3

factors in the Linguistic R

of Indian State~~rganization

Joseph E. Schwanzb ergt

WfRODUCTION

n 1920, the Indian

• • National Congress ' meeting·
in Nagpur, resolved
I
,
to reorganize its own party structure accord'ing to 11ngu1st1c
. . .
rovinces and called on the government to reorganize the adm' · . •
P . f B .. h d' 1n1stration
of the proVInces o rit1s . In 1a along similar lines •1At the 1·1me,
' not
a quite a third of the population of the provinces under direct British rule
spoke languages different from those of the most numerous linguistic
group within their respective areas, and slightly more than half the
total area of British India (including Burma and the frontier agencies)
comprised districts in which a clear majority of the population spoke
languages other than those of the plurality groups.2 Although language
*Originally published as 'Factors in the Linguistic Reorganization oflndian States', in
Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation in India (New Delhi: Oxford &: IBH Publishing
C.Ompany Pvt. Ltd., 1985), pp. 155-82. - _ . .
tThe author is indebted to Gregory Chu and Carol Gersmehl for assistance m the
preparation of the maps and graph accompanying this article. . ., 0f
1Govemment of India, States Reorganization Commission Report, New Delhi s Mgr.
Publications, 1955 (Henceforth, SRC), P· 13. . . . d from
2All population figures, including linguistic data, presented m tlus paper are den~
19 1 . tic
lhc,decmnial Indian censuses ofthe period 1921-71, unless otherwise· stated. The
al and provmc1 eve1s
~ ~alguisl
th
data available to the author in readily usable form were at e nat1o_n £ 1920 't
~=~':::a:
only; h
waa
fi rt . calculations involving aggregations of distnct•l~ d~ta or
estimates by recasting the 1931 data into the admirustranon framewor
•
 140 Language and Politics in India . t he Linguistic Reorgani zation o f I ndlan Stat.es 14 I
fac to rs in
data from the 1981 census are not yet available, a pr . census to another will be clarified in footnotes relating
. d. th OJecti0
figures to the present would m icate at only about one. . n of . one rtions of the su bsequent text.
ctices from
population now belong to linguistic minorities within Ofr~l pfll ,,,,,opr1ate pho arbitrariness and regional inconsistency of the census
J.part frOmt e other tongues, one must recognize
toiirr . t h at th e census
states and union territories. But more striking, perhaps eir r ~ of many m f · · al "al 'fi · ....
of the administrative changes that India has experienced~111a Ill~ eiitJJlen t . .ated by a certain degree o mtentton " SL canon, e1u,er
tr .,ms are vitl r by the enumerators, to advance the cause of
to demands for linguistic reorganization is the fact tha •~" retvthe resp ondants. o. tic group The returns for Urdu are part1cu . lar Iy
which the numerically predominant language differs fro t district, i t,y e or an° ther 1tngu1s
th d ' • ts (with a. tendency toward un der-enumeratton .
state or union territory in which the district is located m at of~ on . many istnc ti dUd 'th
only 9.6 per cent of the total area of the republic and fotC-Oun1 f0r pectdin ..,,.ndence); but, as we have consisten y!roupdeS_ r_ u 1wi _
505
•nee in ey- . , ot thereby significantly auecte . 1m1 ar y, m 1
per cent of its population. 3 It would, thus, appear that the a lllere 2.) uindi, ou r analysis 1s•sing
s1 n PunJ· ab and Haryana a bias . on th e part o f
reshaping India's political map to accord with the linguistic dip'~ P nowcompr1 . . d . d. . l
1 the areas . d . favour of returning PunJab1 an Hm 1respecuve Y
of its inhabitants has virtually run its course. We may, theret blltioQ sj]chs and Hin us 10
dged Other sources of biased data undoubtedly
reached a vantage point in history from which we can look bore, h11ot 1e
is generally. acknoW d to ·
language we do not feel that t h ey are 11·k ely to
the greater part of this century and attempt a dispassionate s ack OVtr . . but in regar , . 4
eJCJSl, k d bearing on our findings.
and assessment of the manner in which linguistic reorga~~~ have a mar_ e th t must be addressed if the following analysis is to make
occurred, th~ pace a_t which_ that often s~or~y process proceeded lion A question a onstitutes a lingu1sttc · · mmonty.
· · While ad m1·tti· ng th e
se is just h tc
factors considered m specific reorgamzat10n decisions (' 1 •~
d •· me~~ sen_ . wf: at that minority status is to some d egree a matter o f
soc10Iog1 al carception
1 ac
ecis10?~ not to implement suggested changes), and the scope,, 'f g and self-identification, we are h ardly m · a position ··
for addit10?al changes in the future. This brief essay, along ~tlt~y, e,ctern p;e which groups think of themselves and of others with whom
acco_mpanymg maps and graphs, attempts to satisfy thos.e objecti Its to de~erm ct as belonging to minorities. We are, therefore, forced to fall
It WIil ,also consider .the implications of the present distributi !CS. they mtera e available statistics in making . our d etermmauons. . . The
lingu·is.tic groups, by po1i·tical regions, in respect to the future unity
· on ofd bac k• on th , l · h
· reporting 'mother tongues spoken may re ate e1t er to
well-bemg of the Indian nation. an stausucs . .
'languages' or 'dialects.' For purposes of ~•s essay, ~o group spe~~ a
. But before we can proceed, it is necessary to state a number of caveats ticular dialect of a specified language will be considered as a mmonty
WI th respect to our statistical data lest the reader accord them a gre 1
p~up with respect to a majority speaking another dialect or group of
degree of scientific validity than they warrant. To begin with, we m3;
!aiects of the same language. Mutual comprehensibility (known or
note that no ~o Indian censuses have been wholly in agreement with
presumed) is the criterion for specifying th<}t two mother tongues (for
~ne an.other I? regard to the inclusiveness of specific languages. This
example, Awadhi and Bhojpuri) are different dialects of the same
inconsistency is of particular importance with respect to Hindi U d
language, while, conversely, mutual incomprehensibility (for ~ple,
~nd other_allegedl~ m~tu3!ly comprehensible tongues, indudi~g:;;
Ao Naga and Serna Naga) is the test for stipulating that they are, m fact,
tlmes-Hmd~stan1, B1han, Rajasthani, Punjabi, Pahari, and literally
scores different languages. The Constitutional distinction between Hindi and
{th ofdother · mother
. tongues' or dialects gro uped un d eroneormore
Urdu, both of which are recognized as 'official languages: and so
> ose es1gnat1ons, depending on the specific census year. The varymg .
enumerated by all post-independence censuses does not affect our
' the earlier period, which was scarcely different fro th 1931
'2 0 were measured by the author on his own maps~b~ or · The area figures cited for A discussion of how to rw;,gnize and deal with bia~d enumerations appears in Joseph
31
lfor the present day, estimates for both area and popul tion figure · ). , E. Schwartzberg, 'Sources and 'fypes of Census Error; in The Cet1.Sus in British India, New
d data of the I 971 Census. a on are extrapolations of district· Perspectives (New Delhi: Manohar, 1981) , pp. 41-60.
 142 Language and Politics in India Int.he Linguistic Reorganlz.ation of \ndian Su.tu \<\3
f ~cto rs
gene_ral rule. While most speakers of Urdu E OF LJNGUISTIC RE.ORGAN12.AT\ON
ethmc minority, the principal basis for theirare_ un~oubtebl" cotJRS
tated at the outset, Congress officially endorsed the
ratherthanlin
.
· • d mmonty 5tatua, iaPllrt
~Ile, an we have treated Hindi- Urd Of, 'ft-IE
•,tho1.1gh, ast ~flinguistic provinces in 1920, the idea had bttn mooted
RaJasthan1, Pahari, and Punjabi pose d"fti uasasing1e~ e5i.>b1·1shfllellBritish and th e Co ngress on a vanety
fV . o{ occ.asions since
~~st speakers of those tongues, in their vari:u:r~?~ problem, bY both th e . r I-Ierbert Risley, then Home Secretary in the Government
a to _understand the Hindi of the regions cl J ects, are p. .:"lit
903, ~h: 5/ raised the issue in connection with the proposed partition
t~rntones more or less well, they will probabl e ose ~o their.res~ 1 f111d a, ra-wling
6
polyglot Bengal Presidency. As matters turned out,
difficulty with the Hindi" of more d1stant
" xpenenceconSid,.,...,:'
yreg· -~ 1 5
0 f the ~ tition of 1905 could scarcely have done greater violence
5
comprehensibility' is, in the final analysis 10ns. But, as ,;•~ 0curz p~r le of linguistic homogeneity. But, in rectifying that political
~hosen to regard the former grou of la~a matter of degree, Weuluai 011
to e pflnc1p . 2, Bengal was recreate d as an essentially · ··
umlmgual
itself until 1961 (foll . G . p guages, as does th th 191
d . . owmg nerson), as distinct fr e cellllii blu11?er 111thereafter divested of the large multilingual area of Bmar

Thows us to present a reasonably standardized s t ts,

~c1s1on accords well with political and social realiti om H:indi,s '1'bia
we believe,illd
e c~ns~s decision in 1971 to lump all spea/ o mf ap~uptot1!161
provinc_e, though not including several million Bengali s-peakers in
all d Oflssa, red province of Assam.7 Offic1a
the reSt o. n to the \ingu1suc· · pnnc1p
· lly, t h "is was the fust British
· · l e; h owever, th at was b ut one among
ar1 with th . ers o RaJastha .
Pah co11cess10
considerations beanng . on th e fin al d ec1s1on
. . taken. The 1905
realistic adjust::n:eaking Hindi is one for which we cannotni illld
manY h fi
partition, arguably, was w atht rst ~ro~seal d Co
n~re~s' senfs!t1~tyhto
·· · th
e
and data with th . <;,°nsequ_ently, comparisons of our 1971 lllai(e
somewhat . . dose or earlier censuses will, in that re lllaps age issue in respect to e ternton orgamzauon o ontls \ndia,
d it was in the context o f the protest over part1t1on
VJtJate . gard, ht langu .. ~'-
uiat the c.utst
.

