill state”’ (ibid.: 132). After the conference, two APHLC deputations were sent to meet the prime minister. In November 1960, Nehru offered the Scottish pattern of autonomy for the hills

to the hills leaders. The APHLC rejected the plan as they believed that this did not solve the basic problem. However, a faction of it called the ‘Assam Hill Peoples Conference’ later decided to accept it. Accordingly, the Pataskar Commission was formed to look into the quantum of autonomy that could be given to them. The commission proposed ‘no basic change’ in the Sixth Schedule, disappointing the hill leaders and making them raise the issue of a separate hill state again. When the APHLC decided to boycott the 1967 general election, the new Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited Shillong from 11–13 January 1967 and promised the reorganisation of Assam. Following the 22nd Amendment of the Indian Constitution on 24 December 1969, the Indian Parliament created history by passing the Assam Reorganisation (Meghalaya) Bill simultaneously in the two houses which resulted in the creation of ‘an autonomous state to be known as Meghalaya within the state of Assam comprising the United Khasi and Jaintia hills and Garo hills district as defined in the Sixth Schedule. The most important feature of the Meghalaya Act was that it created a new tier in the structure of state in India which was similar to the autonomous republics of the former USSR. The executive power of the new unit was vested in the Governor of Assam who was aided and advised by the Council of Ministers of Meghalaya. A Legislative Assembly was also formed. In late 1971, the President of India issued the North East Frontier (Administration) Supplementary Regulation creating an Agency Council (later replaced by a Pradesh Council). In the same year, the parliament passed five Acts: the North Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, the 27th Amendment of the Constitution of India Act, the Government of the Union Territories (Amendment) Act, the Manipur Hill Areas Act and the North Eastern Council Act. The passage of these Acts paved the way for the creation of many new states in north-east India like Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya which has its capital in Shillong. Mizoram district and North East Frontier Tracts became the Union Territories of Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh respectively. The development completely ignored the SRC report as far as north-east India was concerned and created what the SRC report had cautioned against. This left the SRC report completely irrelevant in north-east India. We trace the irrelevance of the SRC and the grant of homeland in the form of statehood in Nagaland and Bodoland mainly because Nagaland was the first while Bodoland was the most recent.

Naga Homeland In the demand of hill states, Naga Hills did not figure because the Naga National Council wanted a Naga homeland outside India and not within the country. Hence it did not join most of the autonomy demand movements. The SRC noted that ‘the Naga National Council seeks independence from Assam and India and to remain aloof from the proposed hill state’ (Government of India 1955: 184). Though there was no proposal for a Naga province from the people, the SRC found that ‘the Naga hills district present a special problem’. Owing to the activities of the extremist elements, the law and order situation in this area had been unstable in the 1950s and 1960s. The Nagas boycotted the elections to the autonomous bodies with the result that the area has had to be administered directly by the Assam Government. It was represented to the SRC that the law and order problem in the Naga Hills District was the same as in Tuensang area of NEFA and that unless the entire area was brought under one authority, the situation could not be effectively dealt with. However, it was stated on behalf of the Assam government that the Naga Hills District was relatively quiet during the last two or three years and that there were indications of the people of the area abjuring violence in favour of peaceful methods. ‘After taking the relevant factors into account, we have come to the conclusion that it would not be desirable to suggest any change in regard the Naga hills district’ (Government of India 1955: 193). In fact after the disappointing report of the SRC as far as north-eastern region was concerned, the tribal leaders stepped up the hills state movement wherein they invited the Naga leaders as well. Though the Nagas participated in one such meeting, they were not enthusiastic about the concept. They still adhered to the idea of sovereignty. In a discussion between the Khasi leaders and a Naga delegation led by Phizo, the latter commented: I feel the Hill state demand had already achieved its mission. It has shaken the Assamese. In Politics, it is not mere majority but a matter of organization .... If one day we achieve independence, it will not mean that India granted it; it will be because India can no longer stand against the voice of the world. You can help us much in this matter by speaking about us to the many tourists. If we come down, it will not be helpful to you (Chaube 1999: 124).

The Naga construction of self vis-à-vis Indians was essentially based on the principle of ‘othering’. They argued that: ‘(1) ethnically Nagas

are from a distinct stock; (2) they have a distint social life, manner of living, laws and customs and even their method of governance of people was quite different; (3) in religion, the great majority of the Nagas are animists, but Christianity which was introduced by the American Baptists long before the advent of the British rule is now speedily spreading.’6 Borrowing heavily from the colonial the Naga intelligentsia constructed their identity which was not only based on differentiation but also was fluid and shifting (See Nag 2008). Similarly, the territorial demand for a Naga Homeland was also changing. Initially it comprised the then Naga Hills District. Later, they demanded the inclusion of Tuensang area and even the Naga inhabited area of Assam and Manipur state. However the homeland was visualised as an exclusive domain of the Nagas where they would have political, economic, social and hegemony. However, this was camouflaged under the demand of a homeland which was a ‘return’ to its pristine form:

construction,

subsequently cultural Nagaland is a wonderful country and the people are a peculiar people who are happy and contented. It is a country in this twentieth century where there is no political party, no class distinction, no class feeling or caste system, no complain of economic maladjustment, no pauper, no (family without) property, no liquor ban, no opium den, no dancing hall, no brothel, no law for death penalty, no law to imprison a person, no land tax of any kind. It is purely a country of people owned by the people, and managed by the people for the common interest of the people. Every village is a small republic and has its own council and assemblies established from time immemorial and it is dynamically alive. Nagaland is a country of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams.7

The rejection of the Akbar Hydari–Naga National Council (NNC) Agreement and open defiance by a section of the Nagas and the announcement of a Government in Exile resulted in the Indian army moving in. The movement of the Indian army to suppress the rebellion and the consequent encounter between the underground Nagas and security forces continued causing havoc to the Naga social fabric. This activated the Naga civil society. A large body of the Naga people decided to rescue Naga Hills from this devastation and bring a semblance of stability. This civil society group, which united itself under the banner of Naga Peoples’ Convention, negotiated with the Government of India and brought about some kind of settlement which included the unification of Tuensang with Naga Hills and the creation of a Naga state under the Ministry of External Affairs.

Prime Minister Nehru was willing to go any extent, expect short of sovereignty, to resolve the Naga impasse. In July 1960, the terms were discussed by the prime minister with the Naga Peoples Convention leaders, resulting in the 16-point Agreement whereby the India agreed to constitute a Nagaland state as the 16th state of India. However, the prime minister did face opposition in his endeavour to grant statehood to Naga Hills and even with the nomenclature — Nagaland. For the Nagas, the nomenclature ‘Nagaland’ was vital for their identity and identification of their habitat. During the discussion, some members raised objection to Nagaland being called a part of India, while others objected to the idea of it being placed under the Ministry of External Affairs. Some others also objected to the idea of the Government of India signing an ‘agreement’ with a constituent part of India. Dr Ram Subhag Sing from Sasaram was perplexed by the nomenclature, ‘Nagaland’. He cautioned the prime minister of its grave future implications. He said, ‘I therefore request the prime minister to carefully name that area. It may be named Naga State or Naga Pradesh. Nagaland is something bigger.’ 8 Raghunath Singh supported the area being named Naga Province or Naga State instead of Nagaland.9 C. K. Bhattacharjee from West Dinajpur even found the name ‘outlandish’ and wanted it to be changed. 10 Members like Vidya Charan Shukla asked the rationale behind placing Nagaland under the Ministry of External Affairs rather than Home Ministry as per the Constitution. Members like Ashoka Mehta, Dr M. S. Aney and Sri Tyagi questioned the procedure of signing an ‘agreement’ between the Government of India and people of India. Since there was never any agreement between the Government of India and the people of Punjab or Uttar Pradesh (UP), they failed to understand the necessity of such a legal document with the Naga people. In fact it was the personality and stature of Nehru which was able to overcome such opposition and convinced the members of the importance of granting special treatment to the Nagas. The grant of statehood to the Nagas in a territory meaningfully titled Nagaland was the realisation of the Naga desire of a ‘homeland’.

government

Bodo Homeland Like the hill tribes, plain the tribes of north-east India also had aspirations. The Bodos, then known as the Cacharis, were one of the first to become conscious of their rights. As early as 4 January 1929, not less than four memoranda were submitted to the Simon

autonomy

Commission. A more articulated expression of their aspirations was made on February 1967 with the birth of the Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA). The PTCA represented not just the Bodos but also the Barmans of Cachar, the Deoris, the Hojais, the Mishings and the Kacharis which included the Sonowals, Lalungs, Meches and Rabhas. It submitted a memorandum to the President of India on 20 May 1967 demanding full autonomy in the predominantly plains tribal areas of the northern tract of Goalpara, Kamrup, Darrang, Lakhimpur and Sibsagar districts including all the tribal belts and blocks of those areas so that tribals can: (a) adequately protect their land, (b) give effective check to economic exploitation of tribals by non-tribals, (c) conserve their language, culture, custom, counter political domination by non-tribals over tribals and imposition of anything which would disrupt their traditions and customs and (d) grow according to their own genius and traditions. The PTCA demand for any autonomous region of 1967 was upgraded to a demand for Udayachal, a Union Territory, in 1973. However, in 1977, a section of their leadership withdrew their demand for a Union Territory and reverted to the original demand of an autonomous region. This resulted in the breaking up of the PTCA into two. One of these, the PTCA (progressive), reiterated their demand for a Union Territory called Mishing-Bodoland for which they submitted a number of memoranda between 1980 and 1983. The All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) was in the meanwhile active during all these years and it managed to unite the fighting PTCA factions. The ABSU also submitted a memorandum to the centre demanding Union Territory status. Due to the failure of the PTCA to get anything tangible from the government, the ABSU took the initiative in its own hand. It listed the harms done to the Bodo community by the Foreign National Movement which has been spearheaded by the All Assam Students Union and felt that without separation from Assam, the Bodos did not have any security or future. The ABSU movement started with the demand of a Union Territory. 11 The twentieth conference of the ABSU, held from 19–22 December 1988, ushered in a more militant phase in the movement. The dropped all other demands and upgraded their demand to a full-fledged state called Bodoland. It raised the popular slogan, ‘Divide Assam Fifty Fifty: Revolution will come; we want human rights Do or Die for Separate Homeland.’ 12 ‘However Bodoland is not meant for only the Bodos, but is merely a nomenclature of a tribal state including all the plains tribal of Assam. The non-tribal would also

conference

be guaranteed with all the constitutional rights in the proposed Bodoland’.13 The movement took a violent turn when two underground organisations — the Bodo Security Force and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland — came up to support not just statehood but sovereignty for the Bodos. What all of these myriad groups struggled for was no more a Bodo state — either federal or sovereign — but a Bodo ‘homeland’. They insisted that a separate political unit was necessary not only for the development of the tribals but also for the survival of the tribe. It was also necessary for the preservation of the language, culture and identity of the tribals (Chakladar 2004: 53). The concept of homeland was striking because it imagined a territory where the tribal life and identity would be preserved and perpetuated. It was a kind of sanctuary for a people who were otherwise being threatened of extinction. Indeed like other plain tribals, Bodos too were facing severe economic deprivation and alienation from their land and needed legislative protection. The idea of homeland was not new to the Bodos. The United Tribal Nationalist Front (UTNLF), one of the many splinter groups that were formed in 1984, had actually demanded a separate union territory called ‘Tribal-land’ for the plain tribal of Assam. In 1986, it was re-designated as ‘Tribal homeland’ (ibid.). The Bodo leaders expected that other tribal groups would join

their movement. However, the language issue isolated them from other groups and hence they confined their demands to the Bodos only. The ABSU for instance declared in unequivocal terms: ‘The main aim and objective of the ABSU shall be to promote the language, literature and culture of the Bodos’.14 It further stated that it will endeavour to improve the Bodo language through printing of magazines and other literary works and will strive to develop and safeguard the culture of Bodos by bringing in reforms. Moreover, it would ‘try to develop and safeguard the Bodo race economically by taking up economic programmes from time to time’.15 Subsequently, the movement gradually turned arrogant and authoritarian and lost its democratic and federal character. The underground leadership made violent efforts to threaten and evict the non-Bodo tribals, non-tribal Assamese and immigrant groups in an endeavour to free the Bodo territory of non-Bodos and make it homogenous so that the Bodos became the majority community in the area. This was to secure the political hegemony of the Bodos in the area. Such security concerns, either political or social, were integral to the concept of homeland which the SRC had anticipated and cautioned about much earlier.

