Occasional Paper Series Number 29 States Reorganization and Accommodation of Ethno-Territorial Cleavages in India Harihar Bhattacharyya States Reorganization and Accommodation of Ethno-Territorial Cleavages in India Harihar Bhattacharyya © Forum of Federations, 2019 ISSN: 1922-558X (online ISSN 1922-5598) Occasional Paper Series Number 29 States Reorganization and Accommodation of Ethno-Territorial Cleavages in India By Harihar Bhattacharyya For more information about the Forum of Federations and its publications, please visit our website: www.forumfed.org. Forum of Federations 75 Albert Street, Suite 411 Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) K1P 5E7 Tel: (613) 244-3360 Fax: (613) 244-3372
[email protected] 3 States Reorganization and Accommodation of Ethno-Territorial Cleavages in India Overview What holds India, a vast multi-ethnic country, together in the midst of so many odds? The question is particularly significant because India’s unity and integrity has been possible despite democracy. The key to the above success lies in a mode of federation building that sought to continuously ‘right-size’ the territory of India. The method followed in doing so is called ‘states reorganization’ in India as a result of which ethno-territorial cleavages have been accommodated and regulated. The result has been durable ethnic peace and political stability. At independence (15 August 1947), India inherited nine provinces and over 560 princely states from the old colonial arrangements. An interim state structure was put in place, but it was recognized that a fundamental restructuring would be required in due course. The process was complex and painstaking but managed to create sub-national units called ‘states’, mostly on the basis of language; subsequently non-linguistic ethnic factors were also taken into consideration.