th The
fo::hi;~ ~x::
th Jin gu1stJc
· · minorities we shall be dealing with . th.
a;::pr~vi?ci4 level in the pre-indep::de~!a:;~:
state or union territo;a1:::~ ~e ates to ~ritis~ India only, and at tlie
.. ~ngress linguistic province was established in "Bihar in 190%. Other
uch Congress provinces were set up in Sind and hndhra in 1917. The
~onowing year, not surprisingly, the authors of the Montagu-
. Indian Constituti . J or the penod smce the adoption ofth Chelmsford report 'examined the suggestion for the formation, within
. on m anuary 1950 p h e the existing provinces, of sub-provinces on a \inguistic and racial \sic)
is one other than th t . . ersons w ose primary Ian;,,,20
. . a accountmg for a plu art if o-ce basis, with a view to providing suitable units for ex:periment in
ma1onty-of the population f . r t y- not an absolute
~en as members of a lin i~icthe~r sta_te or union territory are here responsible government', but, whi\e admitting 'that the business of
ts, at the district or lowe l gul f mmonty, even though locally (that government would be simplified if administrative units were both
Th r eve o analysis) th b smaller and more homogeneous', they concluded that action to
e question of non-Hindi-s eakin ey ~ay e in the majority.
the Republic of India · p sta
g tes as minority regions within
hall £ ts one on which we hall SRC, p. 10. For further historical details, see chapter H, 'Rationale for Reorgani"tion:
s re1er to it briefly in our condudi s not focus, though we 6
and chapter Ill, 'Time for Reorganization: pp. 10-24. A fuller, very judicious account is
normally reported only down to th di n~ remarks. As census data arc provided in Ram Gopal, Linguistic Affairs of India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1996),
can penetrate no deeper than th e dstn~t level, our regional analysis chapter V, 'The Principle of Linguistic Homogeneity', and chapter V1, 'Unguistic State~ P\l·
number. of regions in which a fiat, besp1te the fact that there are a 63-113. Much of the subsequent discussion is based on these two sources.
'Detailed maps of all territorial changes referred to in this paper, maps of the distribution
subdivision) would be quite use::i~r reakdown (by tahsil, taluk, or o~ sp~ci~c languages, and statistical data relating to the effect of political changes on the
d1stnbut1on of language groups arc provided in Joseph E. Schwartz.berg ted.), A Historical
;;;:c:
. 'Despite the census decision to retain these
~ahari languages and dialects, the actu~a;::c~: of Pahari--or more precisely a
am censuses was to enumerate Pahari speaker for the large .uea of Himalayan
Atlas of South Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 66, 76-8, and 100-l.
The accompanying text is on pp. 217, 224-5, and 234-6.
s as speakers of Hindi.
144 Language and Politics in India

establish such units was, at the time, impractical and

0
follow the administrative reforms they were about to "' 1lld
0
Between its initial 1920 declaration and the outbrJr Pose,,
II, the Indian National Congress called repeatedly for the rofwor\d\
oflndia on linguistic lines. The British too paid lip servieorsan~
to time, to the theoretic· al desira
. b'l' · provinccc, frail\~
11ty of 1·mgmstic
that they could be made economically viable and establis~~Pr~¾
general agreement of the populations concerned. It was not ~th tlit
. . . . until.4. C
.g
1936, however, that two new Imgmstic provinces, Sind and ,Pril
O .!;
were finally established. No other such reforms were to OCcur .~
the granting of independence. Pnor1o t'3
Figures 3.1 and 3.2 provide some indication of the dimensio

l...
V

the problem of linguistic heterogeneity at the provincial level fo~~

period from 1920 to 1936. Though the data for these two maps are drawn
from the 1931 census, which is more detailed and easier to use th 0

that of 1921, the picture that would have been portrayed had the 19~
data also been mapped varies so little from that of 1931, that an
additional pair of maps for the earlier year would appear redundant!
Among the major provinces of India, those that appeared most
egregiously to be in need of linguistic reorganization were Madras
and Bombay in which approximately three-fifths of the t~tal,,
8SRC, p. 11; the second quoted passage is from the Report on Indian Constitutidn,j

Reforms, 1918, paragraph 246. See also Ram Gopal, Linguistic Affairs, pp. 65--6. ,,
91.n 1921, Western and Eastern Hindi were enumerated separately, with Hindustanilllll
Urdu grouped under the former (without individual enumeration). Eastern Hindfwu
actually tabulated, however, only in the Central Provinces and Berar and in the Centtil
India Agency, its speakers (including all but 4,000 speakers of Bihari) being grouped in
other provinces with those of Western Hindi. Rajasthani, Punjabi, Lahnda (Western Punjabi)
and Central, Eastern, and Western Pahari were all separately tabulated, but the vast majoritr
of speakers of the former (i.e., those of the United Provinces) were counted along with
those speaking Western Hindi.
In I931, the di~tihction between Western and Eastern Hindi was maintained but th1
areal coverage of the latter group was extended to Assam, Bengal, and several other provinces
and princely states where it was not especially important. Bihari was now separately
enumerated in Bihar and Orissa and adjoining princely states; but neither it nor Eastern
Hindi was tabulated in th_e ~nited Prov~ces, resulting in inflation of the figures for Western
Hindi. Urdu too was again included with Western Hindi throughout India. The treatment
of speakers of Rajasthani, Punjabi, and Lahnda, as well as of Central Eastern and Western
Pahari remained the same as in th.e 1921 census. In order to maximi~ comp~rability from
one map to another throughout this paper we have combined figures for Western and Eastern
Hindi, Urdu, and Bihari wherever they are separately given.
 Factors in the Linguistic Reorganization of Ind! an Statcs 147
·on spoke minority languages. Non-Tamils in Mad .
ulaU f ras me1udcd
pO~ million speakers o Tc1ugu, and 4.0,_3.7, and 1.7 millionsspcaking
J7-. Malayalam, and Kannada respectively. Among the non-Marathi
onya, of Bombay were 3.4, 3.1, and 2.6 millions who .. r .
..takers G . . s· dh. , ... espcctivc
Sr·
0 ther
tongues were . UJaratt, m
. . 1, and Kannada
. · Minor pr •
ovmces
J1I ose governed by chief comm1ss1oners) with particularly pronounced
(~ ·ty problems were Assam, where Bengalis, not Assamese wer
minor1 B 1 h. ' e
th ost numerous group; a uc 1stan, where Pushtu speakers
e mmbered speakers of Baluchi; and .the statistically insignificant
0 utnu
of Coorg and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
are% the remaining jurisdictions, the 5.4 million Marathi speakers
d a special problem in the Central Provinces and Berar, as did the
0semillion Oriyas in Bihar ~? Ori~sa._ Elsewhere, the 6.5 million
[.ahnda speakers and several million Hmd1 speakers in Punjab provided
little cause for concern, presumably because their local dialects graded
moothly into the dominant Punjabi vernacular and because whatever
~guistic cleavages existed in the region were overshadowed by more
salient communal divisions. And in Burma, more than two-fifths of
the population that spoke languages other than Burmese were spread
among so many different largely isolated tribal groups that no serious
thought had to be given to administrative reform on their behalf.
Finally (ignoring the minor jurisdictions of Delhi and Ajmer-
Merwara), we come to Bengal and the Hindi-speaking United Provinces,
which in 1931 were the only two essentially unilingual provinces of
India. Of those two, the latter-now the state of Uttar Pradesh-has
been, since its creation, the most linguistically homogeneous region
of the subcontinent.
Figure 3.2 indicates in dark grey, the extensive tracts over which
the above-noted minorities and smaller unspecified groups were
predominant at the district level, as well as a small number of additional,
largely tribal districts, shown in medium grey, in which all minorities
combined comprised over half the total population even though no
single group was as numerous as the principal linguistic group of the
province. Combined, these two sets of districts accounted, as noted in
the introduction, for roughly half the total area of British India.
Among the six hundred or so princely states of India were some
(example, Hyderabad) that were as linguistically diversified as the
provinces shown in the darkest pattern of Figure 3.1. Nevertheless, on
148 languago, and Politics in India

all of our maps of the pre-independence period, we have sh

areas of the princely states by a diagonal lined pattern b 0 ""1 th,
British, who had come by the twentieth century to regard t~cau~ th,
t
err'.'tones
·
as virtually inviolate, never seriously considerede Prince\
th Y
subiect to administrative reorganization on either linguistic /rn ai
grounds. But, given the complex interdigitation of the territo ?thtr
0