The Utopia of Homeland As a concept, ‘homeland’ sounds very pristine, innocuous and even pious. However, as a political ideology it had dangerous portents. The SRC was able to foresee such potentialities and as such was very critical of the concept of homeland right from the beginning. There are certain aspects of the claim for linguistic units, the implication of which should be carefully analysed and understood. The most important of these is the doctrine of any area claiming to be the ‘homeland’ of all the peoples speaking a particular language. The implication is that a Bengali, and Andhra or a Malayali wherever he is settled has his homeland in Bengal, Andhra or Kerala; that he has a loyalty to that home land, over riding the loyalty to the area of his domicile and that in the same way, the homeland state his claims on him wherever he may be. We cannot strongly emphasise the dangerous character of this doctrine especially from the point of view of our national unity. If any section of people living in one state is encouraged to look upon another state as its true home land and protector on the sole ground of language then this would cut at the very root of the national idea. It follows from the acceptance of the doctrine of the home land that the home land itself should be demarcated with care and it has accordingly been proposed that in determining the boundaries between linguistic groups the village should be taken as the unit. In border villages generally the population is largely mixed. If on the basis of the majority belonging to one language group, a village is separated from the administrative unit to which it is now attached, then it follows that special provisions will have to be made to see that the language composition of such a village does not change at any future time. This is impossible in what is likely to be dynamic economy. The idea that all people who speak the same language and constitute a majority, whether in a village or a taluk, should be attached to their home land will do immense harm to our national growth and must therefore be rejected unequivocally. The allegations that Census returns in the border areas have been tampered with illustrate the dangerous possibilities inherent in this idea. The homeland concept must also deepen majority and minority consciousness and thereby aggravate the minority consciousness and thereby aggravate the minority problem. The constitution of India guarantees common citizenship to all Indian people. There can therefore be only one nationality in India and the idea of majority and minority would seem to run counter to it. Unfortunately, in a number

of states discriminatory practices against people from other units seem to exist even at the present time. The homeland doctrine if encourages is bound to accentuate these trends. This is a problem of considerable importance ... [a balanced approach would appear to be] to repudiate the ‘homeland’ which negates one of the fundamental principles of the Indian constitution, namely equal opportunities and equal rights for all citizens throughout the length and breadth of the union (Government of India 1955: 44–46).

In fact, even before homeland states were created, the groups who had this demand began to apply methods by which their hegemony was established in the designated territory. These methods included ethnic cleansing of two types: one, by ousting a section of people by branding them as outsiders, people of non-indigenous origin, foreign nationals, refugees; and two, by committing genocides, thereby frightening minority groups to leaving the area. Thus, there was the Shiv Sena movement in Maharashtra; Foreign National movement in Assam; anti-outsider riots in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Manipur; anti-refugee movement in Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura; and the anti-Kuki movements of the Nagas in Nagaland and Manipur. In the proposed Bodoland area, there were systematic attempts to intimidate, generate conflict situation and expel minority groups from the area with the aim to occupy their territories, grab land resources and build majority for the Bodos. In similar attempts, the Nagas tried to get rid of the Kukis, Dimasas, Karbis and Nepalis from their area. Both in Bodoland and Nagaland, armed underground outfits were used to free the respective territories of all minority groups to not only build the political hegemony of the dominant group, but also to deny the minorities of their legitimate rights, grab their land and even expel them from the area. This happened throughout the 1990s during the Bodoland and Greater Nagaland movements. In October 2008, there was again a spurt in such movements in the Bodoland area and armed underground activists were unleashed on unarmed minorities which forced the latter to leave the territory and migrate to other areas. Unfortunately, these minorities are ignored in the negotiated settlements even by the Indian state. Conclusion The post-colonial Indian polity had been a site of acrimonious contestations. While the romantic nationalists imagined it as one

‘India’, subnationalists wanted a piece of this territory as their exclusive hegemony. This contest between idealistic nationalists and aggressive subnationalists threatened to tear apart the polity — a situation seen by an American political scientist as ‘the dangerous decades’ (Selig 1960). The reorganisation of the Indian provinces was a committed nationalist agenda. Hence the autonomy groups were impatient to see its implementation. A slight postponement by the centre resulted in upheaval as was evident in the Andhra state movement led by Pottu Sitaramalu. The SRC was formed with the objective of delineating potential areas which could be converted into autonomous federal units. The principle of reorganisation of states as laid down in the Motilal Nehru Committee was the principle of linguistic provinces. Following its recommendation, a series of new states were created conforming to traditional linguistic regions (Brass: 1990: 169). However, when Assam wanted to be a unilingual province, it was considered ‘chauvinistic’ (Government of India 1955). Assam did not actually demand reorganisation on the basis of linguistic principle and wanted a composite province whose language would be Assamese. However, this created a problem. Composite culture did not go with unilingualism as far as the SRC was concerned. Marathas could have Maharashtra, Gujratis could have Gujarat, Tamils could have

Tamil Nadu and so on. However, Khasis could not have a Khasi state only because this community was too small. Same was the case with other small tribal groups of not just north-east India but other areas as well. On these contradictory policies, Paul Brass rationalised: ‘Moreover in the prolonged process, the practice of Indian state a coherent and consistent form somewhat different from the ideology proclaimed by its leaders. Many Indian leaders proclaimed their goals after independence to be the establishment of a strong state to which all the diverse peoples of India would transfer their primary loyalties and submerge their cultural difference in a homogenous nationalism. Others, somewhat more attuned to the realities of India’s diverse cultural differences, thought a ‘composite’ nationalism would emerge combining aspects from the cultures of the various major religious, regional, linguistic and tribal peoples’ (Brass 1990: 171). But why did the onus of carrying the light composite nationalism fall on the small and weak tribes? Demographic strength and formation of powerful elite in major nationalities ensured that decisions went in their favour. Since the small groups had neither, many north-eastern tribes subsequently adopted violence as a means to be heard and achieve similar results. A number of them succeeded too.

developed

The SRC report actually was not a sacred text. It was violated many times, at least in north-east India. This was because the formation of SRC was a contingent requirement. It did not automatically follow the nationalist commitment of the colonial period to the post-colonial period. The government would have liked to stabilise its new and concentrate on nation building — devoting more effort on security and maintaining the integrity of the nation. However, its the upheaval that followed the Vishalandhra movement compelled to government to divert attention from these goals. The SRC report has to be seen in this context. Other than peoples’ movement, there were other compulsions as well. ‘The problem of reorganisation has become emergent because India with her programme of large-scale planning has to think in terms of enduring political units. A direct and regrettable outcome of the present state of uncertainty is that here has been a general reluctance to invest funds in dispute areas’ (Government of India 1955: 23). While many saw reorganisation as balkanisation of India, it was clear to the SRC that ‘the first essential objective of any scheme of reorganisation must be the unity and security of India ... the unity of India must be regarded as the prime factor in readjusting territories’ (ibid.: 31).

independence

As far as the rest of north-east India was concerned, the SRC

categorically rejected any idea of a small state which was economically

unviable. This was despite the fact that a number of tribal communities submitted representations for a separate state which they demanded should be carved out of then Assam. By this time, Nehru’s adherence to the idea of linguistic provinces was also shaken mainly by the violent turmoil that India witnessed over the demand for separate states following independence. He had experienced the parochialism that regionalists encouraged and wanted to halt its rise by creating a mind and multicultural society in the form of big states containing a number of linguistic communities in one political unit. Therefore, small states were ruled out. However, despite it, a new state of Nagaland was created in 1961 without any recommendation from the SRC or even any strong movement for it, and that too under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was followed by the creation of a number of such smaller states during the regime of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It became obvious that the SRC and its recommendation had become irrelevant for north-east India. These moves gave rise to a number of other demands including the one for creation of a Karbi Anglong state, Dimaraji (North Cachar state), Ahom state, Bodo state, Garo state, Kuki state, Hmar state, merger of

cosmopolitan

Naga areas in Manipur with the Naga areas of Nagaland, and so on. A point which should be noted is that they all insisted on a ‘homeland’ and not just another state. So for the Karbis, it was Karbi Anglong, for the Dimasas it was Dimaraji, for the Kukis it was Kukiland, for the Garos, Garoland and so on. The SRC was rendered irrelevant because states were now not seen as a linguistic area as in north-east India because almost every village was a different linguistic area. People saw states as ‘homelands’. Demands for states were thus not just an autonomous political existence but also demands for homeland and domain of hegemony. The principle of state reorganisation in north-east India has therefore experienced a shifting paradigm which has the potential of posing much serious concerns for the Indian state. The SRC, despite its avowed acceptance, was actually shifting away from the principle of linguistic province right from the beginning and it had made it clear that its priority was security and integrity of the nation. Though it still adhered to this principle for the rest of India, it totally rejected this principle as far as north-east India was concerned and did not concede any of the demands made by the people. While demand for a hill state was rejected as ‘separatist’, others were just brushed aside as ‘unviable’. Linguistic considerations were completely

ignored and people’s aspirations were banished. The irrelevance of the SRC was further confirmed by the fact that despite its objections, a number of states were subsequently created by the Government of India. The SRC had failed to see the pre-colonial roots of regions in north-east India where almost every cluster of villages was an independent polity. If linguistic principle was allowed here, there would be hundreds of states in this region alone. What these areas needed is the notion of autonomy to signify a continuance of cultural and political practices. The concept of hill state was a composite state where a large number of tribal groups agreed to come under. However, the SRC failed to see the spirit of this concept and rejected the idea. As it usually happens, rejection only strengthens the resolution. It created a subnationalist upsurge which the centre could not ignore. In the hurry, they created states which only involved redrawing, the political map but this did not satisfy the aspirations of autonomy of all the groups. In a strange irony, the tribals now wanted the application of a paradigm which was similar to the paradigm of linguistic provinces applied to the rest of India. If Bengal was a state of Bengalis and Tamil Nadu of the Tamils, then the Mizos of north-east India wanted a state of the Mizos too, and so on. The only difference was in terms of population viability as these groups did not match

the strength of those larger nationalities. The creation of Nagaland in 1963 gave the right encouragement to this idea. It was seen that the state was not just an autonomous area — it was a domain where a particular linguistic majority could hegemonise the polity, economy and society; It was a space for linguistic power play. Therefore the concept was named homeland. The shift from the concept of state to homeland in north-east India was not indigenous to this region. It was borrowed from the larger states of India. The only difference was that in north-east India, each language group was a miniscule group and could not form a viable basis for statehood. Hence it was seen as ‘negative’, ‘fissiparous’ and ‘dangerous’. It was self-contradictory. The SRC’s strong reaction to the concept of homeland was a counter to linguistic communalism that was spreading throughout India in the 1950s and 1960s. However, despite a correct perusal of the situation, the SRC could do nothing about the demand for a language-based state from big linguistic communities. What was was that the demand for language-based state was not really a demand for a linguistic province anymore as was outlined in socialist principles. Rather, it was a demand for a homeland of particular language group which was opposed to the dominance or permanent presence of other language groups in that territory. The sentiment was sometimes as conceptualised as ‘son of the soil’ 16 or ‘nativism’ (Gupta 1989). As the competition for scarce resources and employment grew stronger, such movements spread to new areas. Appropriation of such sentiments were never missed by failed politicians and ideologically bankrupt groups who started spearheading these movements. The recent developments however reflect another paradigm shift. At the all-India level, the linguistic principle has already come to a stage that it is almost abandoned obliquely. The Telangana, Vidharbha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bundelkhand and Harit Pradesh demands are reflective of this pattern where internal colonialism and development– backwardness are the major issues. Even the homeland concept is also no more an important consideration. There is a perhaps a new realisation that no single basis can inform reorganisation of states in the current stage of globalised India polity. An eclectic approach which will ensure — (a) nation state concerns, (b) administrative concerns (c) democracy concerns and (d) diversity concerns — would be the new paradigm for federal politics in a changing India.

composite

significant

Notes * I am grateful to Professor Suhas Palsikar, University of Pune, for his incisive critique and erudite comments on the draft of this chapter. The other comments came from the participants in the workshop on ‘Interrogating State Reorganisation’ which was organised at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I have tried to address them as far as practicable. 1. For a discussion, see Nag (2000). 2. Ibid. 3. ‘White Paper on Indian States’, 1950, para 147, cited in ibid.: 5. 4. Article 243 of the Constitution of India. For a discussion, see Austin (1966: 186–207). 5. Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, vol. II, Government of India, New London, 1930, para 38. 6. ‘Memorandum of Naga National Council to His Majesty’s Government and the Government of India’, 20 February 1946. 7. T. Sakhrie, General Secretary, Naga National Council, in a write-up on Naga homeland. 8. Dr Ram Subhag Singh in the Lok Sabha while debating on the Nagaland Statehood Bill, Proceedings of the Lok Sabha, vol XLIV, 1–12 August 1960, Government of India, Delhi. 9. Raghunath Singh in ibid. 10. C. K. Bhattacharjee in ibid. 11. ‘Memorandum Submitted to the Prime Minister of India’, New Delhi, ABSU, 22 October 1987. 12. Press Release by ABSU, Kokrajhar, 1987. 13. Ibid. 14. ‘Constitution of ABSU’, Kokrajhar, 1987, p. 2. 15. Ibid. 16. Myron Weiner (1988) saw the such demands as the practice of son of the soil theory as was in Assam while Dipankar Gupta (1989) saw such political practice as nativism as in Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

References Austin, G. 1966. The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation. Mumbai: Oxford University Press. Brecher, Michael. 1959. Nehru: A Political Biography. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Brass Paul. 1990. New Cambridge History of India: The Politics of India Since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chakladar, Snehamoy. 2004. Sub-regional Movement in India with Reference to Bodoland and Gorkhaland. Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi and Company.