the st ates w1'th those under dn-ect

· Britts ru e, attempts at achifies. of
· · h I
the political unification of certain major linguistic groups with:ing
l~tter ai:eas would have only resulted in the creation of bizarrely sha tb,
disconuguous, and difficult-to-administer provinces. On the other¼
s~ch ~ensive multilingual and culturally, physically, and econornicau
d1vers1fied provinces as Madras and Bombay were also quite difficui
to a~inister in ways that were responsive to th~ n~eds of the people~ :in
particularly those most distant from the provmc1al capitals.
Figure 3.3 provides some intimation of the di~erential difficulty
faced by various provinces in dealing, as of 1931, with the concerns of
their major minority language groups. The implicit assumption of
this map is that, ceteris paribus, the further a group is situated frorn
the seat of administration, the greater will be the costs of responding
to its needs and the greater will be its perception that those needs are
not being adequately addressed. The median distance (in miles) of
each group from its respective provincial capital is indicated on the
map along a line connecting the capital with the so-called population
'centroid' of the group. 10 The greatly varying distances on Figure 3.3
explain, perhaps better than any other single factor, why Orissa and
Sind were the first and only linguistic provinces to be established in
the period between 1912 and the granting of Indian independence.
The failure of the British to accede to the demands of those who
wanted to create a province of Andhra out of the Telugu-majority
districts of Madras province calls for comment, especially in light of
the fact that the 17. 7 million Telugu speakers of Madras ( as of 1931)
'°The population centroid is the point of intersection of east-west and north-so\lth
median lines, each dividing a given population into two equal groups. It is similar to, though
not identical with the population's centre of gravity, but much easier to determine. The
centroids shown on figure 3.3 were determined by the author by plotting the 1931 data on the
linguistic groups in question ?n district_ma~s and, where necessary, prorating the population
by area in districts alo~g the.likely median lines to fix those_lines w!th the precision necessary
for the present analysis. It 15 _doubt~ th at any 0 ~ the pomts so determined is as much u
fifteen or twenty miles from ,ts athemat1cal position.
 150 Language and Politics in India In the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States 151
factors
far outnumb . ered th e 7.4 and 3.2 million . JiticallY joined. This was especially true in regard to the
who then hved in territorie Onya and Sindh· t)leY we~e pOti Muslim population of Sind. lt is hardly surprising, in
respectively. Part of the pr~~~bse~uently assigned to Oris~ SPeaI<er,
Telugu population . dd' . em m regard to the distrib . andsind
predoIT1 111311:ny charged political atmosphere of the 1930s, that
t)le coITl~un her parts oflndia should have strongly supported Sind's
of Madras and , ma ition to their relative proxun· Ution ofth
are an . consequent ease of governance was th fa tty to the ci~ Mosli~s: i:m the Hindu-maj~rity pr~vince of B~mbay; and !twas
important min · , ' e ctthat] ·1 seParauo . d that Britain's acquiescence m the establishment of Smd-
districts.11 Thu th ont~ m almost all of the Tam .1 e!ugtis 11'1·delYbelteve
J{ dus of that area strongly opposed-was, m . part at least,
left roughly 2 Ssm, ·ue· separation of Andhra from Madras t ·tnaiority which tbeh 1~dian Muslim community. 13 Whether the largely tribal
. I ton Telugu speak . th Would ~-
th e province in a ·r ers m e remaining 'Ii'!' aSOP to } eortions of what was to become Orissa weighed heavily in
were all Telu~ s~:r:~n ;uch ~o.re disadvantaged poliJ::ion of nator~ : decision to create that province is questionable; I have read
these Telugu speak m eund1V1dedprovince.Byandlar Ythan the B_nus suggest that it was. A final comparative observation: whereas
comparable issue aro:;/pposed the .suggested partitio~';~:~• n° th'.ngto'sion from Bombay was a relatively simple act of political
Apart fr th respect to Onssa or Sind . ,,o Sind s exci
om e Telugu ul • · the establishment of Onssa· from d'1scont1guous
· areas of three
who failed to b pop_ ation, otherlarge linguistic m. . . stJ1'g~~s (Bihar and Orissa, Madras, and Central Provinces and Berar),
e granted their o . tnonties
order of population-th wn provinces were-in descend' provinmuch more complicated undertaking, entailing, among other
in the Central Provinces ::~~akers o; Lahnda Punjab, of Mara:~ was
th' as the partition of several long-establ'1shed Bnt1s . . h d'1str1cts.
.
Madras, of Malayalam in Mad erar, od Kanna~a I~ ?oth Bombay and in~~ures 3.4 and 3.5 show the linguistic situation in the provinces
none of these groups ras, an of GuJarat1 m Bombay. Whil of British India as of 1941 in terms comparable to those applicable for
numerous than the Sin: ; po~ulous as the Oriyas, all were mor: Figures 3.1 and 3.2. Although no language returns were tabulated for
administration appear to I~e ~t;it~:hnone of these did the burdens of those provinces in the greatly curtailed wartime census, we can derive
the costs of political reorganizati to be so onerous as to warrant a reasonably accurate representation of the distribution and relative
Wh'l on. strength of linguistic minorities by prorating the district proportions
. I ewe have emphasized how d' .
adrmnistrative difficult' f . istance contributed to the of various linguistic groups, as reported in the 1931 census, among
become Orissa and s·ieds o governmg the areas that were in 1936 to
m , we must also po· t the district populations reported in 1941. Although two new provinces
considerations that were surely I h m out some additional were created in the interim, the areas of only a very small number of
dominant populations of th ~e evant. T cultural gap between the districts were significantly affected. In the case of those changed in order
. e o new provinces and th ul .
from which . they were separated was greater than thatebpop tw th
attons to create Orissa-the establishment of which was already anticipated
oth er maJor minorities just cited and th e dommant . groups to whiche
e een when the 1931 census was published-detailed subdistrict breakdowns
are available and fairly good estimates for 1941 can therefore be made.
IIThis will be particularly evident from plate 29 f In short, the pictures presented by Figures 3.4 and 3.5 can be regarded
Gl!ographiquedesLanguesetdesEthniesdel'lnd td Sb o _Roland J.L. Breton's Atlas
I 'Universit~ Laval, 1976). Careful study of th• ." u u conhnent (Qu~bec: Les Presses de
. 1s important work wh fi""•
as reasonably reliable and representative of the situation that obtained
an d-wh1te maps . and graphs are supplemented by nearIy SIX . hund
' oseed "T plates of black· in India from 1937, when Burma was split off to become a separate
th row much hght on a great variety of problems relat· h _r pages of text, will
So uth As'1a throughout the twentieth century. mg to t e hnguIs Ile· geography of crown colony, to 1947, the year of the independence and partition of
121am indebted to Robert E. Frykenberg for calling this l . the subcontinent.
to Frykenberg, the anti-Brahmanism of the Telugu peasant act to my
castes attention. According
of what b :he only striking differences between the 1931 and the 1941 maps
An dhr a was not shared by the Telugu peasants of Tamil-m . . was to ecomc
'd 'fi · f h aionty areu be are tn respect to the areas affected by the establishment of Sind and
1 entJ cation o t e Brahmans as those who had the greatest stak . ' cause of thc
of Madras province. em maintaining the unity
llRam Gopal, Lirtguistic Affairs, p. 69.
 J,_
·-
•,J
II

Figure 3.4: Linguistic Minorities as Percentage of Provincial Population in

'
British India, 1941,.

Note: ,.All percentages are estimates. 1931 figures are used where there is no
significant change in area of province. 1931 district data are recast within
new boundaries where significant changes have occurred.
154 Language and Politics in India

Orissa. In the former of those two provinces, linguistic minoriti

in 194 l to one-fifth of the population and in the latter to ~scani,
seventh, a proportion slightly lower than in the remaining area
O
:rB~n,. re
J1'1a1n
factors
.
d' tricts
.
. . province o
.
in the Lmgu

f more
• .
istic Reorganization of Indian States

. t .an ch province a mmonty

· b
b
'd and the capital cities of Born ay an
O n each si e
dM d
al And nowhere will 1t e poss1 e o or a
· 'bl
t,ord~r b1~ingual or multilinguh .70 to 'so per cent of the people speaking the
a ras
t

. · of at 1east 20 per
i
155
will
m
'
uogu1st1c thus leaving m ea
The reduction in the minority proportion of the total popular ihar. e language, akin other languages.14
Madras and of the Central Provmces . an d Berar was not espeIOnsor
. saJll ople spe g
cent of pe . n language but comprising only 70
significant; but in Bombay it fell from 57.2 per cent to 48 2 perCialiy aking a commo th . .
. . . • cent opulation spe . e's population, reasoned e commission,
Of note on Figure 3.5 is the fact that there was not a smgle district .
A PSO per cent of a pr?vin~ u·c group'but only a 'big majority:15 As we
either Sind or Orissa in 1941 in which all linguistic minoritt to all d 'hngu1s . ' · ·call
d not be c e a of the commission were stansu Y
comprised a majority of the population. es couI the cone1usions al
shall presentl~ see, own, I believe, that its fundament ears as
The resignation during World War II of all Congress ministries in . alid and history has sh . f n on the development of a sense
.the provinces of British India in which they ruled resulted in a inv . l im act of reorganiza to
temporary cessation of any significant demand for linguistic to the like y . p d were ill-founded. .
of Indian nauonhoo how the distribution and relauve strength of
reorganization. In any event, the prosecution of the war and then the
Figures 3._6 an~_3.7 s of the 1951 census and may be. taken as
preparation of India for independence became far more pressing
linguistic mmonttes. as . obtaining in India from the ume of the
concerns. With independence in 194 7, the situation changed radically.
representative of the s1~ua~10n_ J ary 1950 until the establishment
Led by the proponents of Andhra, a chorus of calls for a new political . fth Constitution m anu 'ffi ,. di
map based on linguistic principles was raised almost immediately after
the new government was installed. The responsibilities of power,
adoption o e
of the sta~e of Andhr:r~
from their counterp
7o:t~ b 1953 These two maps di er mar ...e y
9;~ and {941 insofar as they lack the lar~e
. h the rincely states were represented m
however, caused Congress to reconsider its former stance on that issue.
diagonally ruled areas by whic d ~ashmir to which the 1951 census
Now, the tasks of putting the new nation in to working order, of deaijng
with the millions of refugees, of coping with the conflict in Kashmir,
the earlier periods. Only Jammu ;° t . Trac;s (later NEFA) of Assam,
did not extend; the Nor~h-~ast ~~nh i:as not yet fully integrated into
of integrating and consolidating into governable units the myriad also uncensused; and Sikkim, w 1~ the ma s for 1951.
princely states, and framing a constitution became the most urgent items the Indian union, are shown in_ a lmed patte;~::.ab PEfsu (Patiala
on the government's agenda. 'Unity' and 'security' were the slogans of Our treatment oflanguage m th e areas O J ' d D lh'
the day. Nevertheless, Nehru did appoint a Linguistic Provinces and East Punjab States Union), Himachal Pradesh, Bilaspur, an e 1
Commission in 1948 to consider the question of reorganization. The calls for some comment. Although languages were, by a nd Iarge,
commission's findings were considerably at variance with the pre- enumerated for other states of India according to the actual responses
independence position of Congress. Paragraph 125 of its report reads of those interviewed, m . the areas JUS· t na med that was not the . case.
the
as follows: Rather, 'As a result of the controversy over the langua_ge qu~stion, .
Linguistic homogeneity in the formation of new provinces is certainly figures for Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Pahari, and their various ~«:ts_[ s1~ I
attainable within certain limits bµt only at the cost of creating a fresh minority have been put together at the time of sorting under the headmg Hindi-
problem. More than half the Malayalam and Kannada speaking people are living Punjabi-Urdu-Pahari"... :16 While this linguistic merger by fiat may have
. Indian States, and only a little less than half of Telugu and Marathi speaking satisfied · the responsible authorities and denied proponents .".f a
in I are living either in Indian States or in Union Provinces from which they separate unilingual Punjabi-speaking state the statistical ammunition
peop e . . . · 'th
cannot be transferred to new linguistic provinces e1 er for Want of geographical
ti 'ty or want of their consent to be so transferred. These must remain, 14
Cited in Ram Gopal, Lingui.!tu: Affairs, P· 76 ·
c;~:Cor many years to come, outside the sphere of a linguistic province. Even 77
ain the limited areas o fthe umon,
· which can be made homogeneous lin gwst1uu,,,
. .__ ,., ::~!d., p. · d ' La a~••-1951 Census, Paper No. I, 1954. Part III, 'State Tables;
.....,nsus of In 1a, ngu 6 ' •1 d lh ''
Section Is, 'Punjab, PEPSU, Himachal Pradesh. B1 aspur an De , • p. I .

lfl'(il)
 N-'talYpndollllnlnlllngllalll ti ,
dlatllctdllln to,nthlld .._

I
•~',Ill
-dll1rlet•-•thll"
-
by
...
not ll)Oklllmojo,llr.
Ill . . .
........ d
bulil •

Nu,MrlcallypreclolNllllll...,..o1.
- the ,111e II ll)Oklll by_, llltolul9
majotttytAllledlllridflOIIUltllO"-

~ - A,Ntnot--'•*""-

Figure 3.6: Linguistic Minorities as Percentage ~f State Po ulation Figure 3. 7: Linguistic Minority Districts of India, 1951
in India, 1951" p
Note: "1951 data not tabulated; figure is based on recasting of 1961 data.
 . the Linguistic Reorgani zation of Indian St.ates 159
158 Language and Politics in India
factors i
0

with which to further their cause, the populations con cernM._ rtion of the 1951 population that we have classified as
Th~ pr~~nguistic minorities in India as a whole was 29.5 per cent,
J~
least, their more vocal spokesmen-were less than hap -~-:-Or,it
expedient employed by the census and, in the absence of 0 0 'With tht !JelongtnS . ally less than our 31 .7 per cent estimate for 1921, just after
6 onlyrnar~1.0 'tial espousal of the idea of linguistic provinces. And, as
could, within limits, concoct whatever figures they wished .al ~
eongress ~ni reatest concentrations of minority population were in
to their respective numerical strengths. But, irrespective f
in 19 21 : t portion of the country, where three large states, Madras,
?1ay have ~ublicly p~aimed, both groups probably had:~ at they
the peninsu: Hyderabad all had more than half their populations in
idea of their proporttons to the total population of each distri ly 80<ltl
Bomb~Y• an ups Rather sizeable and important minorities were also
region and it seems appropriate, therefore, to map the be t ctoftht . ntygro .
mino fi d in the northeast and northwest. Among the major states of
estimates for the time. This we have done by recasting the\;ssiblc
to ra ~;: so-called class A and clas:s stat~ of_ ~e 1950 Co_n stitution),
within the boundaries of the states and districts that existed as 0 / 1dati
95 In . Uttar Pradesh were linguistic mmonttes (exclusive 18 of those
G'IVen th e gen eral consistency
. · boundaries between 195 1 1·
o fd'istnct on~Y 1.0 Urdu as a mother tongue) of negligible importance. Surely,
1961 ~ut for the creation ~f two new districts in Himalayan Pun: claiming .
the situation in 1951 was o~e. which offered ~xce mg
ed' lyb d
roa scope
and Himachal Pradesh), this was an easy statistical operation. Th
for improvement in the political map ~f India. . . . .
we ~erive m~or~ty totals equivalent to 38.5 per cent of the popula~~ Notwithstanding the negative findings of the Lmgui_sttc :~VInces
(mamly 1:1nJabi speakers) in Punjab, 40.7 per cent (mainly Hindi Commission of 1948, demands for the establishment ofhngu1st1c sta~
speakers) m PEPSU, 23.0 per cent (mairlly Hindi speakers) in Hirnachal were not stilled. In 1953, following the dramatic fast unto death of Pott1
Pradesh and Bilaspur, and 16.9 per cent in Delhi. The sizable area of Sriramalu in support of the long frustrated demand f~r a Te~u_g u-
the Punjabi-speaking, predominantly Sikh minority in the northwest speaking Andhra state, Congress was forced to change its pos1uo~.
of Punjab, as constituted in 1951, stands out on the map. Andhra was carved out of Madras in October of that year; and, tn
. Els~~here, the formerly patchy tracts of Gujarati and Kannada response to the mounting flood of additional demands, a St~tes
mmontles that appeared on the 1941 map appear in 1951 as substantially Reorganization Commission was established in December to reconsider
greater areas in Bombay and Hyderabad; the Marathi minority area
of the old Central Provinces and Berar is expanded by the emergence the entire issue.
Some measure of the intensity of sentiment in regard to the linguistic
of the adjoining area of the same language in Marathwada, the
reorganization of India can be derived from the fact that between the
northw~stern _third of Hyderabad; new Hindi and Pahari minority areas time of its formation and the issuance of its report in October 1955,
appear m RaJasthan and Uttar Pradesh; the old Assamese minority
the new commission received some 152,250 documents in support of
area of the North-~t ~comes a majority area, while the Bengali area
or in opposition to specific changes, of which, it was estimated, perhaps
of Assam, reduced
. . m s1ze
. by territorial lossesoast
t E Pakistan, now
comes
be'b l · a mmonty
• region; and a number of sma , scattere , largely
ll d
over most of India; but in the key region of the northwest (Punjab, PEPSU, Delhi, Himachal
tn_ a mmonty areas appear on the map in what had reviousl been Pradesh and Bilaspore) Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Pahari were grouped together. Hence, to
prmcely states. 17 P y make the 1951 data of figures 3.6 and 3.7 most comparable to those for other c~nsus yea~,
we have combined various Rajasthani and Pahari mother t~ngues to mm ~ell' respective
17 In the 1951 census, the distinction between Western and Eas . . . . ted; speakers comparable to the groups so designated fo~ p~ev1~us ccn~uscs. Finally, we have
but Urdu and Hindustani were now, in most areas enum tern Hindi was eliJtUlll
Only a few thousand individuals retur~d I Bihari~ their ;rated separately from the former: retained Urdu, Hindustani, and Chhattisgarhi with Hindi, as in prcVlOUS maps, and, for the
th
°
claimed nearly a million speakers. 'Rajasthani,' forme 1 her tongue; while Chhattisgarhi
rY t e I f ill' was
sake of consistency have maintained thtir tquivalence in maps for I 961 and 1972.
. 11The princip~ reason for the increase fro~, 0.3 per cent to 2.7 per ccn_t in the proportion
recorded for only 645 ,000 persons, with a commensurate gr •~guage o m 10ns, .
Marwari , Mewari • Jaipuri (Dhundhari) and many oth er regional 111
~h the numbers declar1J18 of linguistic minorities in UP was that Pahari speakers, who were dominant over most o
I of the Himalayan districu , were counted separately from Hindi speakers in 1951, but not so ii
the three Pahari groups of previous censuses, Kumauni Garh . vernaculars. In P ace
' Wall N 1·1 d 1her 1931. Jn 1961 the distinction was retained; but in 1971 it was again supprcned.
mother tongues were separately enumerated. Punjabi was reta. ' epa , an many o
•ned as a separate language
 160 Language and Politics in India in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States 161
f actors
as many as 2,000 were 'well-consider d . ( ) the Central Provinces, renamed Madhya Pradesh, though
scope of this paper, it is not possible :o me~oranda:19 \Vi , a11d ~~tc~,d 4in the south by the loss of t~e associated ar~ of ~rar, ':as
recommendations
b. . of the com mission
. . Inconsider the detailthin ,1•~ di[Tl 1nts~all enlarged by its merger with three other Hmd1-speaking
mdmg and never fully implemented ·s ~ny_ event, they~ of !Iii substantl d:ya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh, and Bhopal; (5) Punjab was
largely
. in response to those recommend . ut' ce It to say that ier, llot states, M~ merger with PEPSU to form a second bilingual state, in
gomg beyond them, the Seventh Arn a tons, and in some n 1956, enl~rge!e y~indi majority and Punjabi minority do~inated in the
sweepingly reordered the nation'sepndm1· ~nalt to the Indian Constir~ which and north respectively; and (6) Travancore-Cochin was enlarged
·d . o 1t1c m T
they:
h»:..
consi _erations were not the sole basis£ ap. hough lin -~ sou th b ption of a portion of the Malabar coast of Madras to form
the a sor th b d
outweighed all other arguments. or the changes made, bY al Iarn-speaking state of Kerala. Elsewhere, ere were or er
the. M ayats and minor mergers, too numerous to mention, · almost all
. ~ong the principal outcomes of th adiustrnen
ehmmation of the categories of stat e 1956 reorganization was the . h l d to a significantly greater degree o fl"mgu1st1c
. . homogene1ty..
While a large proportion of the changes affected involved the trans £er
ofw hic e .
class C states either became • . es class A, B, and C. The S"'·"
I
arger, more viable units speakin th
union ternto · '
nes or were merged with
·~ ·re districts or groups of districts from one state to another, the
oenl
f t of instances in which
number . d1stncts
. . were partitioned
·· was suffi"
c1ent
former large princely states g e sa.n_1e language; and class BstatM
or states unions, h d d , ...,
were put on a par with the class A . ea e by ra;pramukhs, to establish a precedent for further such actions.
?Id major British provinces Th states'. which were formed from the Following states reorganization, for the first time in India's modem
institution of the rajpramukh . u~ with ~e clearing away of the history there was not a single state or province in the country in which
there was no longer any le al . , m e_ ect a relic of the ancien rtgimt, all linguistic minorities combined comprised more than half of the
in areas previously under g_ unl pedunent to territorial reorganization total population. Even in Bombay, where Gujaratis accounted for a
pnnce Yrule and th uld · third of the population, where immigrants from other areas to the
as was Mysore or totall . . eyco either be enlarged,
' Ye1immated as w th I . . .
h eterogeneous state of H d b as e arge but lingu1stically cosmopolitan metropolis of Bombay and other cities were particularly
continued to enjoy a s ~c~a ad. ~he ?ne former-princely state that numerous, and where tribal groups were also significant, the combined
Kashmir, b~cause of tf co~st1tut1~nal status was Jarnmu and minority total was only 49 per cent. 21 Other states with combined
accession to the Ind· e. exceptional cucumstances attending its minorities of over 40 per cent ( see Figure 3.8) were, in descending order,
Hence, the States Reo ian union
. .(on wh"ICh we shall not here elaborate). Jammu and Kashmir (mainly Punjabi), Rajasthan (mainly Hindi and
alterations of its boundar. 20rganization Co
mm 1·ss1on
·
never considered any not a problem), Punjab (overwhelmingly Punjabi), and Assam (Bengali
government continues ties. To the best of my knowledge, the central plus tribal languages), while in Mysore a diversity oflanguage groups
In regard to 1i·ngu1· t· o regard these boundaries as inviolate. collectively comprised more than a third of the population. In all other
s 1c reorgan · · . .
were as follows· (I) Andh ization, the prmapal changes of 1956 states the total of minority populations was significantly below the
the annexation ~f the Telura, :es;1e_d Andhra Pradesh, was enlarged by · national average of approximately 22 per cent.
(2) Mysore, as noted was :;1 P aking Telangana region of Hyderabad; Two territorial changes further altered the political map between
speaking areas ofHyderab dso enlarged by absorption of the Kannada· . 19 the date of states reorganization, and the taking of the subsequent
56,
a bilingual state, the Iar a •!'•fadras,~dBombay; (3) Bombay became . census in 1961. The establishment of the Naga Hills-Tuensang area in
region of the old pre ~de st m th e union, by the addition to the core 195 7, was the first of a series of concessions by the central government
s1 ency of twO M h"
Marathwada region of H d b
Provinces and Berar, and~ e;: arat i-speaking areas, the
ad ~d ~he Ber~r region of the Central
y e GuJarati-speaking states ofSaurashtra
.
to the political aspirations of tribal peoples in the far northeast of
!ndia. Though the linguistic differences of the highland Nagas from
he lowland Assamese were substantial, Nagaland, as the area became
19SRC,p.ii.