Chaube, S. K. 1973. Hill Politics in North East India. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Gopal, S. 1947–1956. Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, vol. 2. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Government of India. 1955. Report of the State Reorganization Commission . Delhi: Government of India. Gupta, Dipankar. 1989. Nativism in a Metropolis: Shiv Sena in Bombay. Delhi: Manohar. Harrison, Selig. 1960. India: The Most Dangerous Decades. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kluyev, B. I. 1980. National and Language Problems in India. Delhi: Sterling. Nag, Sajal. 2000. Nationalism, Separatism and Secessionism. Delhi: Rawat. ———. 2008. ‘Changing Configuration, Shifting Modes: Construction of Naga Identity in Colonial and Post-colonial North East India’. Paper presented in a seminar on ‘Understanding North East India’, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, January. Rao, V. V. 1976. A Century of Tribal Politics in North East India 1874–1974 . Delhi: S. Chand and Co. Weiner, Myron. 1978. Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

11 Assam through the Prism of Reorganisation Experience Ivy Dhar The State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) created separate linguistic states of India. However, in the process of executing the plan, it sharpened dormant ethnic identities. The tribes, residing in the hills areas of north-east India, thought that the reorganisation criterion applied to other states of India could be also applied for the division of Assam. The ethnic aspiration of tribals came forth during the implementation of the reorganisation plan, though at that time, their demand did not have a strong linguistic base. Conflict arose between ethnic majority and minorities or tribals and the issue of state reorganisation became much larger than just territorial division —it assumed the image of ethnic identity representation. This chapter examines the reorganisation experience of Assam. Debates on reorganisation have been going on since the 1950s but it was finally implemented in the 1970s. From holding the North-east frontier region within the territorial boundary of Assam since colonial annexation to the culmination of the Federal Plan (1972) when Assam was divided into different north-east states, the journey has passed through several rough patches. The chapter begins with a discussion on the approach towards the frontier areas of Assam in the colonial and post-colonial period. Being a border state, Assam has been treated differently in comparison to other states. When the rest of India had the privilege of expressing their preference for reorganisation, no such preferences were encouraged in this region, regardless of its character. It may be argued that the pressures of linguistic integration of Assamese and tribal population, in order to keep them together, had eventually prepared Assam for reorganisation. Even after Assam gave away most of its tribal land, reorganisation remained a debatable issue and there have been recurring demands for adjustment of territorial boundary corresponding to fulfilment of ethnic identities.

multilingual

Assam

through the Prism of Reorganisation Experiencem

Reorganisation is not a post-colonial experience for Assam. It has been experimented long before. The British had receded and expanded its territorial boundary several times to suit their administrative and imperial interests. The adjoining hill areas1 and parts of East Bengal2 were included within the administrative unit of Assam with the possible interest of maximising revenue extraction and of colonial jurisdiction over the surrounding areas of Assam. After independence, the hills remained within Assam as recommended by the Bordoloi Sub-committee (1947).3 The centre did not want to separate the hills, explaining that border states like Assam needed to be resourceful and stable and if it was divided into smaller units, there could be a threat of de-stabilisation. The argument for smaller and more homogenous administrative units of Indian provinces which was first proposed in the Montague-Chelmsford Report (1918) was not envisioned for Assam. The idealism of integration and needs of stability together went against taking any decision for territorial divisions. The SRC also adopted similar views; it proposed that Assam its multiracial, multilingual and multiethnic character. The SRC’s stand on Assam led to a debate between the hill people and the plains Assamese; the hills were dissatisfied with the SRC of territorial unity of hills and plains, while the plains Assamese strongly favoured it. But there was hardly any recommendation by the Commission on how to maintain the unity with such broad ethnic differences between the hills and the plains. The Assamese middle class which at that time were much more articulate and organised in comparison to tribals, took upon itself the task of integrating ethnic groups. It had been propagating the idea of standardising the Assamese language as the common language for Assam. Fundamentally, a link language between the diverse language groups was needed so that the idea of integration holds strong. Within a span of a decade of the Indian states reorganisation, Assam formulated its language policy declaring Assamese as the state official language (1960). The timing was not appropriate as the reorganisation issue was still fresh in the minds of the hill people. Pushing for a purposeful integration led to further tensions and as a result, the hill tribes strongly demanded separation of hill areas of north-east India from Assam. The British system of keeping the hills and the plains intact through a policy of non-interference could not provide an example to post-independence Assam. The measures for integration were perceived

convenience expansion

administrative maintains proposition

m IvyDhar

as interference because the tribals valued their independence from the plains. Consequently, the central government had to bring up the reorganisation plan for Assam, which was deliberately avoided earlier. Before a discussion on the reorganisation debate, the policy for the north-east frontier area is briefly discussed. This will help to understand the complexity of the situation in Assam and why there was a stress on integration. Colonial and Post-colonial Policy for the Frontier: Transforming from the Philosophy of Alienation to Integration Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the British had completed the annexation of the hill tracts located between Bengal and Burma, surrounding the areas of Assam. They eventually called the region as ‘North East Frontier’ and were content to administer the frontier region more as a territorial appendage rather than an integral unit (Bhaumik 1998: 310). In their dealings with the so-called frontier peoples of north-east India, they did not exert pressure upon them to adopt colonial administrative practices. Unlike the plain areas of Assam, the colonial administration let the frontier function under very loose administrative control. It did not even allow the plains to meddle with the hill areas and practiced a policy of segregating the hills and plains people. The Inner Line Regulation passed in 1873 established a virtual boundary along the foothills, and then under the Government of India Act of 1935, the hills were placed either under excluded4 areas (Naga hills, Lushai hills, North Cachar hills and North East Frontier Agency) or partially excluded areas (Garo hills, Mikir hills and Khasi-Jaintia hills).

administrative

The excluded areas had exclusive tribal population while the

partially excluded areas had mixed populations, both tribal and non-tribal.

Both the areas were excluded from being part of provincial and federal legislatures and so they did not experience democratically elected institutions. It was supposed that the tribals remained so isolated that it is unnecessary to engage them in the complicated concept of modern governance. The concerned provincial governors were given the responsibility to look after the day-to-day administration of these areas. In this way, the people of the north-east, except the plain areas of Assam, felt only an indirect impact of colonial domination.

The British wanted to keep the tribal at a distance from the growing Indian nationalist movement. Lord Hardinge, the Governor General, expressing his opinion on the frontier areas said that ‘we consider our future policy should be one of loose political control, having as its object the minimum of interference. To abstain from any line of action or inaction as the case may be, this may tend to inculcate in their minds any undue sense of independence’ (Hussain 1993: 352–53). Consequently, the political status of the hills and the

administration of the hill people remained vague. They were neither considered

independent nor were brought under an integral administration. The colonial administration established only a superficial link between mainland India, the Brahmaputra plains and hills of the north-east by stretching the name of British India up to the frontier while at the same time acting as barrier that prevented any socio-cultural and political interactions beyond the Brahmaputa valley. As a result, no common ideology could develop between the Brahmaputra valley and its surrounding hill areas. The British had adopted a policy of ‘alienation’ to keep out of any trouble between ethnic communities in the region. There are many such examples, when tensions over land rights arose between the immigrant Muslims and the Assamese, the British administration brought up the ‘line system’5 to segregate areas for indigenous and immigrants settlements. While crafting the post-colonial state of India, the nationalist did not want to keep any residue of alienation in the tribal areas. They felt that their foremost task in the north-east was to integrate the hills, both with the heartland of Assam— the Brahmaputra valley —and the Indian mainland. This was not a matter of territorial rather, there was a strong need for psychological integration. The task was not easy. Both Ambedkar and Nehru acknowledged the glaring distinction between the mainstream and tribal societies. While extending constitutional measures to the north-east, it was necessary to undertake certain protective measures. The centre was advocating views as ‘we should avoid introducing too many outsiders into the tribal territory’ although ‘some technical personnel from outside may be needed in the beginning of their development’. 6 By the proclamation in the First Schedule of the Constitution of India, the north-east region was integrated as a united part of the territory of Assam. Such a step was preceded by a planned study made by the Bordoloi Committee so that all political, territorial and administrative adjustments made

leadership

unification;

within the Indian union do not fall short of people’s aspiration. The hills were not to be excluded. However at the same time, it was necessary to ensure that their affairs were not much interfered by the plains people. The Bordoloi Sub-committee co-opted two members from each of the hill districts of Assam but no member was nominated from the Sadiya, Balipara, Lakhimpur and Tirap frontier tracts. The members of the committee toured the hill areas to find out the viewpoints of various tribes and how they wanted to be represented in the Indian union. The hill leaders submitted petitions enlisting their demands on economic, political, administrative, cultural and educational matters. After studying their views thoroughly, the Bordoloi submitted its report where it argued that ‘all the tribes of the province other than Assam, whether living in the plains or in the partially excluded tracts, should as a whole be treated as minority’ (Singh 2004: 172). It recommended for declaring the hills as scheduled areas without making any alteration in the territorial combination of hills and plains of Assam. The Sixth Schedule was finally taken up which made all the hill districts of Assam autonomous with their respective district councils. This Schedule did not include the plains tribe areas of Assam, perhaps because the committee thought that plains tribal were assimilated with the Assamese community and drawing a line of distinction would reverse the process.

Subcommittee

Analogous to the background, which was uneven, Assam and the

adjoining hill areas remained a single political unit. The national ethos was dominated by the need for integration of the hill areas. Jawaharlal Nehru lamented that the struggle for independence by millions of Indian people did not extend to the tribal areas, chiefly the frontier areas. The result was while the rest of the India was psychologically prepared for changes in India, the frontiers were not prepared; rather they were prepared to go the other way by the British officers (Singh n.d.: 18). The hills evolved from the colonial policy of separate to the post-colonial policy of dual administration. Development and law and order were subjects of the Indian state while autonomy was given to the tribals to make their own laws on management of land, forests, customs and traditions under the administration of councils. The plan was accepted only half-heartedly by the hills they desired for being an enclave as in the past. The Nagas had already demanded full statehood, and some tribes began questioning why it was necessary to integrate with Assam in order to integrate with India.

political experienced

administration

district

SRC's Rationale of Retaining Assam as a Single State The SRC was constituted for developing a federal plan in order to preserve the homogeneity of Indian provinces, facilitate the process, maintain the stability of the regions and also protect the national interests. The SRC argued that forming of linguistic states could bring a national homogeneity because linguistic states ‘is the only national basis for restructuring the states as it reflects the social and cultural pattern in well-defined regions of the country’ (Barpujari 1998: 3). This was also strengthened by the fact that there has been a phenomenal development of regional languages in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The idea of linguistic redistribution of states has been put forward by the Indian National Congress (INC), in its various sessions since 1905. In its Nagpur Session in 1920, the Congress recommended that ‘time has come for the redistribution of provinces on linguistic basis’ (ibid.: 1). However, while many state legislatures supported the implementation of the SRC’s linguistic reorganisation plan, the Legislative Assembly of Assam raised its voice against the implementation of the plan in the north-east. The experience in the north-east was different on the language issue. While for the rest of India it acted as a cementing force, here it was the other way. Bishnu Ram Medhi, the Chief Minister of Assam (1950–1957), stated that:

integration

in any case, we do not favour reorganisation of states on the basis of language alone. There are so many dialects prevalent among the hills that if linguistic basis were pursued to its logical conclusion, every range in the hills would have to be framed into a separate state. Once the claim for language as the criteria for reorganisation of state is conceded it would be difficult to resist the force of disintegration, particularly in a state like Assam which it is feared would fall into pieces (Goswami 1997: 44).