1l!SRC, p. 203. 21Schwartzbcrg, Historical Atlas, p. 10 1, map X.B.2.c.

 factors in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States 163
achieving statehood in 1963, could hardly be considered a
\al 0 wn
. on
. state; for, not on1Y d'dth
1 e many culturally related Naga tribes
Jingl.11su~ost of mutually incomprehensible languages, but they also
.-.eaJca d considerabl"
Sr· y into the umon
. temtory
. of Mampur,
· the North-
overlFapP;tier Agency ( established in 1954 ), and the republic ofBurma.
. . . o f Bornb ay mto
F,astThro second change, th e part1ttonmg . its larger
ara;i-speaking and a smaller Gujarati-speaking area, which became
Mah ashtra and Gujarat, respectively, created two more essentially
:tic states. Of the two, the former, in which the city of Bombay
lin~till more than half non-Marathi, retained something of its polyglot
wasture with minorities comprising nearly a fourth of the total population.
~ujar~t, however, where Gujarati speakers were now more than nine-
tenths of the total population, became one of India's most linguistically
homogeneous states. These changes are indicated on Figures 22
3.8 and
3.9, which are based on language data of the census of 1961.
Not counting the special case of Jammu and Kashmir and ignoring
the inconsequential differences between Rajasthani and Hindi in
Rajasthan, Punjab was, in 1961, India's only essentially bilingual state.
While, objectively, the differences between the Punjabi and the Hindi
spoken in that area were probably no greater than those between the
various Rajasthani and Hindi dialects of Rajasthan, the aforementioned
communal identifications of the two languages in Punjab, with a
resurgent Sikhism and with Hinduism, respectively, tended to magnify
the significance of whatever distinctions there were. Further, Punjabi
w~ now being increasingly written in Gurumukhi, the Sikh liturgical
script, rather than in the previously widely used Perso-Arabic or
LACCADIVE, MINICOY
&AMINDMIS.

EJ
17.0
10 t
• irt(.al
.711
Ii~:
22The 1961 treatment oflanguage is the most detailed and systematic of any Indian census.
. . • it. po ses a numb er o f d'1fficulties.
fr cvertheless
N . B1han
. . here re-emerges as a language separate
Hindi, :with 16.4 million speakers; but the spatial distribution of those speakers made
and :n~e,_s'.nce m?st speakers of the three principal Bihari vernaculars (Bhojpuri, Magahi,
- Uncen,used areas+ Sikkim aithih) continued to return Hindi as their mother tongue The various Rajasthani
vcp rndacul_ars, on the other hand, declined noticeably in relation to Hindi, while retaining their
re onunance
ton ei over most O f RaJas. th an. Chhattisgarhi, while still a widely claimed mother
no gu n eaSt ern Madhya Pradesh, is again grouped by the census with Hindi. Punjabi is
Figure 3.8: Linguistic Minorities as Percentage f S ow separate through out Ind'ia. And , p ah an· continues
, to encompass a congeries of dialects
Population in India °
• 1961
tate/Union Territory gr
haveuped underd more
comb" Bih thanU d half a d o_zen prm~p
· · al tongues. For the maps in this paper we
retainedRl~e h _ar I:th~ u, a nd Hm d ustam (now of negligible importance) with Hindi;
We differ fro aJasttham ' w1
th ,itsdnumerous
. . . local variants
· as a separate language (m• which
· regard
A.sia)• and com b'eaud allors n..hecmon
. m the. 1961 Ianguage maps of A Htstonca1Atla5
• • of South
' m me n• an vernacu1ars other than Nepali.
 in the Lingui stic Reorgani zation of Indian States 165
f acto rs
i the national script employed for Hindi. In the face of an
pevanaga~;ing Sikh demand for a 'Punjabi Suba,' the government
ever-rnoueded. In 1966 Punjab too was partitioned. The overwhelmingly
fi~a1:ua:ountainous regions, in which both Hindi and various West
J-I!Oari languages were most comm~nly_spoken were tr~nsferr~d to
~h hal Pradesh, which was then raised m status from umon temtory
j-Jirnac. and on the larger plains area, the mainly Hindi-speaking districts
to state,
. •
TJoshiarpur, . had a near fifty-fifty language split)
which . were
(rninus.,
ed off to form the new state of Haryana. Between Haryana and the
car::cated Punjab, the city of Chandigarh was established as a new
tru
nion territory to serve as a cap1t · al,:1or b o th'its ne1g
· hbo unng
· states.
u All subsequent changes in the political map of India have taken
place in the North-East. Most of these related to tribal concerns. Among
those concerns linguistic distinctiveness was but one aspect of a wide-
ranging cultural cleavage between the indigenous, mainly highland
populations, and the mainly lowland Assamese and Bengalis, After the
previously noted creation of a Naga state, the next new tribal territory
to be established was Meghalaya. Instituted in 1970 as an 'autonomous
hill state' in the area in which the Khasi and Garo tribes were
predominant, it attained full state status in January 1972. At the same
time, the North-East Frontier Agency and the Mizo Hills districts of
Assam, respectively, became the union territories of Arunachal Pradesh
and Mizoram, while Manipur and Tripura, both union territories since
1956, were proclaimed full-fledged states. The most recent alteration

- ;~lnantlanguageol
;.:::Ry
N from Iha! of alale/11.T.
PNdomlnant language ot
t 0 ~ th e map, India's annexation of Sikkim in 1975, had nothing to do
wi th the internal linguistic politics of India. Nevertheless, the fact that
~e d?m~ant linguistic group within Sikkim had, because of prolonged
1:migration, become Nepali, a Hindu group rather different from
- by"that
la not apohn an of,·~··
..........•·• but
-
Numencally Predo lbaoluta majority. t ~~older_ B~ddhist Lepcha ruling community, was obviously not

----.,. ,~
lllla/U, T. ,. •Pol< mlnant language of~

('\
of the dlatrfct en by an ab9olute maJ«IIY 6 out s1gmficance.
··,
A l>OPUlallon. ,
. Fi~~es 3.10 and 3.11 indicate the situation in regard to linguistic
minorities as of 1972 .23 .. vve
, h ave proJected
· the census date of 1971 to
-
2
3Th I 971 census presents 8 set of language tables that is substantially simpler than
any previc
Figure 3.9: Linguistic Minority Districts o f I ndia,
. 1961 • d' and
n1n ous enumeration. since .1881. Bihari, Ra,·asthani , and Pah ar1· arc a11 groupc:u -~ WJ'th
0
"crnacu)
I• we
U arc not provided .with
, separate
. figures for any ofth cm or fo rth cir · consutucnt
·
th ough iars. rdu, asoncofJnd1a
. . , s offic1al. languagcs, contt' nu csto be separat ely enumcratcu
-~
'W n our maps 11 1s combined, agam, with Hindi D · . . '
-~n, howlanguage.
as enumerated as a dialect of Punjabi, now appears a~ a -paratc ever, which prcVtously
 N\llftlllCIIIY ...... cl
dll1rlddllllrl"°"'lllltclltlla'U·T.

dll1rld II 111M 111111 cl llllgUIVI

NumertcallY .-,U.l~cl '
II not spobt'I by 111 ablolull fflliolitY.
NumtriCIIIY~..,...ot
-.KSHDWEEP !hi 1\1191\l,T. II apoMI\ bf Ill ablolull 6
fflliOrltY of the dlltrlCl populllloft-
18.1 ,.,...notcentUM11+Pklffi.
•
-

Figure 3.11: Linguistic Minority Districts of India, 1972

Figure 3.10: Linguistic Minoriti
Populati:nasm
· Plerdc~ntage of State/Union Territory
n 1a, 1972
 . the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States \69
168 Language and Politics in India factors in
that year so as to take account on our maps of the few s b
changes noted above, though, obviously, the differences be~ sequent ,., A 1 PROVINCES OF BRITISH INDIA
A 192v-- ·
and 1972 can hardly be regarded as consequential. We now een 1971 40
(Figure 3.10) in which only the North-East remains a region:~ lllap 40
heavy concentrations of linguistic minorities at the state or t v~ry
territorial level, in some instances more than 50 per cent (s6 union 30
in Nagaland) . Additionally, Jammu and Kashmir and :rcent
(su bsequently renamed Kamataka ) retam . th e heavy concentrat·Ysore 30
. d .
th at were noted m the census of 1961 as oes Goa, which India annexedions
20
in December of that year. At the district level (Figure 3.11 ), almostalJ
of the areas in which the combined linguistic minorities constitute
more than half the population are predominantly tribal. And, apan
10
from the North-East, Jammu and Kashmir, and Himachal Pradesh,
every such district occupies an interstitial boundary position between
the areas dominated by two or, in a few instances, three of the major,
official languages of India.
Figure 3.12 indicates the extent to which the linguistic 1g~::\~::,:•::~~:-:•:•::2;··· ·:;~ ... :3~ .. ·,;2 '34 '36 '38 '40
L1Jili;Bill:8~~~~~~~~0
reorganization of provinces in pre-independence British India and
of states and union territories in the post-independence period has
reduced the proportion of the total population living as linguistic B 1950-72 STATES AND UNION TERRITORIES
minorities in their respective areas. The top half of the graph covers ----.----,---~O~F~T~H~E~R~E~P~U~B~L~IC:O::::_F-rlN.:.:.ID=-AT_1-,1'140
the period from 1920, the year of the initial Congress resolution in 40~
support of linguistic provinces, to the census year 1941. Because
World War II and preparations for independence precluded any
30
further change, there was no point in carrying the graph further. 30 29.5
The amount of change registered in this entire period was modest,
coming almost entirely in the year 1936, when Orissa and Sind
provinces were created. The minor change shown for 1937 resulted
from the separation of Burma from India. The entire period
witnessed a decline from 31.7 per cent to 28.3 per cent. The lower
half of the graph covers the period from 1950, by which time the
absorption of princely states and the adoption of a constitution
again made linguistic reo~ganization a realistic policy option, to
19 72, the year of_ the_ last mt~rna~ t~rritorial changes. The period
registered a decline m the hngu1st1c minority population from B:i.8iZ!illilli:;i;i;:.8:i;:8;8:J~~~~~,;w..,.:~C
29.5 per cent to only 16.5 per cent (some 96 million persons at the 1950 '52 '54 '56 '58 '60 '62 '64 '66 '68 •10
72
1971 census).
. . . . L' · tic Minoriti1
Figure 3.12: Proportion of Indian Population m mgws

a_
 . •stic Reorganization of Indian States 171
l 70 Language and Politics in India . n the Lmgu1
factors , . ns of from, roughly, 0.5 to 1.6 million (1 ~7_1) .
FACTORS CoNSIDERED
. F,ast with popula~~wever, that the political expedie~cy of g1vmg
The factors that weighed most heavily in the minds of de • . North uld have argued: the North-East entailed strategic and o_thcr
. th 1· . . . . fl d" . c1s1onlll•L oneCO cal sentiment m •ff t from those in which previous
m e mgmsttc reorgamzation o n 1a vaned considerabl fro ""<II
in to _1 ;erations quite _d_1 :r~:d been made. Elsewhere, it was ~ot
pre- to the post-independence period, and within the la~ rn~ ,ons1 . ally based decision . . ed that Haryana came into being
from one year to another. Since the British were not beholder !>enOd · 5uc . b was paruuon , th
!in~' 966 when PunJa 10 million in 1971) that was smaller an
electorate for their power, they operated in a political conten to~
~til 1 Po;ulation (just ov~r ter the situation changed again ~hen
diffe~ent from that ?f the ruli~g Congre~ ~arty after 1947. F:~:lt with a ' . and five years .a. ) s elevated from a union territory
they issued no manifestos calling for administrative reform th ,as Assam s, desh (3.5 m1lbon wa
• eycould . achal Pra . .
not be called on, as was Congress, to be as good as their word . I{un . .thin proposed lingwsuc
conceding ~e de~ands ~f m~jor _linguistic groups. Congress, on th~ to a;:t~egree of linguistic ho~or:e;::: to be weighed in any
other ?and, mher_1te_d a situation m 1947 in which rapid change Was inces or states was certa; ~ritish would have regarded as the
unavmdable and, m its response to such change, it had to demonstratt prov anization decision. Wha~ e f m;"'orities is impossible to judge
considerable flexibility. In the following paragraphs, we shall consider reorg bl oportton o w d 20 3 er
maximum allowa e pr . a and Sind ( 14.0 per cent an . p
a number of factors that were considered during the course of from the lone examples of 0~1ssthe concern on this matter, expr~d
reorganization over the period since 1920.
cent, respectively); but, dt::t; 948 Report of the Linguistic Provinces
Foremost, perhaps, among the factors to be taken into account,is . the quoted passage o . ·n 1956 and subsequently,
that any proposed linguistic state had to have a population and an
10
bl' of India was, 1 .•
Commission, the Repu IC . tence of rather sizable minonttes.
economic base large enough to make it viable. In the pre-independence obviously willing to tolera:e ~e :~inant group throughout all or
period one could argue that the requisite threshold was around four so long as there was c ear y osed new linguistic state. Thus,
million persons, which was the population of Sind in 1936, when, virtually all of the tern~ory o_f a p~t-u al states of Bombay and
despite prior British declarations as to its unviability, that area finally leaving aside the two mte?tion~ Y ; :~e linguistic minorities in
attained provincial status. But, as we have seen, population alone was Pun1·ab as they were constituted m 1 5 ' 35 per cent of the
' fM
not a sufficient criterion for being accorded such status; for there were the then expanded state O yso re came to some , area was in a sense,
a number of other areas considerably more populous and at least as . th fact that Mysore s ' .
total populat10n. Of course, all f, r of its neighbouring
economically developed as Sind in which aspirations for provincial determined by decisions made 10 regai:d t~ . ou inority proportion
status were never recogniud. 1
. states precluded any possibility of bnng~? :f:en higher limits, at
Since independence, the importance of the population factor much below that figure. But the acceptabi ity d .d nt by the 1972
obviously changed with the passage of time. While a number of rather least in the tribal states of the North-East, is ma e eVl e
small and/or not very populous class C states were recognized by the
figures for both Nagaland and Me_ghala~. the uestion of how
1950 Constitution, these were entirely eliminated or relegated to the
Related to the preceding consideration was q be left out of
status of union territory by the States Reorganization Act of 1956, . li ngms · ti c grou p would havethto areas where
many persons of a given
after which the least populous state (except for Jammu and Kashmir, a proposed province or state if it were to include o~y oser a ars to
whose status was inviolate) was Assam, with a 196 I population of 11.9 that group was in a majority. As we have seen, this facto . ppe. 'ty
million inhabitants. In 1963, however, when Nagaland (whose
have been important to many TeIugu-spe akers ·m the Tamil-maJon . rtant
population in 1961 was less than 400,000) became a state the situation
was radically altered; and in the subs~quent eleven year; a number of areas of pre-independence :-1adras and maychi~ave dbeenda: :~~gis of
reason h Andhra province was never a eve un e d
additional, mainly tribal or largely tribal states Were established in the the Bri:s{;milarly, the large number of Gujaratis in Bombay an
 1 72 Language and Politics in India in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States 173
f actors
other Deccani cities who would have been ,·s I d . ·t districts, the former becaus~ of concerns about Tamil
of G · · o ate fr
UJaratl speakers if Maharashtra state h d om the rnaj flla) 0 r! '. the latter because of fear m regard to mounting anti-
1956 was certainly a factor in the decision t a co_me into existen chauvinis_m, Undoubtedly, 'other cases of similar caste concerns could
Bombay. Ultimately, however in the two o ret~m a bi1in01,.1 stance~ arah!tlan1sm- . .
d All such cons1derat1ons, h owever, appear to have been ad
· ·1 ' cases cit d o"4! It
s1m1 ar_co~ce~ns may have been expressed, the i e and others Whtrcl. be add~ce · edient; so generalizations are difficult.
the maJontanan principle. ssue Was decid , hoc an e"!'nts in respect to the economic and social backwardness
Th r Cdon M~u!ll areas were not infrequently advanced as justification either
_e sa iency of the differences between th I
areas is obviously important, thou h diffi e anguages of adjoin• ofvariou\ng the establishment of specific new units (for example,
noted that the objective differences\etw culthto quantify. We -~g f~r ;p~:; to 1936) or for merging certain units with others, sometimes
spoken . Pu . b een t e Hindi d """' SIIl p - e of the linguistic problems that such mergers would create.
m nJa prior to its partition in 1966 h an Punjabi
or even less than those between the dial may . av~ been no greater irrespecthe1iv SRC recommended the absorption . of all class C states,
then spoken in Rajasthan But b efcts of Hmd1 and Rajasthani ThUS, . th . . . l 'ghbo .
except for Delhi and Manipur, mto e1r pnnc1pa ~e1 urtedmg
Jin . . . , ecause o the comm al
gu1st1c question the former diffi I un nexus of !hi 24 That recommendation, however, was never fully implemen .
to th Sikh , erences oomed as im sta s. arguments occasionally ran the other w~y. In a note append~d
auttethe
e s, while the·Iatter did not portant,atleast
concern; consequently the fact th appear to be a matter for major to the SRC, S. Fazl Ali argued that precisely because of its
Rajasthan's populatio~ as bel . at we recorded 43.5 per cent of backwardness-among other reasons--Himachal Pradesh should be
( . I H' . ongmg to minority I protected from a merger with Punjab, whose more enterprising
mam y md1-Urdu) is not indicaf f . ~nguage groups
reorganization. On the oth h d IVe o a senous desire for linguistic population, he suggested, would exploit the mountain region in ways
·11· er an the sudden . 25
m1 ionsofspeakersofMa'th'li M' . emergence m l961of that would not be in the best interests of the local people. And we
nd
the census as dialects ofBi~a : d~g~, a Bhojpuri, all grouped by may note in passing that, even in well-established linguistic states,
solidly Hindi-speaking s n, m istncts that were previously almost separatist movements of relatively backward, historically distinct
, uggests that the . .
diffierences is a barometric ph enomenon andperception th t .
of linguistic regions, such as Telangana and Berar, in Andhra Pradesh and
no pro b !ems are thought t O . . a , even m areas where Maharashtra respectively, have posed serious and occasionally bloody
t
Recognition of this prospect i ehXIS , th eu emergence is possible.
. th sw atmayhavel 'dbehi dth .. threats to the government.
m e 1971 census to consolid t th ai n . e decmon Perhaps the principal areas in which economic and social
Bihari, and Pahari and to suppra e e returns for Hindi, Rajasthani, backwardness has inhibited serious consideration of the establishment
• h ess totally the e . .
m t ese and other mother to numeration of dialects of new linguistically distinctive states or union territories are those of
rd
official 'languages' of India nhgudes. (U u, however, as one of the
' a to conti b d predominantly tribal population to the south of the Gangetic Plain.
separately, from Hindi.) nue to e enumerate While some of these areas are linguistically quite mixed (for example,
Apart from purely linguistic consider f10 . . most of the Chhota Nagpur) others are relatively homogeneous (for
did, from time to time enter into d . . a ns,.other ethnic factors example, the hilly Santai tracts of the Santai Parganas, the Gond tracts
' ec1s1ons in
of new provinces and states. The dominant! reg~rd to the creation of Bastar, and the Bhil tracts of the southern Aravallis). Only a few of
population of Sind, the attainment ofa Sikh Y Mushm make-up of the
majo · · th e scattered predominantly tribal areas are large or populous enough
truncated area of Punjab, and ,the racial a d nty m the post-1966 to be represented on Figure 3.11; but if that figure were drawn on the
of the tribal states of North-Eastern India are
n cases•
cultural distinctiveness
. basis of subdistrict data (by subdivision, tahsil, or taluk) the tribal
seems to have played a role. Telugu-speaki •~ pomt. Caste too
predominantly Tamil districts of Madras op;: c;ltivating castes in 24
SRC, pp. 203-4 and 67-202, passim.
':> f Andhra as did both Tamil and Telugu-speakin seB tbe establishment
g raJun ansm. Telugu· 25
SRC, pp. 238--243.

fi Aln
 Language and Politics in India . guistic Reorganization of Indian States 175
174 ·n the Lm
factors t • by
ered Kannada speakers m 1951 54 per
areas would loom much larger and occupy several sizable . outnu mb ld ·
astride district and state boundaries. terl'Jtoriti u speaJ<ers of the total population. But, because the g~ mmes
rel gu 21 per cent d I ped by Mysore government capital, were
The differences between these tribal areas just noted and th ,eotthtot district
.
w
ere eve o ·can
. .ty from Mysore, and were economi y more
northeast India are substantial. In the North-East, the cultural osc 0/ of ared by hydroelectncth1 an toward Andhra, the States Reorganization
I ...owe d Mysore • · d ·
between the tribal and the dominant plains population ten~~ r-.rieote d towar
much deeper than in other parts of India, where most of the~ be , ommen d a t'io n that the district be mamtame l .m
o mmission s rec d 26 A rather different situation led to an a te~auon
were Hinduized in varying degrees (including those who '.bah