In March 1955, the Asom Sahitya Sabha (ASS)7 decided to send a delegation to the SRC. It placed a memorandum 8 stating that the division of Assam, based on language criterion, was unnecessary. It would be rather more appropriate if some of Assam’s neighbouring areas, which were historically a part of it, should be again merged Civil societies in Assam have a phenomenal strength of public support as they have played a historical role from preparing peasant

political

together.

voices against colonial laws to giving shape to the freedom movement. The people of the Brahmaputra plains and specifically the ethnic Assamese supported the opinion of its leaders. It was being questioned that if the colonial rulers could manage to administer Assam as a single political unit, then why there was a need for reorganisation which would rather be a reversal to the process of integration? Whether is it not true that hill areas were better represented than in colonial rule with adequate safeguards being provided under the Sixth Schedule, which vested them with legislative powers that was denied by the colonial government? Legislative rights were only a partial fulfilment— the hills wanted a fair chance of representation that was still being denied to them. Williamson Sangma of the Eastern India Tribal Union (EITU) wrote to the SRC in 1954 that there had been no political, social and cultural ties between the people of the plains and the hills. Apart from endeavours made by the Assamese to impose their language and culture on the hillmen, they were trying to dominate the hills. There was a large gap between the plains and hillmen with regard to economic development, representation in legislature and in public service with huge share of it being accrued by the Assamese (Barpujari 1998: 14). There were demands pouring in for the formation of separate

states and the combinations of such proposals were not necessarily based on linguistic criterion. Proposals were made for the formation of Kamtapur state consisting of Goalpara, Garo Hills, Coochbehar Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. Another alternative demand was put forward for the constitution of a Purbanchal state comprising Cachar, Tripura, the Mizo hills, the Naga hills and North Eastern Frontier Agency (NEFA). Along with the hills, the Barak valley that largely had Bengali residents also demanded territorial separation from Assam. The authority of Assamese leadership was shrinking as new leadership emerged from other ethnic groups. The SRC did not favour any demand for the division of the state or the formation of separate states for the hills because such demands had little linguistic manifestation. It maintained its earlier position that the territorial division shall not accrue much benefit. It would rather add to the cost of administration. Apart from the factor of cost, coordination of policies between India, Assam and the hill areas and also coordination between the hill districts themselves will become more difficult. The hill districts of Assam were land-locked and so

it would not be a suitable strategy to separate them from the plains. The commission was making a careful attempt to keep border states like Assam resourceful rather than dividing them into smaller units. The state of Assam, following the State Reorganisation Act of 1956, did not undergo any change, and this had many reactions. The members of the Assam Legislative Assembly had mixed

response. Hareshwar Das, member from Goalpara district, said that ‘language no doubt plays an important role, but the main consideration should be promotion of unity, security and prosperity of India

as a whole’. Moinul Haque Chaudhary pointed out that ‘the best solution was to have Hindi as the lingua franca and local languages to be used in transacting court, business and in primary and schools’. However, Ranendra Mohan Das felt that ‘Assamisation policy followed by the Assam government after independence greatly disturbed the other linguistic minorities living in Assam’ (Goswami 1997: 44). Minority organisations like the Assam Provincial Jamait-Ulemar did not support the demand that Assam should be reorganised on linguistic basis. Many were worried that the issue of the implementation of official language in Assam was still not resolved. The SRC may have given various reasons to keep Assam intact but gave no solution on how the various hill districts of Assam would communicate without a consesus on a common language. The language question in Assam remained a controversy as ethnic groups were not satisfied without any solution for dealing with the diverse language issue. The Asom Sahitya Sabha was however satisfied with the stand of the commission. The reorganisation experience of India had definitely made a phenomenal effect and opened the Pandora box for north-east India and Assam. The linguistic determination of Indian states gave hope to Assamese leaders for pursuing integration under the banner of ‘Greater Assam’. The Assamese leadership, which had categorically rejected linguistic reorganisation, had otherwise thought that language could be instrumental in bringing political and cultural unity. They felt insecure of tribal aspirations that were gradually coming to the forefront and hence, securing Assamese as the official language of Assam was assumed necessary. The tribal communities were uncomfortable with the way Assam sought to maintain its unity. Consequently, conflict among the ethnic leaders on the issue of representation in ‘Greater Assam’ was quite evident.

secondary

Retreat from 'Greater Assam': Hills Moving towards Political Disintegration in the 1960s and 1970s The tribal leaders expressed anxiety over the predominance of Assamese language in the region and started to assess future limitation in comparison to their Assamese counterparts. In the 1960s, areas dominated by tribal or linguistic minority had strongly protested and showed resentment against the imposition of Assamese language, and sometimes the resentment was directed towards the Assamese The hills united under the All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC) to challenge the ethnic Assamese leadership. During that period, tribal dissent was primarily based on the language issue, though consciousness of language may not have surfaced proportionately across all tribes. They had a common fear of getting dominated by the plains people and becoming culturally subservient to an advanced language group. Some had said, ‘as long as tribals remained with Assam their destiny lay in the hands of the Assamese’ (Barpujari 1998: 19). The state leadership failed to pacify the tribal concerns and supported the one-sided language policy.

community.

Nilmoni Phukan, ex-MLA, had stated that:

all the languages of different communities and their culture will be absorbed in Assamese culture. I speak with rather authority in this regarding the mind of the people that this state government cannot nourish any other language in the province. When all state affairs will be conducted in Assamese, it will stand in good stead for hill people to transact their business in Assamese with their Assamese brethren.9

matter

The hills consistently protested against the state government’s language policy and accused it as a measure to push for ‘Assamisation' of hill people. Their belief was made stronger by examples of hostile attitude and crippling policy towards the District Councils and rapid introduction of the Assamese language in schools and district administration. The hill people saw the Assamese acting through state administration as the ruling group that treated the tribes as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ (Goswami 1997: 36). Challenging the use of Assamese language in the NEFA areas, Hindi was being in schools. Despite several efforts like delegations being sent by the ASS to convince the tribal leaders for acceptance of Assamese as the official language, there was no success.

introduced

The Pataskar Commission (1966) report brought more pain to hill people. The report referred to the hill districts as a ‘series of economic islands’ joined only by the plains. It concluded that the hills are on the plains for their development and the prospects of both will depend largely on interchange. But looking at the gap created between the hills and plains due to neglect and isolation of the hills, integration was hardly possible.10 The hill tribes began questioning the validity of the Sixth Schedule, of the Indian Constitution. The exclusive rights of hillsmen, as claimed in Sixth Schedule had no weight because their every possibility of development depended on the plains. The suspicion of hills of being dominated by plains grew large and the Assamese leadership thought that the success of of language could be once again applied to pacify the hills. The Executive Committee of the Asom Sahitya Sabha put forward a proposal (September 1967) that Assamese should be introduced as the medium of instruction in two Universities of Assam— the Gauhati University and Dibrugarh University— and measures should be taken for the publication of books and other literary materials in Assamese. This time, the hills were not at all convinced by the argument that it was not a move to hurt the sentiments of any ethnic section, and was rather a way to develop Assamese as the common and link language. The atmosphere in the north-east region was charged with tensions and controversies. The APHLC demanded strongly for hill states. The hills finally received a sign of relief when the much-awaited political commitment by the central government for the territorial division of Assam was announced.

dependent

centralisation

The centre proposed a ‘Federal Plan’ for the formation and

administration of north-eastern states on 13 January 1967. The political leadership as well as civil society organisations of Assam protested that

such a proposal was impractical and would lead to further tendencies of dissent; that the reconstitution of Assam would be against its and cultural development. The Asom Sahitya Sabha observed a day on 11 February 1967 disapproving the formation of hill states. The Sabha sent a memorandum to the central government reiterating its humble request for giving up the Federal Plan and resolving the issues of hill people through constitutional measures. It that if the hill people were not satisfied with the content of the Sixth Schedule, there could be further amendments incorporated in the Schedule. The people of the Autonomous Districts could be given wider scope for social, economic and political development

historical protest various recommended

whereas division of Assam would pose a threat to India’s national security and even break the emotional integration of the people. The Assamese leaders widely protested that ‘it was not mere reorganisation or division of Assam but destruction of Assam, and termed it as undemocratic and unconstitutional’ (Raatan 2004: 36–37). The Government of India however acted in favour of the APHLC and five states and two Union Territories were carved out of Assam. The Naga Hill District had already been separated from the state of Assam in 1963 and it was made a full-fledged state. The Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills were separated from Assam and formed into the state of Meghalaya (1972). The NEFA, now known as Arunachal Pradesh, earned the status of Union Territory. Mizoram became a Union and states of Tripura and Manipur were also carved out. All the newly-formed states and union territories including Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunchal Pradesh were placed under the North Eastern Council (NEC) in August 1972. The discussion above is not as simple as to assume that the for Assamese language was the only determining factor in the reorganisation of Assam. However, pushing for language integration was the breaking point of the pressure that was building up in the hills. The hill state movement gained impetus under the leadership of APHLC; the party had drawn huge support from the hill people in the general election of 1962 and 1967. The involvement of APHLC in the politics of Assam, which until the 1950s was mostly by the Congress, was a very strong destabilising force for the idea of ‘Greater Assam’. The hill party leaders desired to get positions of power, which was held largely by the Assam Pradesh Congress, in undivided Assam. The extremist activities gaining momentum in Mizoram and Nagaland districts were watersheds that changed forever the attitude of the people and the the centre towards Assam. Militant battle waged for sovereignty of Mizoram and Nagaland had persuaded the centre to carve a policy for satisfying the aspiration of the hill people. Separate statehood to the hills would divert the attention of the people as they would get involved in fulfilling their dreams of a new state.

Territory

campaign

dominated

Fernandes had rightly pointed that control of resource is a very

crucial factor for conflicts in a region. As there are unequal power

relations between tribal and non-tribal communities or between various tribal communities, they struggle to control the limited resources. Land or any basic sustainability resource lay in the crux of these

struggles although such struggles appear as cultural conflict (Fernandes 2005: 90). Their struggles imitate one another and it is often seen that ethnic consciousness among smaller communities emerges due to the reduced distances with the dominant communities, in terms of both socio-cultural and economic space. The hills tribes of Assam, who were facing land alienation since colonial times, did not wish to fall again into the trap where non-tribals could be in a position to subordinate them. The imposition of Assamese language would make passage for such control. The reorganisation of Assam and fulfilling demands of hill tribes had repercussions among the plains tribal. The birth of the Plains Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) in 1967 was in fact a response to the reorganisation of the state. The emergence of hill states emboldened the Bodos to strongly assert their demand for statehood. The Bodos argued that they were numerically stronger than the Nagas, Mizos, Khasis and Garos, and so ‘if they (hill areas) can be a separate state, why not us (Bodos)’ (Chanda 1989). It also alarmed the Assamese leadership to harden its stand and try to keep hold on the remaining parts of Assam. The Plains–Tribal Dissent in Post-reorganisation Phase The PTCA and the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) 11 emerged as the mouthpiece for plains tribal. Numerically, the Bodos are the largest plains tribe and so the plains tribal leadership was almost of this tribe. The Bodos were politically well-equipped to lead because they resided largely in the Brahmaputra valley and had been a witness to the politics of the valley. The PTCA the parliamentary elections of 1967 and bye-election of 1968 from Kokrajhar district of Assam. The Bodos were also involved and influenced by civil society organisations like Asom Sahitya Sabha and they too formed a similar organisation, the Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS). 12 The BSS, a literary-cultural organisation of Bodo language through a peaceful movement in 1968, pressurised for the of Bodo language as a medium of instruction up to secondary stage of education in Bodo-populated areas. The government conceded this demand though earlier, this provision was only available up to primary education.

representational therefore boycotted

community, introduction

In the late 1960s, and more prominently after the reorganisation in

1970s, the rift with the Assamese identity had shifted from hill tribes

to plains tribe. The situation worsened when the state government agreed to execute the demands raised by the ASS for introduction of Assamese as the medium of instruction in the two universities of Assam in 1972. Immediately after this declaration, the Assam Minorities Rights Commission (ALMRC) was set up. Charan Narzary, the PTCA General Secretary, became its Vice-President. The ALMRC, with the full support from the PTCA, fought in favour of retention of English as the medium of instruction in the universities of Assam. The political atmosphere was already very tense because of the introduction of North East Reorganisation Act in 1972, and the medium of instruction issue gave a further fillip to the fears of the plains tribal. Though voices against the arbitrary proposal echoed from the hill areas of north-east India, these areas however now moved on with their new political units whereas the plains tribal were culturally left all alone. However, they were not all alone. The only two hill districts— Mikir and North Cachar Hills— that remained in the territorial unit of Assam were also not happy about the implementation of Assamese as the sole medium of instruction in the two universities. They held a conference on 18 February 1973 and submitted a memorandum to the then prime minister complaining that ‘the Assamese junta are determined to “Assameise” them by forcing Assamese upon them and wiping out their own language and culture which they cherish to develop’.13 These two hill districts had opposed the idea of a separate hill state when other hill areas were asking for separation. However now, they too felt insecure of their culture and identity in the territory of Assam. Opposition also came from the Misings tribes who wanted Mising language to be used in educational institutions. Language monopoly in educational institutions could cripple the tribal urge for development and so they responded by a movement for a separate state and separate language identity. The PTCA, with active support from the ABSU, started demanding for ‘Udayachal’ state in December 1973. Simultaneously, the BSS launched a Roman script for Bodo language movement and wanted to discontinue the use of Assamese script for the Bodo language (it did not have its own script). The state Congress, the Assamese press and the ASS were all disturbed by the double strategy of political for a separate state and the cultural movement. The script issue was resolved as the centre intervened to suggest Devnagari script for Bodo language, which was accepted by the BSS. The Bodo pressure group had successfully countered the Assamese pressure group by demanding for a separate status for Bodo language,