::~~~:om
CO ore was followe . en al-Bihar boundary. Because the cre~uo~ of
... ) d h.
converte d to Ch nst1amty an many ave given up their tr'b
sinct
languages. The proportion of Christian converts among the triba1
the North-East is much higher than elsewhere, as are the local ra~
1
0
::t
~ys part of the West B g
pakistan led to
tion of the three districts of DaIJeehng,
the rest of West Bengal~ a small part
Jalpaiguri, and ~oPumea district was transferred from Bihar to cre~te
1
literacy, which are among India's highest. Thus, the concessions gran~ of Hindi-speaking the two portions of West Bengal. Oth~r ~pe:ial
to the highly politicized, well-educated tribal elites of the North-f.ast_ a corridor between do with the efficient management of rrngauo~
though possibly made primarily on the basis of political considerations circumstance~ had ~:n of commerce, and the like. Space doe~ not permit
that have little to do with their social advancement-do not systems, the or~entati h local details; but the two cases c1~ed s~ould
automatically establish precedents for more backward tribal regions a full accountmg of_su~f the issues confronting the admimstra~o~ of
elsewhere. In any event, the once vociferous demand for a tribal state, suggest the ~ompl~ty th eriod leading up to the great reorgaruzauon
Jharkhand, in Chhota Nagpur, has received little outside support and India, especially during e p
appears, for the time being, to be moribund. of I 956. h f the States Reorganization Commission
Several purely geographic factors came into play in the reorganization The general approac o
of Indian provinces and states. In Figure 3.3 we directed attention to was succinctly stated in their own report:
one that appears to have figured prominently in the decisions to . . from region to region. It has to be kept
The problems of reorgamzation vary . .cal linguistic geographical,
establish Sind and Orissa provinces within British India, namely, the in mind that the inter-play for centuries of hi:r1 ~ems in different regions.
distance of certain linguistic groups, the Sindhis and Oriyas, from the economic and other factors has produced pee ar pa
capitals of the provinces to which they were attached and the Each case, therefore, has its own bac~gro_u nd . m lex that it would be
commensurate difficulty in administering their territories effectively. Besides, the problems of reorgam~uon are~o co ~e have, accordingly,
Because these were the only two such difficult cases and b.ecause of unrealistic to determine any case by a single tes~ one.... text and arrived at
improvements in transportation and communication after 1936, this . 'ts and in its own con
examined each case on its own men all f circumstances and
distance factor was probably not again of major significance. Other conclusions after taking into consideration the tot ty 0
concerns that were relatively important in the pre-independence period, on an overall assessment of the soIuuons· proposed'·
27

but of little consequence after 1950--by which date the integration of

the princely states was completed-were the discontiguity of several SCOPE FOR FUTURE CHANGE
population groups in the ~rovi?~s of B~itish India and the peculiar
. . . . I d' t the state level totalled
shapes that proposed new lm~1st1c pro~~ces might have on account As noted the 1ina11istic mmont1es m n ia a Whil
, o- ) f the 1971 census. e
of the haphazard interpenetration of Bnt1sh and princely territories. roughly 96 million persons (16.5 per cent as O h still
Finally, we may note that there were a n~ber oflocaI circumstances one might suppose from that figure that there was t en
that led to clear deviatio~s fro~ th e h~guistic principal in the
rearrangement of boundaries, particularly m the post-independence 26
SRG, p. 93.
27
period. In Kolar district of Mysore state (now KarnataJca) for example, SRC, p. 66.
 176 Language and Politics in India in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States 177
f actorS
considerable scope for further political reorga • . •milation will reduce minorities faster than new migration
th r . ntzation tha
e case; ,or, as Figure 3.11 shows, the numb f ' tisn 11 whether ass1
lin~uistic minorities account for more than ha:/;e districts ; ~ sweIIs theirdranks.
large and very varied subset of minorities would include
A seconho are the descendants o f migrants
· who settIed m
· part1cu
· la r
qmte small, collectively they account for £ewe r th an 26 population
· -~
IS~
gro_ups w ny generations, if not centuries ago. Among such groups
(· 4.7I per cent). And, if one excludes from th · million
me ud mg ' Bom bay, m · which· the principal Ian e group the six · di...,_' regions;~e Muslim speakers of Urdu outside the Hindi-majority
than an absolute majority was the same as thgua~e group, tho;l.1!, would ~o numbered as many as 12.4 million according to the 1971
states, w
. various Telugu-speaki ng cu Iuvatmg
. . castes wh o are ,oun
r dm.
state (for example, Marathi in both Bomba e pr~ncipalgroupio:
are left with districts containing fewer thany;;ee:~~ashtra), lit cen:~~iable numbers in virtually all districts of Tamil Nadu and many
!>enons ~~arnataka; Marwari and other ~rading castes over_ many ~~ -of
the per cent). While
(2.7 r
this small remaining area an d popul million
ti d'a• Lambadi and other so-called gypsy' castes ofRaJasthant ongin,
greatest scope ,or change, under certain forese . a on offen
Inho1 are
' probably more than a m illi'on strong m
· th e Deccan; an d perhaps
others mi_ght also be considered. eable crrcumstan((s,
w manY as 200,000 Anglo-Indians scattered throughout India. This set
Allowmg for population growth in Ind. . .
acceleration in the rate of interstat . ia_smce 1971 andforaslig1it : minorities, like the one previously discussed, cannot be diminished
minority ul . e m1grat1on, the present !in . significantly by further states reorganization and it has already shown
milli ~p atto~-again at the state level-is probably cl 8UJSti: its marked resistance to assimilation. Its size, therefore, will remain
on an would mdude several rather distinct ose to 121
largest, probably more than a third f th ~horts. Of these, the large for the foreseeable future.
and their still incomplete! as . il o e total, are mterstate rnigran~ Probably third in size among the groups of linguistic minorities,
descendants. The 1971 y s1m ated second- and later-generation and possibly second-depending on the extent of census bias in the
. . census enumerated l I9 . . direction of under-enumeration-are India's tribals. Although the 1971
res1dmg in states in wh' h th near y million persoDJ
h Ic ey were not bo ( 'th all census enumerated 38 million persons as members of scheduled tribes.
c anges in state boundaries) of wh ~n . w1 owances for
urban areas with parti h om 11 million were residents of the number reported as speaking any one of the scores of tribal
, cu1ar1y eavyconce t . . ,
cosmopolitan cities 2a Of th n rations rn the larger, mort languages was less than 19 million. 29 Of the tribal languages, five
· e nearly 7 6 .11 • accounted for more than a million each. Santali, 3.8 million; Bhili/
rural areas (2.9 milli'on ma! d · mi ton migrants resident in
esan 47 ill' · ·
that most travelled only short d' · m ion females), we can assume Bhilodi, 3.4; Gondi, 1.7; Kurukh/Oraon, 1.2; and Mundari/Munda,
betw: istances main! ul f 1.1. Six others exceeded 300,000, a figure which is noteworthy because
een two places situated in dose ' . . Yas a res to marriage,
not all of the urban group moved . proximity ~o a state border. Wjlile it corresponds to the approximate number of Lushais/Mizos, the
other than their own (consider a ~:to states ~th majority languages dominant group in Mizoram, the smallest tribal union territory. (Not
most undoubtedly did; but a smalle:C fro?1 Bihar to Uttar Pradesh), included among the six other tribal groups, however, were the Mizos
of the rural group, would have be fraction, possibly less than half themselves or the half million Khasis, who also constitute a locally
by virtue of migration. Of cour <:°me part of a linguistic minority dominant group in the state ofMeghalaya.) Thus, if India were willing
'ob I · se, mterstat · to accede at some future date to the wishes of increasingly politicized
} s as P antat1on work, mining, and the _e migration to such rural
move to a new language area. The . . like would often involve a tribal groups of appreciable size, by establishing for them states or
don ead mm1strattvely
· · · to reduce theresize
•IS of
v1rtuall Ynothing that can be
th . .
will , of course, have an effect; but, in the ne ~minority.Assimilation 29
Calculated by the author from data in Census of India 1971, Series I, Part 11-c (i), Sod,1/
. ar ture, it is questionable ""d Cultural Tables (Delhi: Controller of Publications, 1977). Union Table C-V-B, 'Speakers
28C.K. Mehrotra, Birth P/aa Migration in Ind' oflanguages ... other than those, specified in Schedule Vlll to the Constitution of India', PP·
No. I (N= Delhi: Office of the Registrar Gener':i<;;usofindia, _ •5pcc,aJMonograp
• n ••• 1974),p, 1971 . h 63--86. The total for all non-Schedule VIII (i.e., non-official) 1anguagea.in 1971 was 25,4 milllon.
26