Linguistic

initiating

movement

away from the Assamese language identity. It had successfully the government to adopt the Bodo language as a medium of instruction, to accept it as a Modern Indian Language (MIL) at the higher secondary and graduate level and as the Official Language of Assam. The government found enough justification and also perhaps considered it a milder demand compared to the demand for a separate state. The Bodo language earned the status of Associate Official in 1984 for Bodo-dominated district of Kokrajhar and Udalguri sub-division of Darrang district. Eventually, Bodo language was adopted as the Associate Official Language of Assam. Another long-drawn battle by the BSS that finally came to an end was the inclusion of Bodo language (2003) in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. Fulfillment of few cultural demands did not diminish the risk of the division of Assam. The ABSU had been able to draw support from the Bodo community in their demand for a separate state. Public protests and slogans as ‘Divide Assam Fifty-fifty’ rose in high pitch in the 1980s. It created ethnic tensions in Assam, which became very violent with the emergence of Boro Security Force (BrSF), an extremist organisation. The Congress government in Assam, through the central negotiated for a settlement on issues of autonomy in Bodo Accord (1993). The Bodo Autonomous Council (BAC) was formed by this accord. Peace, as expected, still did not come after the signing of the accord. The Bodo leadership was worried about the superficial autonomy as various clauses of the accord indicated dependency on the state government. The extremist groups resorted to ethnic cleansing in and around those villages of Kokrajhar and Bongaigaon districts that were not included under the accord. The Bodos were brought to the negotiating table many times and eventually, the Bodoland Territorial Council or the BTC (2003) was formed. However, the non-Bodo tribes felt insecure because of the expansion of Bodo identity and feared that it would overshadow and marginalise them. They expressed their over the creation of the BTC. There was sharp reaction and protest among various other tribal groups demanding the same privilege. The Koch–Rajbonshis people, historically belonging to the same stock as the Bodos, now classed as Other Backward Caste (OBC), started building alliance with all non-Bodo communities who were opposed to the creation of the BTC. The Bodos however saw such demands as an encroachment of their political space that they had secured after a hard struggle.

pressurised Language

government,

dissatisfaction

The tribal organisations opposed the government concessions

being given to a particular tribal language group which had lobbied

for them and this they felt threatened other tribal minority language groups. There was continuous pressure on the state to accommodate demands put forward by different organisations led by the Deuri, Rabha, Mising, Karbi, Dimasa and Tiwa tribes of Assam. The illusion of a composite Assamese identity had already been broken; the demand for a separate identity from different tribal groups from the plains have challenged the compositeness of larger Bodo identity. The Bodo movement slowly left the other plains tribal behind, or it may be that others felt discomfort in associating with Bodo The Rabha movement demanded a separate Rabha Hasong (Rabhaland) autonomous state within Assam on the south bank extending from Jyoramukhi in Goalpara district to Rani in Kamrup, together with an autonomous district in Darrang on the north bank and autonomous councils in yet other four districts holding Rabha population. The experiment of the accord was also extended to other tribal settlements and its failure did not discourage the government from signing more such accords. The Rabhas, the Mishings and the Tiwas also got their respective autonomous councils. Assam’s population is varied in terms of language and other socio-cultural features. The diversity is a result of continuous Linguistic conflict in Assam is not just related to the number of language groups and their relative size but also the degree of and distinction among them. The relation of the Assamese with the plains tribal became very complex and controversial because of the unnecessary pressure of integration of plains tribal identity with Assamese identity. As the Bodo language gained recognition and stretched its influence over other plains tribal, the effect was almost the same. The expanding role of the Bodo intellectuals also put a to Assamese leadership in terms of their influence on the people, state and government. Ethnic problems and demands for further reorganisation had almost reached a saturating point. Resolving the issue by providing autonomy rights over cultural matters were seen a measure to restrict further political division of Assam.

likewise

identity.

migration. relation challenge

Linguistic Integration in Multilingual States The idea of integration for India was very significant at the time of independence and as the trouble spots in the country multiplied, the Indian ruling classes strongly asserted its need. Political culture sets precedent on how certain features are held more closely than others as integrative measures, even if it means relegating certain In the process of bringing integration across ethnic communities

interests.

of Assam, the Assamese middle class had overshadowed the presence of smaller nationalities of Assam and shrinked their scope for progress. It is highly unexpected that the Assamese middle class or any middle class would not retain their hegemony even if it led to further tensions in the region. The rule of the ethnic majority is also established by the democractic process. The electorate largely composes of this section and hence, political leaders try to appease them by encouraging not only the linguistic and cultural interests of the majority group but also by distributing scarce resources among them. Since 1956, as scholars explain, there was a growing sentiment across India of creating cultural linguistic homogenity.14 There was however a complete silence on how the cultural linguistic differences among the ethnic minority tribal and linguistic majority population could be handled. It was assumed that the Sixth Schedule would take care of such intricacies, as it assures scope of maintaining customs and traditions of different tribes. But it was very difficult to execute such co-ordination outside the Sixth Schedule areas, with respect to matters of state. The situation was worse for the plains tribe because they were not even given appropriate protection as Schedule Tribes. The only plan that the state leaders could think of was to make Assamese as the state language in order to bridge the cultural differences. Assertion of Assamese language as a measure for integration restrained the tribal population in many ways and they saw no space within the political boundary of Assam. The insecurity was not just brewing among the tribal populace; other linguistic minorities of the state were also apprehensive of their space. The Bengali of Cachar, which had no ethnic resemblance to tribals, had joined the protest with them and fought against the propagation of Assamese as the state language. Eventually they started demanding Bengali as the second official language of the state in Bengali-dominated Cachar district of Assam. The Assam government had to consider such The government tried to address the language issue between the Assamese and other linguistic minorities of the state. However, its approach differed according to the exigencies of time. In a limited political and economic space, interest groups may seek to strengthen their claims by evoking ethnic relations among its and creating tensions. The state, as an arbiter, has an important role to play by proceeding with thoughtful actions that would lead to the empowerment of the society. Since there is a natural connection between the language spoken by a social group and their all democratic states therefore must try to develop its wide

especially

population demands.

members

empowerment,

variety of languages. It is argued that by language ‘their accent, their vocabulary, their discourse patterns, speakers identify themselves and are identified as members of this or that speech and discourse. From this membership, they draw personal strength and pride, as well as a sense of social importance and historical continuity from using the same language as the group they belong to’.15 There are many in Assam whose mother tongues are different from the official language. However, that should not be a barrier to the development of such groups.

communities

The Assam Official Language Act (1960) was criticised as being

a barrier to the advancement of the linguistic minorities. Provided the fact that the constitution allows for provision of drawing separate language policy for states, the main issue of dispute in Assam was how a balance could be reached between officially adopted regional language and the other minority languages. It was necessary to the language of administration with space for using minority language in educational institutions as the medium of instruction. All citizens have the right to primary education in their native tongue. In democratic states, education is itself a preparation for citizenship. After the reorganisation of the states in 1956, Articles 350 A and 350 B were incorporated in the constitution which declares that it shall be the endeavour of every state and local authority within the state to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups.16 Several rounds of discussion were held among the state and national representatives of the government on such issues. The meeting of Chief Ministers of the States and Central Ministers, held on 10, 11 and 12, August 1961, discussed the various dimension of linguistic integrity along with safeguards of the diversity of languages and dialects of minor language groups. It reflected on how states can respect the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction at various stages of education, how links between different states and between different regions within states are to be strengthened and how multilingual states must proceed with the formulation and using of official language.17 Assam’s discriminatory policies, incorporated in the early post-independence decades of giving no space for minority language development, had to be changed in the later decades.

complement

Conclusion The nationalist leadership promised the tribal population of north-east India the benefits of maintaining autonomy and thereby tried gaining confidence of the tribal societies. It tried to evolve a sanctioned from the segmented society of India by installing the practice of representation in the new political order. The very idea of failed to develop as a democratic culture and rather, it became a subject of political estrangement. During the anti-colonial struggle, the regional leadership of Assam also grew simultaneously and tried to supplement the national leadership by drawing homogeneity across certain sections of the population. In the subsequent years of the regional elite could gather enough strength and support to establish language domination across smaller ethnic groups of Assam. The idea of cultural autonomy of tribals remained detached from the other complications of the increasing ethnic gap between tribals and non-tribals.

polity representation independence, The District Councils were constituted under the protective

provisions of the Sixth Schedule to provide solutions to tribal autonomy.

However, its dependence on the plains did not allow them much freedom. The tribal leaders started complaining of discrimination towards the hill areas and accussed the plains people as an impediment to their growth. The Assamese leadership tried to conceal such fissures by pushing for cultural integration. The ‘one state one language’ was viewed as Assamese chauvinist politics. Though of the hills was not possible in isolation, yet any attempt made to integrate them with the plains was seen with suspicion.

formula development

The implementation of linguistic reorganisations of Indian states

followed closely by the Official language Act of Assam gave a new dimension to language politics in the state. The ethnic groups found that there are sites where language could not only establish cultural autonomy but could act as a weapon for exerting power. The tribes were still in the nascent stage of development and hence, they learned to react. However, they could not act on their own. The decision to reorganise Assam, or rather north-east India, was unlike the reorganisation of states in many other parts of India. In other areas, the reorganisation plan evolved with sustained political mobilisation, whereas redrawing boundaries in the north-east was more a process (Barua 1990: 106). No tribes were consulted on the

top-down

territorial plan. The present problems between the tribes in several north-east states are a proof of such limitations. They were all put together without even knowing whether they can be together. The reorganisation experience of Assam may not have brought

much good to the ethnic groups that remained within the political territory of Assam. Yet this experience taught the regional leadership of not pushing their cultural interests for any political benefits. The state must definitely look into the matter on how cultural issues are addressed and it is better to address such issues thoughtfully. Cultural and linguistic diversities are features that cannot be avoided. Different groups live together as a consequence of historical events and human migrations; the development of diverse languages is critical for the preservation of cultural heritage and identity.

Notes 1. The Garo, Khasi-Jaintia, Naga and Lushai hills were formally included in Assam in 1874 when Assam was constituted as Chief Commissioner’s province. Therefore, the hill tribal areas were neither a part of India nor of Assam prior to the British colonisation of the region, though tribes had trade relations with the neighbouring Brahmaputra valley. The Nagas, the Mizos, the Khasis, the Garos, the Karbis and the Dimasa-Kachari tribes had their own small states and culture, and remained almost secluded due to their geographical isolation from the valley. Almost all the tribes settled in the region in the remotest past and are undoubtedly the original natives of Assam. Even in the non-tribal dominated Brahmaputra valley, the Bodo-Kachari tribes were the first natives of the valley in the real sense. See Hussain (1994: 279). 2. Sylhet district, which is presently in Bangladesh, was separated from Bengal and added to Assam in 1874. Between 1895 and 1898, the Chittagong hill were detached from Bengal and merged with Assam. In 1905, with the partition of Bengal, Assam was completely merged with East Bengal. In 1921, as Assam became a Governor’s province, East Bengal was again separated from Assam. However, Sylhet and Cachar remained within Assam till independence. Finally through referendum, Sylhet became part of East Pakistan in 1947. 3. An Advisory Committee on the tribal areas under the chairmanship of Sardar Vallabbhai Patel was set up. The Advisory Committee for further constituted a Sub-Commmittee under the chairmanship of Gopinath Bordoloi. It was popularly known as the Bordoloi Committee.

convenience

4. In the Government of India Act 1919, in continuation of the Scheduled Districts Act of 1874, the hill areas were designated as ‘backward areas’. The Simon Commission recommended the term ‘excluded’ instead of using the term ‘backward’. 5. In 1916, the Deputy Commissioner of Nowgong (Assam) suggested the ‘line system’. Specified areas were divided into immigrants line (where land would be allotted to immigrants only), mixed line (both indigenous and immigrants could settle) and Assamese Line (only indigenous people could settle). 6. Das discussed Ambedkar’s views on tribals in Assam, who unlike their counterparts in India, were not Hinduised, rather their culture was quite different from Hindus. The policy of avoiding complete assimilation was propagated in ‘Nehru–Elwin model’ of tribal development and welfare. See Das (2002: 73–74). 7. Asom Sahitya Sabha is a civil society organisation of yesteryears and today, it is a mouthpiece of the Assamese leadership. The Sabha was constituted in 1917 by like-minded Assamese intellectuals who wanted to change the face of Assam by giving priority to the language, literature and culture of Assam. In the Constitution of the Sabha, it declares itself as a non-political organisation but as it has been involved in the socioeconomic life of the people, it could not thoroughly disassociate itself from political matters of the state. 8. The demands placed in the memorandum were: (a) that no part of the state of Assam, as at present constituted, be taken away from it; (b) that the NEFA be forthwith amalgamated with Assam; (c) that Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling be transferred to the state of Assam, subject to the will of the people of these districts; (d) that the two part C states of Manipur and Tripura be merged with Assam, subject to the will of their people and with provisions for subvention from the Government of India; and (e) that the ill-conceived plans to separate states on this defence frontier like Purbanchal and Hill state be not countenanced (Goswami 1994: 43). 9. Assam Legislative Assembly Proceedings, Government of Assam, 1984, pp. 581–82. 10. Comments in Rao (1976). 11. The PTCA could be considered as the first political organisation of the Bodos formed under the chairmanship of Modoram Brahma. Although the PTCA was a party for plains tribal, nevertheless there was Bodo domination in the party. The ABSU was also formed in 1967 and it played a vital role in the political life of the Bodos later on. 12. The Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS), as known as Boroni Tunlai Aphat in Bodo language, was formed in 1952. It is said to have originated from the Bodo Literary Club founded by a handful of elites working in government in Dhubri in 1950 for the upliftment of Bodo language and literature.

offices

13. 14.

15. 16.

The BSS also follows the same fundamental tradition of the Club. Yet it concerns have extended to every aspects of social, cultural, economic as well as political life of the Bodo people. It has been an umbrella organisation for Bodo language groups, residing not only in Assam but also in other states like West Bengal, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, and country like Bangladesh and Nepal. A memorandum demanding a separate state comprising the Mikir and N. C. Hills and the contiguous tribal areas of Assam, submitted to the Prime Minister of India, 9 June 1973. Myron Weiner ideas of cultural linguistic homogenisation as state policy have been discussed. When states were reorganised along the linguistic lines, the regional language was used far more extensively. Chaklader (2004: 31). See Kramsch arguments in Mantero (2006: 26). The concept of minority languages exposes the vulnerability of every linguistic minority. Both the Indian and international law are based on a premise that majority languages can prosper along with minority Promotion and protection of minority languages is a matter of legal obligation. The constitutional scheme of promotion and protection of minority languages in India is apparently reasonable. However, a few critics consider it inadequate, a few fear ‘linguistic fascism’ and many feel frustrated from the many unresolved language controversies in India. See Tyagi (2003: 22). http://www.education.nic.in/cd50years/g/12/1N/121N0809.htm (accessed 2 May 2010).

languages.

17.

References Agarwal, K. S., ed. 1999. Dynamics of Identity and Inter-group relations in NorthEast India. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. All Party Hill Leaders Conference (APHLC). n. d. The Reorganisation of Assam: Federation Clean-cut or Separate State. Shillong: APHLC. Barooah, Nirode. 1992. ‘Nehru, Bordoloi and Assam’s Problem with Cabinet Mission Plan-II’, Mainstream, 30 (4): 23–28. Barpujari, H. K. 1998. North-East India: Problems, Policies and Prospects Since Independence. Delhi: Spectrum Publications. Barth, Fredrik. 1970. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Cultural Difference. London: George Allen and Unwin. Barua, Indrani. 1990. Pressure Groups in Assam. Delhi: Omsons Publications. Bhattacharjee, J. B. ed. 1988. Proceedings of North East India History Association: Ninth Session, Guwahati. Shillong: North East India History Association. Bhaumik, Subir. 1998. ‘North East India: The Evolution of a Post-Colonial Region’, in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of Indian Nation-State, pp. 310–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chaklader, Snehamey. 2004. Sub-regional Movement in India. Kolkatta: K. P. Bagchi and Company. Chanda, Arup. 1989. ‘Bodos on the War Path’, The Statesman, 15 April, Kolkata. Das, S. K. 2002. ‘Tribes as Other: A critique of the Political Anthropology of North-eastern States’, Anthropological Survey, 51 (1): 73–78. Dash, J. N. 1989. ‘Udayachal Movement in Assam: A Case of Socio-Political Identity for the Bodos’, The Indian Journal of Political Science , 50 (3): 335–42. Fernandes, Walter. 2005. ‘Reservations and Social Change: The Case of North East’, in Rewal-Lama and Stephanie Tawa (ed.), Electoral Reservations, Political Representation and Social Change in India , pp. 83–104. Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors. Goswami, Sandhya. 1997. Language Politics in Assam . Delhi: Ajanta Publications. Government of India. 1992. ‘Report of the Expert Committee on the Plains Tribes of Assam’, vol. 1, mimeograph. Delhi: Government of India. Hussain, Imdad. 1993. ‘Loose Political Control: Theory and Practice in the North East Frontier’, in David Reid Syiemlieh (ed.), Proceedings of the North-East India History Association: Fifteenth Session, Doimukh , pp. 346–59. Shillong: North East India History Association. Hussain, Monirul. 1994. ‘The Tribal Question in Assam: A Sociological ’, in Milton S. Sangma (ed.), Essays on North-East India, pp. 278–93. Delhi: Indus Publishing Company. Mantero, Miguel. 2006. Identity and Second Language Learning: Culture, Inquiry, and Dialogic Activity in Educational Context. North Carolina: Information Age Publication. Paul, M. C. 1989. Dimensions of Tribal Movements in India: A Study of Udayachal in Assam Valley. Delhi: Inter-India Publications. Phukan, Girin. ed. 2000. Political Dynamics of North-East India. Delhi: South Asian Publishers. Raatan, T. 2004. Enclyopaedia of North-East India . Delhi: Kalpaz Publications. Rao, V. Venkata. 1976. A Century of Tribal Politics in North-East India: 1874–1974. Delhi: S. Chand and Company. Shullai, Gilbert. 1994. North-Eastern India: From Union Jack to National Flag. Shillong: ICSSR. Singh, B. P. n. d. North-East India: Demography, Culture and Identity Crisis . Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Singh, Dr Chandrika. 2004. North-East India: Politics and Insurgency. Delhi: Manas Publications. Tyagi, Yogesh. 2003. ‘Some Legal Aspects of Minority Languages in India’, Social Scientist, 31 (5/6): 5–28.

Appraisal

About the Editors Asha Sarangi is Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her most recent publication is an edited volume, Language and Politics in India (2009). She has also published several articles in journals and edited volumes. Her primary areas of research include the political and cultural economy of development in modern India, identity and politics in South Asia and more specifically the politics of linguistic nationalism in modern India. Sudha Pai is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, and Rector, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She was also Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, Delhi. Her research interests include state politics in India, dalit politics, agrarian politics, globalisation and governance. She has authored many books, the most recent being Developmental State and the Dalit Question in Madhya Pradesh: Congress Response (2010).

Notes on Contributors Ivy Dhar is Assistant Professor at School of Development Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi (AUD). Prior to this, she was Junior Fellow with Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and also worked with Higher Education Department, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA). She was a project leader of a study on ‘Foreign Education Providers in India’, independently commissioned by British Council.She completed her PhD from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests include tribal development and politics, identity and inclusion, peace and conflict, environmental and resource politics. She focuses on cross-cutting issues of development in north-east India. Rita Kothari is Professor at Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. Her publications include Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English (2006) and The Burden of Refuge: Partition Experiences of the Sindhis of Gujarat (2009). An acclaimed translator from Gujarati and Sindhi, Kothari’s translations include The Stepchild: Angaliyat (2004), Speech and Silence: Literary Journeys by Gujarati Women (2006) and Unbordered Memories: Sindhi Stories of Partition (2009). She has also co-edited Decentring Translation Studies: India and Beyond and Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish (forthcoming). She is currently working on a manuscript on communities living on the Indo–Pak border in Kutch, Gujarat. Nivedita Mohanty is an eminent historian and a PhD from Heidelberg University. Her book entitled Oriya Nationalism: Quest for a United Orissa, 1866–1936 (1982), published originally as a part of the series on Indology by Heidelberg University, has earned wide acclaim as a seminal work. An enlarged version of the same book (Oriya Nationalism: Quest for a United Orissa, 1866–1956) was published in 2005. She has co-authored The Eloquent Silence (2006) and has worked on ‘The Impact of Depression of 1929 and the Growth of Socialism in Orissa’ while pursuing her PhD at IIT Kharagpur. As a senior research fellow of the Indian Council of Historical Research (1997–1999), she worked

on ‘Dhalbhum: A Symbol of Harmony between the Brahmanic and Tribal Traditions’, which gives an insight into the cultural heritage of Jharkhand. An independent researcher, she is recognised today as an authority on Regional Studies and a front-ranking scholar on the modern history of Orissa and Jharkhand. Sajal Nag is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Department of History, Assam University, Silchar. He is a well-known scholar on the politics of sub-nationalism and secessionism in South Asia. A Commonwealth Fellow (2004–2005) and Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge (2008), he is the author of books like Roots of Ethnic Conflict: Nationality Question in North East India (1991), Nationalism, Separatism and Secessionism (2000), Contesting Marginality: Ethnicity, Insurgency and Subnationalism in North East India (2002) and Pied Pipers in North East India: Bamboo Flowers, Rat Famine and the Politics of Philanthropy, 1881–2007 (2008). He is also considered an authority on the history and politics of north-east India, a troubled region of South Asia. Sudha Pai is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, and Rector, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She was also Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, Delhi. Her research interests include state politics in India, dalit politics, agrarian politics, globalisation and governance. She has authored many books, the most recent being Developmental State and the Dalit Question in Madhya Pradesh: Congress Response (2010). Ranabir Samaddar is Director of the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, and belongs to the School of Critical Thinking. He has pioneered along with others peace studies programmes in South Asia, and has worked extensively on issues of justice and rights in the context of conflicts in South Asia. The much-acclaimed The Politics of Dialogue (2004) was the culmination of his work on justice, rights and peace. His particular researches have been on migration and refugee studies, the theory and practices of dialogue, nationalism and statehood in South Asia, and new regimes of technological restructuring and labour control. He has authored a three-volume study of Indian nationalism —Whose Asia Is It Anyway?: Nation and the Region in South Asia (1996), The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from

postcolonial

Bangladesh to West Bengal (1999), and A Biography of the Indian Nation, 1947–1997 (2001). His recent political writings — The Materiality of Politics (2007) and the just published The Emergence of the Political Subject (2010) — have challenged some of the prevailing accounts of the birth of nationalism and the nation–state, and have brought to fore a new turn in critical post-colonial thinking. Nagindas Sanghavi has taught Political Science in various colleges of Mumbai between 1950 and 1981. He has contributed articles to various newspapers and magazines and has written several booklets dealing with constitution and political affairs in India. He has concentrated on the study of Gujarat and is the author of Gujarat: A Political Analysis (1996) and Gandhi: The Agony of Arrival (2006). He has also translated Rajmohan Gandhi’s book titled Patel: A Life (1994) into Gujarati. Asha Sarangi is Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her most recent publication is an edited volume, Language and Politics in India (2009). She has also published several articles in journals and edited volumes. Her primary areas of research include the political and cultural economy of development in modern India, identity and politics in South Asia and more specifically the politics of linguistic nationalism in modern India. K. Srinivasulu is Professor of Political Science at Osmania University, Hyderabad, and has been Visiting Fellow at University of Oxford and Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). His interests include political theory, agrarian and Dalit movements, and public policy. He is presently researching on ‘the Politics of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)’ and ‘State and Business Relations in India’. His forthcoming book is Karamchedu, Chunduru and Beyond: Dalit Movement in Andhra Pradesh. Usha Thakkar is Honorary Director of the Institute of Research on Gandhian Thought and Rural Development; Honorary Secretary of Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, Mumbai; and Vice-President of Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. She retired as Professor and Head, Department of Political Science, Shreemati Nathibai Damodar

Thackersey Women’s University, Mumbai. Her research areas include women’s studies, Gandhian studies and Indian politics. She has Women in Indian Society (2001) and Kautilya’s Arthashastra (1980), and co-edited Culture and Making of Identity in Contemporary India (2005), Politics in Maharashtra (1995), Zero Point Bombay: In and Around Horniman Circle (2008) and Women’s Studies Series (in Gujarati).

coauthored

Louise Tillin is Junior Research Fellow in Politics at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, and is due to join as Lecturer of Politics at the India Institute, King’s College London. Tharakeshwar V. B. is Associate Professor and Head at the of Translation Studies, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He has published extensively both in English and Kannada in the area of language politics, translation studies and on the question of nation in colonial and post-colonial contexts from an interdisciplinary perspective. He has handled a number of research projects funded by various agencies in these areas and has brought out three volumes of translation under the series ‘Classical Kannada Texts in English Translation’ from Kannada UniversityHampi, India. He has been the Associate Editor of the Journal of Karnataka Studies, and continues to be on its editorial board.