GQ
 179
178 Language and Politics in India .n the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States
factors t
union territories of their own al . . •fit were to be combined with the adjoining linguistically
tribal regions of the Soviet Uni~n othng the model of the aut0 ..npuJauon, '. ts of Kinnaur and Lahul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh
o J · • e proportio f noll! r- ·1ar distrJC . would be nearly doubled and
P pu anon could be significantly red d . no minoriti . olll siJ11 1 Buddhist), its population
ma t 'bal h uce It is q . CSIJJUit 1
. ny r'. s w o have given up their tribal ian u1te likely tao (aJso. large Y d
'J'tY enhance ,
m_ or adJacent to tracts in which those Ian guage, but who still~ its viabi 1 other territorial mergers that would reduce the proportion
Severa
d' , 1population an d area m . 1mgu1st1c
. . . mmontJes
. . . suggest
w1~h to be a part of any contemplated rr:;ges ~redominate 1iVr
units, however, would be difficult. The . un1ts. Setting upWould ;3 of In 5
5
The most important, potentially, would be a merger of
surel! arise; but even greater obstaclesq;:u~~n oftheirviabilityw: themse ;';helmingly Bengali district of Cachar in Assam with the
the tnbal areas south of the Gangetic plain are ;re: from the fact that th ~ ovet prepanderantly Bengali-speaking state ofTripura. That would
scattered, situated on rather poor land ' o~ e mostpart,small, adJulace~n 'ridding Assam of more than a million Bengalis, whose large
other infrastructure 30Furth . 'and deficient in transpon .., restbers in the state are presen · t1 y a maJor
· source of gnevance
' to th e
· et m manylocaI' · ...
are intermixed while . th ' . . itJes various tribalgro "u:nese-speaking majority. It would also make Tripura into a more
. , m o ers, immigrant n 'bal . ups
acquired possession of much of wh t 1· l on-tn Hindus havt ~ble economic unit. Similarly, most of the Darjeeling district of West

obstacles in the way of satisfyi t

combination, these problems mi ht a ft itt e good land there is. /n
o ~n prove to be insuperabk
Yet another subset ofm. _n_g ture tribal territorial aspirations.
;engal could be merged wi~ Sikkim as in both 3:e~ the principal
language spoken is now Nepali. (A small part of DarJeeling would have
to be retained by West Bengal to maintain a road and rail link to its
Jin . montJes are the handful of izabl
gwstic groups who occupy com act
of new linguistic states might be
than a million Tulu speak .
r -~ . . s e, non-tribal
m which the establishment
deas1 le. These would include more
other two northern districts.) Finally, Goa might be slightly expanded
to both the north and south by adding on adjacent taluks ofKarnataka
and Maharashtra that have a Konkani-speaking majority. (It is not
ersman nearSo th.Ka d'
coast ofKamataka and more than a . . u nara 1strict on the possible to ascertain from the published data if, in fact, there are any
group in the Jammu region of J million speakers ofDogri, the largest such taluks, ,though it seems likely. The I 971 Census indicates that
was, until 1961, classified as d 'alammu and Kashmir. Although Dogri there are 600,000 and 300,000 Konkani speakers in Karnataka and
Sikh . a J ect of Puni b . . . like
maJority of Punjab would . h ,a 1, It is un ly that the Maharashtra respectively, in addition to the 600,000 in Goa, but data
area of Jammu annexed to p ':15b to ~ave the predominantly Hindu
d un1a on lmgu.1 . bytaluks are not available.)31
o so would then again make th st1c grounds, because to Finally, there are the minorities speaking major languages of India
own state. It seems not unlikel th em; c~mmunal minority in their situated along the state borders in districts or smaller administrative
authorities upgraded Dogri to ~e sat at is the reason why the census units, that, despite reorganization, have remained-like Kolar district
If the Government ofindia-possi:t~ofa language in its own right. in Karnataka-with a particular state despite the fact that the largest
accord on Jammu and Kashmir with ;aki er th e conclusion ofa lasting
st part of their population speaks a language of a neighbouring state.
that state on linguistic grounds it se ~-were ever to partition Because of the unavailability of data below the district level, it is very
'd ' ems quire likd th
cons1 er a previously mooted suggesti Y at it would also difficult to estimate how numerous these border-area minorities might
ofLadakb, which is culturallyand lin gu1st1cally ~n _for a new union territory
. . be; but several million would appear to be a reasonable guess. The Tdugu-
th e rest of the state (and more than 50 quite different frotn speakers of Kolar alone were 1.25 million in 1971; and, a strong case
however, is very thinly settled, with h:r ~ent Buddhist). Ladakh, could now be made for transferring much, if not all, of that district to
re Y more than 100,000
'°Ar~ of India, a l .the subdistrict level (subdivisions h . Andhra Pradesh.
than 50 ~r cmt tm·L-' ... rn pop uJanon,
• though not necessaru ' ta •ils: and tal uk.s) that are mort
sp«kins tribal J.ansuasn. an indicated in Schwartzberg («D WJ!h '? u than 50 per
0
ct/If 31 The Konkani language is not to be confused with the Konkani dialect of Marathi,
vi4, plate XIII. C 3, p. I 43. . 'A Htstorica/ Atlas ofSouth which was not separately enumerated at the 1971 census.
 180 Language and Politics in India factors in the Linguistic Reorganization of Indian States 181

. If all the possible changes suggested dia is a vast country, ~th a l'?pulatio? now_( 1983 e~tin:iate) ?n
•m~l~mented-a most unlikely prospect- above Were aq that 1~ of 725 million, 32 Discounting the nme uruon terntones. with
India s P
. opulation in linguist·1c mmonties
. . . the 1present proport10_ual!y the or b~~ed population of not more than 10 million, India's twenty-
65
pro bably be reduced by not more th 3
territorial shift one might reco mmen and would
, . . per cent nof
or 4 per cent, bed
a ,orn :es have an average population of 32.5 million, while the most
. useWould
an. rwo ~;~us state, Uttar Pradesh passed the hundred million mark before
portion
th of the population from m1· ·ty
non to m · . not only shift -,,
SOJ!J poPtaking of the 1981 census. Thus. Indian states, on average, are more
. e same time, shift those formerly in the m . ?Jonty status,1bu1, c tbe uJous than all but twenty-twO countries in the world (not counting
tnto ~ino~ity status and would leave certai::::J (at the state lev,;; :dia itself), while UP alone is more populous than all but China, the
;:ust1c minority groups virtually unaffected Th and lower ranking USSR, the USA, Indonesia, Brazil, and Japan. Some observers feel that
o . e ~f~rementioned polyglot district of JG I . . us, _to take the case states of this size are too large and too populous to administer
mmont1es (non-Kannada speakers) tot:1:~mwhichalllinguistic
1971 population, its transfer to Andhra p d h
Telugu majority, would reduce th
:6
per cent of the
. ra ~s ' ecause of its small
effectively and that, as the role of government expands, smaller states
will better be able to respond to the diverse local needs of the people.
The most carefully thought-through proposal (complete with map)
45 per cent. . e mmonty ,proportion to onfy that I have seen for a radical reorganization of India with these
To the best of the author's knowled . ., considerations in mind is that of Professor Rasheeduddin Khan, who

a: t
no strong demand anywhere . I d " ge, there is at the present time advocated the establishment of a federal system based on fifty-nine
the ·political map on essential~ ia _fo~ further reorganization of 'socio-cultural sub-regions.' In his words, a stage in India's political
thought on the government's o:°gu1~t1c grounds and no serious
development: ·
for new territorial un1·ts, h p making-further changes. Demands
owever. often' wh ... has nc;>w ar.rived in which we have to go from large, administratively
groups with a sense of eth . , d" . em_erge enformerlybackward
linguistic or other criter · mcb 1stmct1veness-whether·baseion unwieldy, politically troublesome and economically unequal though
1a- ecome r · ·· d
a d ministrative recognition of th . . _P 0 _1t1c1ze ·•ahd press for linguistically homogeneous States to a more rational reorganisation based
politicization is often a co t
eir diS mctiveness, The process of on the principles of techno-economic viability, socio-cultural homogeneity,
nsequence of th d , and administrative and political manageability, This would restore a balance
(for example, the Christian lead h' e•e ucation of a new elite
. . . ers Ip of the t .b.al N , d between the federating States and the Centre and would made planned growth
M 1zos, m that order of their em n agas, Khas1s, an
more feasible. 33
relative social and economic d e~ge~ce ), and/or of the perception of
epnvation It , th
to foretell what the future holds for as ethn ,' is, erefore, very difficult While it is not my place to endorse this or any other proposal for the
as India. It certainly appeared, judgin ~ca11y heterogeneous a country further territorial reorganization of India and while I find certain
census, that there was an emergence of g om the returns in the 1961 specifics of the proposed scheme questionable, I believe that it and
.
M agah1, an
d BhOJpun
, fr or~-
. speakers in Biha sense --r~ ..tenes.sofMai
•thiJi',
other such thoughtful proposals that might be advanced are worthy
speakers of north-central India and i:'" om the great mass of Hindi of serious attention.
author if strident demands by one or mwould not have surprised the
th Po llEx_trapolated from a figure of 714 million given by Population Reference Bureau, World
own linguistic states had followed in the :~s:f ose groups for their
pu ~t1on Data Sheet, 1982 (Washington, D.C.: PRB, I 982).
has not yet happened, at least not to any si .quent decades. But that S 3 Raahecduddin Khan, 'Federal Nation-building in India: The Regional Dimension', in
016
There is, however, one other importanf ~nt degree. · Manzoor Alam and G. Ram Reddy (eds), Sodo-Economu: ~lopment, Problems in South
drastically affect the political map of India an':~s~deration that might and Southeast Asia, Papers and Proceedings of the International Seminar on Jnter-i«gional
~;:eration in South and Southeast Asia, held at Osmania University, Hyderabad, January
of calls for new states of the type just suggested nng about a surfacing (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1978), pp. 194-215, quotation from p. 205.
· One must remember
182 Language and Politics In India

CoNCLUSIONS: IMPLICATIONS OF PAST AND PossrBLE

FUTURE CHANGES

The sensibilities of many linguistic and other ethnic groups in In .

in many other parts of the world, :ire potent ~d ~asily aroused. ta,ai
evolution of the Indian polity dunng the penod smce 1920 and, °'
particularly, in the period since the achievement of independ1110te
language questions have been an important item on the politica] agence,
ofboth the central government and, the governments of India's consti:a
provinces or states. Making territorial changes in fuvour of PartieuJ nt
linguistic groups aspiring to have or to expand, a province or state of the:
own and, at the same time, protecting the rights of minorities SJ>eakin
other languages has called repeatedly for the exercise of careful diplorn~
and the making of exceedingly difficult and complex decisions. Many
such decisions have had to be made in a politiq} context fraught With
the potential for massive violence. Yet, on the whole, one would have to
acclaim the remarkable success to date of the nation's decision makers
in keeping violence within manageable limits, in effecting workable
territorial arrangements, in forestalling threats of secession by powerful
linguistic groups, and in safeguarding the rights oflinguistic minorities.
The flexibility of the government's response to demands for change and
its general willingness at least to consider all points of view has stood
the nation in good stead and distinguished it from other ethnically
diverse Third World countries who could find no alternative to force in
dealing with the frustrated demands of their minorities.
In the author's judgement the changes that India has made to date
in its political map have preserved the essential unity of the nation, rather
than contributing, as many predicted, to a process of Balkanization. In
creating a system of essentially linguistic states, India has provided a
local political milieu that is conducive to the flowering of many
linguistically-rooted cultures and thereby evolved a system which greatly
enriches the cultural life of the nation as a whole. Further changes along
purely linguistic lines ar~ not !ikely to be great. Whether or not the states
that have evolved to th is point, however, represent the most efficient
territorial vehicles for the ~ture economic progress of the nation is
th
debatable. Ai ough no n:3aJor changes now appear on the political
horizon, it seems not ~nlikely that on economic and administrative
d further alterations of the syst ,..:1 be .
groun s em ... u1 come a pressing issue.