Department

Index aboriginal tribes 262 Adivasi Mahasabha 226 adivasi politics 222 adivasis 115, 151, 219, 225–29, 235,

242–44 agitational politics, demobilisation

of 120 Agra Presidency 50

agrarian radicalism 51 Akali movement 11 Akbar Hydari–Naga National Council

(NNC) Agreement 270 Akola Pact 149

Alam, Javed 204 Ali, Rehmat 54 Ali, Syed Fazl 10 All Bodo Students Union (ABSU)

272–73, 293–95 All Hills Tribal Leader’s Conference

267 All India Tribal Writers Forum 242

All Party Hill Leaders Conference

Andhra Pradesh 11, 15, 18, 21, 57, 76, 164, 170, 223, 254; demand for creation of 6, 37; establishment of States Reorganisation 55; formation of 51, 170, 172–74, 249, 258; language and regional identities 99; public education system 178; ‘visual’ capitalism 178

Commission

Andhra State Formation Bill 258

Anglo-Saxon culture 203 anti-colonial nationalism 190–91,

249; relation between Kannada nationalism and 192-96 anti-feudal peasant struggle 171

anti-Kuki movements 275 anti-Oriya campaign 218, 227 anti-outsider riots 275 anti-refugee movement 275 anti-reservation protests 117 anti-terrorist operations 63 anti-zamindari struggle 172

(APHLC) 267–68, 291–92 All Utkal Adivasi Congress 226

Article 131 of Constitution of India

Ambedkar, B. R.: Needs for Checks

Article 350A of Constitution of India

and Balances: Articles on Linguistic States 9; recommendation for division of larger states 9–10; Riddles of Hinduism 155; views on linguistic states 35, 38

238, 298 Article 350B of Constitution of India 298

American (USA) model of federalism

60-61 Amrutara Santana (Mohanty) 220 Anderson, Benedict 166, 177, 192,

216

Article 370 of Constitution of India

55 Article 371 of Constitution of India 61, 252 Arunachal Pradesh 268, 275, 292 Aryan language 136

199 Andhra Maha Sabha (AMS) 171

Asom Sahitya Sabha (ASS) 22, 287,

Andhra Mahasabha Boundary

Assam: Bordoloi Sub-committee

Committee 214

289, 291, 293 (1947) 283, 286; civil society

Interrogating Reorganisation of

organisations 291; colonial and post-colonial policy for the 284–86; ethnic cleansing 295; ethnic communities 285, 296; ethnic tensions 295; Federal Plan (1972) for division of 282, 291; Greater Assam 290–93; Inner Line Regulation policy 284; language monopoly in institutions 294; official language 267, 283, 289–90, 295, 298; plains–tribal dissent in post-reorganisation phase 293– 96; policy of ‘alienation’ 285; policy of dual administration 286; political disintegration in 1960s and 1970s 290–93; SRC’s rationale of retaining Assam as single state 287–89; territorial boundary 282–83

frontier

educational

Assam–Bengal Railway 51

Assamese–Bengal riots 56 Assamese script for Bodo language

294 Assam Hill Peoples Conference 268 Assam Linguistic Minorities Rights

Commission (ALMRC) 294 Assam Official Language Act (1960)

298 Assam Pradesh Congress 261, 292 Assam Provincial Jamait-Ulemar

States

Bengal: famine (1866) 50; partition of 50–51; Presidency 3, 50; separation of Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts 51 Besant, Annie 6

Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) 88 Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) 95–102,

151, 154; alliance with Shiv Sena 151–53, 156, 158; in Chhattisgarh 14; plans to create states between 1998–2000 108, 113; Ram Mandir campaign 119; regional division of votes/seats 73; social and statehood movements 110; support of statehood demands 111–12, 117, 120–22 Bhave Commission 91–92 Bhim Shakti 155 Bhopal Congress 75 Bhuyan, Udayanath 219 Bihar Provincial Congress Committee

224 Bijoylakshmi Kalapitha 225

BIMARU states 102 Bodo Accord (1993) 295 Bodo Autonomous Council (BAC)

295 Bodoland 15, 23, 57, 95, 268, 272–73,

275 Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC)

295 Bodo language 273, 293–96; as official language of Assam 295

289 Assam Reorganisation (Meghalaya) Bill 268

Bodo movement 12, 296

Babri Masjid, demolition of 97

Bombay Presidency 3, 78, 191, 195,

Backward Class movement 197,

201–2, 205 Baghel, Khubchand 94–95, 115 Bahujan Samaj 157

197 Bordoloi Committee 285 Bordoloi Sub-committee (1947) 283, 286

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 88,

Boro Security Force (BrSF) 295

118, 158 Bandhua Mukti Morcha 94

Bose, Subhash 255 Boundary Agitation 231–32, 240

Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS) 293–95 Bodo Security Force 273

Index

Boundary Commission 218, 229 Brahmin–Bania conflict 84 ‘Brahmin conspiracy’ 202 Brahmi script 138 Brass, Paul 11 British Empire in India 51 British Indian Army 54 Brown, Judith 33 Bundelkhand 4, 15, 76, 95, 279;

formation of 72, 94; proposal for creation of 17, 70, 72, 80 Cachar State Reorganisation 261, 264 capitalism, development of 165, 168 caste-based parties 13, 112 caste–class alliance 10 Ceiling Law 90 Census of India (1951) 259 Census Tracts 259

Committee

Central Statistical Organization

(CSO) 13 Chadda, Maya 13, 111

Chandrakar, Chandulal 95–96 Charter Act (1833) 50 Chatterjee, Partha 190, 199, 205 Chaudhary, Moinul Haque 289 Chavan, Y. B. 145, 149–50 Chhattisgarh Asmita Sangathan

Samiti (CAS) 97 Chhattisgarh Bhratir (brotherhood)

Sangh 94

Chhattisgarh State Creation 95, 116

Campaign

Chhattisgarh State Formation

Committee 94

Chhau Mahotsava 225, 236

Chief Commissioner’s province 50,

75, 253 Chin–Lushai Conference (1892) 50

Chipko movement 108 Choudhury, Nabakrushna 228, 231 Churhat Lottery scandal 93 civilian dimension of society 63 civil society 44, 117, 161, 165, 167,

175–76, 179, 291, 293 coalitional governments, formation

of 17 Cohn, Barnard 2 colonialism 49, 70, 100, 167–68,

177, 198–202, 279; territorial consolidation of 3 Colonial State, interventions 2–4

common political community 71 communalisation 42; and language

politics 33, 35; rise of 33 communal politics 139 Communist Party of India (CPI)

117, 172 Communist Party of Soviet Union

40 Congress Working Committee (1949)

11, 149, 215, 258 Constituent Assembly 34, 40, 61, 75,

Chhattisgarh Mahasabha 94, 115

256–57, 262 Constitutional Amendment Bill, for reorganisation of states 60 Constitution of India Act (27th Amendment) 268

Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh

constructive competition 121

Chhattisgarh, demands for creation

of 72- 73, 79, 96-97 Chhattisgarhi Brahmins 115–16

94 Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha 108 Chhattisgarh Rajya Nirman Manch

(CRNM) 94–96, 116 Chhattisgarh Rajya Sangarsh Morcha

(CRSM) 97–98

Coorg movement 12 counter-insurgency operations 63 cultural homogenisation 48, 178,

201 cultural movements, languagebased 5

cultural nationalism 34, 192, 195–98 Curzon, Lord 51 Dakshin Koshal 78 Dalit Panther movement 157 Dalits 82, 95, 102, 118, 151; politics in Maharashtra 157–58 Dandakaranya 95

Dandekar, V. M. 159 Dar Commission 7, 35, 40, 148, 257 Daulatram, Jairamdas 134–35,

137–38, 141 de-colonisation 52

Delhi Durbar (1877) 54 democratic political forces 71 democratic politics, accommodative model of 71 Deo, R. N. Singh 217–18, 223–24, 228, 232, 240 Desa Misrana Fandi (Amalgamation Fund) 214 Deshpande, Rajeshwari 156 Devanagari script 129, 138–40; for

Bodo language 294 Doctrine of Paramountcy for the

Princely States 54 downward alliances 82 Drafting Committee of Indian

Constitution 8

Dravidra Munetra Khazagam

(DMK) 100

English Geetagalu (Srikantia) 202 Entry 17 of the State List 59 Entry 56 of the Union List 59 ethnic cleansing 295; types of 275 ethnic conflict management 110 Fact Finding Committee 159 factionalism, politics of 84–87;

within two-party competitive system 87–93 farmers’ movement 153

Fifth Schedule 61 First Schedule 54–55, 285 Foreign National Movement 272, 275 Foucault, Michel 62, 64 Ganatantra Parishad 214, 217, 223, 228, 232, 240 Gandhidham 129, 132–33 Gandhi, Indira 36, 85, 89–91, 150,

154, 268, 277 Gandhi, Mahatma 147

Gandhi, Rajiv 92 gandi zehniyat 138 Gentlemen’s Agreement 174 Giri, V. V. 215 Glimpses of World History (Nehru) 35 Gorkhaland 12, 57, 95 Government of India Act (1935) 54,

253, 284 Government of the Union Territories

Eastern India Tribal Union (EITU) 267, 288 East India Company 54, 146

education, multilingual 41 Eighth Schedule 21, 42, 131, 134, 137, 242, 295 electoral politics 13, 17, 73, 82,

109-10, 113, 120, 145, 158- 60, 181; in Maharashtra 149–52 Embree, Ainslie 4 Emotional Integration Committee

(1962) 41–42

(Amendment) Act 268 Gowda, Deve 14

Greater Assam 290–93 Great Partition 53 Green Revolution 16, 57, 109, 179 gulabi channa relief money scandal 92 Gundappa, D. V. 196, 198, 202

Hall, Stuart 43 Hardinge, Lord 254, 285 Harit Pradesh 15, 57, 279

Hasan, Zoya 109 Hills Tribal Union 267 Hindi language 56, 135, 219 Hindu Mahasabha 78 Hindu–Muslim riots 151 Hindu nationalism 118, 121 Hindutva 96, 151, 153–54, 157, 194 Hirakud Dam project 215, 240 History of Hindu Imperialism (Swami

Dharma Theertha) 205 Hoenig, Patrick 62

homeland, concept of 274–75 hyper-governance 62 identity-based movements 108 Indian Councils Act (1861) 54 Indian federalism 61, 108, 111, 123,

242 Indian High Courts Act (1861) 54 Indian National Congress (INC) 4–5,

77, 147, 168, 197; adherence to linguistic principles for reorganisation of provinces 255; backward class movement 197, 201–2; election manifesto 255– 58; linguistic redistribution of states 287; Nagpur session 6, 19; and politics of factionalism 84–87; and politics of integration in MP 82–84 Indian nationalism see anti-colonial

nationalism Indian Penal Code 54

Indian Statutory Commission 255 Indicators and Backlog Committee

(1995) 159 Indus Valley Civilisation 141 Inner Line Regulations, Bengal

Eastern Frontier Regulation Act (1873) 266 Inner Line Regulations policy 263,

284 Instrument of Accession 75 Inter-State Water Disputes Act

(1956) 60

Jaffrelot, Christophe 109 janapadas 69 Janata Party (JP) 91, 112, 114, 153 Jan Sangh 73, 83–91, 101 Jena, Niranjan 229 Jharkhand 222, 227, 279; adivasi state 242; movement 225–26, 242; Oriya-speaking people as minority in 234–38; scheduled tribe and scheduled caste 109 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) 108, 120

population

Joshi, Sharad 153

JVP Committee 7, 148, 257–58 Kaanadiyappas 203 Kandhamal violence 243 Kannada identity 191, 202–5; 202; script 192

movement

Kannada nationalism 21, 199–202;

cultural and political of 196; relation with Indian nationalism 192–96

reunification

Kannada Sahitya Parishat 195

Kanyakubja Brahmins 116 Karnataka 6, 10, 12, 193–94, 197;

language of education 199 Karnatakatwa 21–22, 193–94

Kaushik Committee 117 Kaviraj, Sudipta 190, 192, 200, 204 Khilnani, Sunil 33–35, 43 King of Mysore 196–97 King, Robert 32 Kisan Adivasi Sangthan 94 kisan (peasant) movement 172 Kochanek, Stanley 10 Koshala Ekta Manch 238 Koshala Party 238 Koshala Raj, demand for 238–41 Kothari, Rita 20 Kui-Lipi/Kui scripts 243 Kunzru, H. N. 10, 148

Language Agitation 212, 220 language-based communalism 35 language-based identities 190–91 language nationalism: and

anticolonial nationalism 190–91;

competing imaginations of 200–2; constraints of 191–92; Kannada, English, Sanskrit and other Indian 197–200; and Kannada identity 191; opposition to state reorganisation on linguistic basis in Princely Mysore 197; and politics of space and equal rights 205–6; of princely state and presidency regions 196–97; relation between Kannada and Indian 192–96

communities languages

Madhya Bharat 70, 72, 79, 252 Madhya Pradesh: claims and

counterclaims for creation of 79–80; classification as Part ‘A’ state 80; Congress Party and politics of integration in 82–84; demands for division of 101; factionalism within two-party competitive system 87–93; responsible for slow and partial integration of 73; gulabi channa relief money scandal 92; political competition in 1990s and division of 93–99; politics of factionalism 84–87; Reorganisation Bill 98

factors

nationalism nationalism

Madras Presidency 3, 170, 172,

of 42

Mahakoshal Pradeshik Congress

language politics, communalisation license-raj system 16

196, 203 Mahakoshal 17, 72, 78–79, 82–85,

88, 90 Committee 79

Lingayat community 197, 200–2

Maharashtra: claim for regional

linguistic communalism 9, 51, 77,

identity 152–55; concept of 144; cultural traditions and identity 145; electoral politics in 149–52; history of 145–49; issues of Vidarbha and Marathwada 158–59; Maratha empire 146; politics of Dalits 157–58; role of Marathas 155–57; sons-of-thesoil movement 152 Maharashtra Government Reforms Committee Report (2002) 162

281, 283 linguistic communities 51, 77, 277,

279 linguistic–cultural minorities 12, 42 linguistic demarcation of provinces,

principle of 37 linguistic minorities 20, 33, 42, 56, 58,

130, 234–38, 289, 294, 297–98 linguistic principle, for reorganisation

of provinces 254–58 Linguistic Provinces Commission see

Dar Commission linguistic reconstruction programmes

(USSR) 39

identity

Administrative

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)

21, 154 Mahar movement 78

linguistic reorganisation, of provinces

Maha Vidarbha movement 58,

4, 8 linguistic states, demand for creation of 33–40

77–78 Malkani, Narayandas 137

Lushai Hills, annexation of 50

Lyngdoh, B. B. 267

Manipur 261–62, 264–65, 268, 270,

275, 278, 292 Manipur Hill Areas Act 268

Manor, James 34 Maratha empire 146 Marathi Sahitya Parishad 148 Marathwada 17, 144–45, 149, 151, 155, 158–59 Marmik 154

Mawdsley, Emma 14, 112–13, 118 Medhi, Bishnu Ram 287 Meghalaya 268, 292 Menon, V. P. 74 military dimension of society 63 Miller Committee 197 Misra, Godavaris 216 Mitra, Subrata 71 Mizoram 268, 275, 292 Modern Indian Language (MIL) 295 Mohanty, Gopinath 220

National Democratic Front of Bodoland 273 nationalism: concept of 199; models

of development of 165 Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)

21, 99, 151 nationality: definition of 168;

linguistic

principle of 53 national language 9, 32, 40–41, 55, 137, 219 national movement 3, 71, 78, 83; and

development of capitalism 168; and Indian National Congress (INC) 4; Lingayat community, participation of 200–2; and nationalities 169; and signs of reorganisation 4–7

linguistic

Montagu–Chelmsford Report (1918)

‘national park’ policy 263

52, 54, 254, 283; reforms 4 Moplah revolt (1921) 54 mother tongue education, in schools 35

Naga Peoples’ Convention 270 Nagpur Pact (1953) 78, 149 Naidu, Chandrababu 175 national coalition government 111–12

natural resources, sharing of 59 Naxalites 95, 160 Needs for Checks and Balances: Articles on Linguistic States (Ambedkar) 9 Nehru, Jawaharlal 213, 249–50, 255– 58, 267, 286; autobiography 32; contribution to state-formation processes 34, 44–45; cultural and educational policy 32–33; dilemma over demand for states 34–40; early 31; Glimpses of World History 35; involvement in politics 32; model of democratic consensus 17–18; morality and ethical politics 33; 16-point Agreement with Naga Peoples Convention leaders 271; speeches during years of 1949– 1964 36; views on Hindi–Urdu conflict 31, 36; vision of new independent India 7, 19

national cultural renaissance project

Nehru, Motilal 31

Motilal Nehru Committee 7, 276

Motilal Nehru Report (1928) 6, 255 multilingual education 41 multilingual states, linguistic

integration

in 296–98 Munda, Jaipal Singh 122, 222, 225 Muslim immigrants 56 Muslim League 61 Naga Hills District 262, 269–70 Nagaland 11, 268, 270–71, 275, 277–79, 292 Naga National Council 262, 269

5 National Democratic Alliance (NDA)

97

linguistic education language

non-cooperation movement 54, 193 North-Eastern Areas Reorganisation

Act (1971) 57, 268

North Eastern Council Act 268 North East Frontier Agency (NEFA)

261–62, 264–65, 269, 288, 290, 292 North East Frontier (Administration)

Supplementary Regulation 268 North-East Reorganisation Act

(1972) 23, 294 Northwestern Provinces 50, 77

O’Donnell Committee (1932) 223–24, 229, 233 Official Language Amendment Bill (1965) 41 Official Language Bill 41

Palshikar, Suhas 152, 154, 162 Panchayati Raj 61 Panchayat Samiti 151 Pandian, M. S. S. 205 Panikkar, K. M. 9–10, 148 partition of Bengal 6, 51, 254 Pataskar Commission (1966) 268,

291 Patel, Sardar 74, 100, 148, 257, 262

Pawar, Sharad 21, 150–51, 153, 156 peasant movement 52, 172 peasant mutinies (1845–1875) 50 Perso-Arabic script 129, 131, 137–38,

140 Phukan, Nilmoni 290

Official Language Commission (1956) 42, 44

Plains Tribal Council of Assam

Official Languages Act (1963) 56 Orissa: adivasi concentrations 241–44;

political entrepreneurs 120–22

Koshala Raj 238–41; Legislative Assembly 230; official language 242 Orissa Sahitya Akademy 237 Orissa Sanskriti Samaj 238

Prabasi Banga Sahitya Sammelan,

Oriya movement 22, 241; and

amalgamation

of Oriya-speaking people 221–28; despair and violence over SRC 230–33; discontent over SRC report 228–30; Language Agitation 212, 220; language and literature, interest and 219–20; outline of 211–13; Seraikella and Kharswan 217–19; signature campaign 225; States Reorganisation Commission and 213–33; for unification of all Oriya-speaking territories 213 Other Backward Castes (OBC) 82, 109, 153, 295; politics of castebased empowerment of 119

recommendations

conflict

Paippaladin Samhita 235 Pai, Sudha 20, 69

(PTCA) 272, 293–94 political reunification 195–96 Cuttack 215 praja mandals 75, 81, 100

praja (tenant) movements 61 Praja Socialist Party (PSP) 85 The Prajatantra 220 Prasad, Rajendra 6, 52, 216 Pratap, Bhai 132 Presidency of Fort William 50 Princely Mysore 191–92, 195–97,

200–3, 205; opposition to state reorganisation on linguistic basis in 197 princely state, integration into Indian Union 52, 76 print capitalism 166–67, 177, 190,

199 Provincial Congress Committees 6,

19, 185, 222, 224, 230 public education system 178

Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) 175 Punjabi language 39 Rabha Hasong (Rabhaland) 296 Rabha movement 296

Rajagopalachari, C. 54 Ram Mandir campaign 118 Rao, Chandrashekhar 18 Rao, Narasimha 118–19

Samyukta Maharashtra 78, 147–48

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti 21,

14, 78, 117, 121–22 Ratha Yatra of Lord Jagannath 236 reasoned morality 33 regional autonomy movements 169 regional languages, growth of 56 religion-based nationalism 190 Renkin, W. O. 244 reorganisation of states: on basis of

culture and identity 22–23; on basis of languages and States 20–22; concerns related to 19–20; conflicts associated with 62; Constitutional Amendment Bill for 60; in East and North-East 22–23; ethics associated with 63; for Hindi heartland 20; in historical and political context 19–20; linguistic principle for 254–58; nationalist movement and 4–7; Nehruvian vision of 7; specificity and significance of 18–23; States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) and 7–12; in Western and Southern India 20–22 Republican Left Democratic Samiti 158 Riddles of Hinduism (Ambedkar) 155 Risley, Herbert 6, 254 River Boards Act 59 Roman script for Bodo language movement 294 Rural Debt Amortisation Law 90 rural–urban migrants 57 Samajwadi Party 118, 158 Sambalpur Hitaishini 239 Sambhaji Brigade 161 Samna 154

Samyukta Maharashtra Parishad

148 Samyukta Maharashtra Sabha 147

149 Sangma, Williamson A. 267, 288 Sanskrit language 31–33, 42, 131,

136, 141, 197–99, 203, 239 Sanyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) 89

Sarangi, Asha 19 Saryupali Brahmins 116 Satpura Kisan Evam Mazdoor Kalyan

Samiti 94 satsangs (spiritual gatherings) 141

satyagraha 149, 232 Satyagraha Committee 232 Satyashodhak Samaj 157 Scheduled Languages 41, 56 Shetkari Sanghatana 151, 153 Shiv Sena 21, 145, 151, 157–58, 275;

anti-congress policy 154; claim for regional identity 152–55; Hindutva politics 153; sons-ofthe-soil movement 152; trade union movement 154 Shiv Shakti 155 Shukla, Pandit Ravi Shankar 82, 84 silent revolution 109 Simon commission 271–72 Sindhi community: economic

success 130; evolution of Sindhi

language 133–37; and Hinduism 140; Islamic influences 141; as linguistic minority 129; of 132; scheduling existence 133–37; script during Mohenjodaro civilisation 137–42 Sindhu Resettlement Corporation (SRC) 132 Singh, Arjun 92–93, 114, 116 Singhbhum District Board 224 Singhbhum Utkala Sammilani 217 Singh, Digvijay 97

rehabilitation

SRC report 44, 228, 234, 276;

Telangana 51, 57, 107, 164–65, 170, 177, 180, 279; cultural movement 181; dialect–language distinction 179; economic development 182; educated middle class 171; Gentlemen’s Agreement 174; rise of identity politics 179; social and cultural scenario 171; Telegu Desam Party (TDP) 175–76

implementation of 41; making of 250–54; as sacred text 258–68

Telangana Praja Samithi (TPS) 174 Telegana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) 18,

Sixth Schedule 61, 262, 267–68, 286, 288, 291, 297, 299 smaller states, demand for 12–18 social governance 62 social mobilisation 170 soldiers revolt (1857–1858) 54 sons-of-the-soil movement 152 Soren, Sonaram 226, 228 sovereignty, colonial model of 62

Srikantia, B. M. 195–96, 198–99, 202,

204–5; English Geetagalu 202 Srikrishna Committee 18, 161 Srinivasulu, K. 21 state formation: Instrument of

Accession 75; and integration of

princely states 74–76; opposition on linguistic basis in Mysore 197; processes of 74–81; reconciliation of territorial claims and for 76–81; years of 41

counterclaims state leaders and demands for statehood 113–20

States Reorganisation Act (1956) 53,

55, 289

175 Telegu Desam Party (TDP) 175 territorial administration 50 territory people 53 Tikekar, Aroon 155, 162 Tillin, Louis 20 Tisco 219, 222, 244 Tiwari, N. D. 118–19 trade union movement 154 trans-boundary waters: disputes in

sharing of 60; equitable of 59; integrated 59; regulation and development of 59; sustainable development of 60

utilisation management

States Reorganisation Commission

transnational governance 62

(SRC) 55–56, 148, 172, 211, 245; creation of Hindi speaking states 69; making of report 250–54; and Oriya movement 213–33; rationale of retaining Assam as single state 287–89; recommendations of 1, 8, 29; for reconciling territorial claims and counter-claims 76–81; and reorganisation of states 7–12 Stuligross, David 111

tribal ‘homelands’ 57 tribal minority language 296

Tamil Brahmins 203 Tamil Nadu 61, 63, 197; anti-Brahmin movement 205; language riots 41–42; water disputes 58

Tripura 261–62, 264–65, 268, 275,

288, 292 Tura Conference 262

Udayachal 272, 294 United Progressive Allaince (UPA)

18 United Tribal Nationalist Front (UTNLF) 273 Utkala Dibas 220 Utkal Association of Jamshedpur

235, 237 Utkal Congress Committee 222, 232

Utkal Kui Samaj 243

Utkal Sammilani 80, 213–14, 217–19, 223, 228, 230, 232, 237, 239–40

Visuba Milana 220 vote banks 10

Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) 117

Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee

(UPCC) 119

Wadhwani, T. T. 138 water resources, sharing of 59 West Bengal States Reorganisation

Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram 14 Venkatarao, Alur 192–96, 198, 202 Verghese, B. G. 19 vetti 170–71 Vidarbha 11, 21, 57–58, 144, 149, 155,

158–59 Vidyavardhaka Sangha 195 Vindhyachal 57, 76 Vindhya Union 76 Vishalandhra 178, 181; demand for

Committee 11 Western Orissa Development Council

241 Western Orissa Jana Jagaran Parishad 238 Western Orissa Liberation Front 238 Wilcox, Mayne 71

Yadav, Laloo Prasad 107, 120 Yadav, Mulayam Singh 116–20

creation of 164, 171, 177 ‘visual’ capitalism 178

zamindari system, abolition of 10 Zilla Parishad 151