National Law Institute University

Bhopal

Subject: Constitutional Law III

Project Topic: Indian Federalism and Linguistic States

Submitted by:
Amit Mate
B.A.LL.B. 2009 24

Submitted to:
Prof. (Dr.) V.K. Dixit
Professor of Human Rights/ Political Process/ Environmental Law
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Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................3

Social context of language..............................................................................5

First Linguistic State.......................................................................................8

Andhra Pradesh.........................................................................................8
Battle for Bombay......................................................................................8
Assam.......................................................................................................10
Punjab......................................................................................................11

Recent Divisions...........................................................................................12

Pros and cons...............................................................................................13

Conclusion...................................................................................................14

Bibliography.................................................................................................15

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Introduction
The Indian Federalism is unique in nature and is tailored according to the specific needs of
the country. Federalism is a basic feature of the Constitution of India in which the Union of
India is permanent and indestructible. Both the Centre and the States are co-operating and
coordinating institutions having independence and ought to exercise their respective
powers with mutual adjustment, respect, understanding and accommodation. Tension and
conflict of the interests of the Centre and the respective units is an integral part of
federalism. Prevention as well as solving of conflicts is necessary. Thus, the Indian
federalism was devised with a strong Centre. Federalism with a strong Centre was inevitable
as the framers of the Indian Constitution were aware that there were economic disparities
as several areas of India were economically as well as industrially far behind in comparison
to others. The nation was committed to a socio economic revolution not only to secure the
basic needs of the common man and economic unity of the country but also to bring about
a fundamental change in the structure of Indian society in accordance with the egalitarian
principles. With these considerations in mind the Constitution makers devised the Indian
federation with a strong Union.
The constitution and various other government documents are purposely vague in defining
such terms as national languages and official languages and in distinguishing either one
from officially adopted regional languages. States are free to adopt their own language of
administration and educational instruction from among the country's officially recognized
languages, the Scheduled Languages. Further, all citizens have the right to primary
education in their native tongue, although the constitution does not stipulate how this
objective is to be accomplished.
As drafted, the constitution provided that Hindi and English were to be the languages of
communication for the central government until 1965, when the switch to Hindi was
mandated. The Official Languages Act of 1963, pursuing this mandate, said that Hindi would
become the sole official national language in 1965. English, however, would continue as an
"associate additional official language." After ten years, a parliamentary committee was to
consider the situation and whether the status of English should continue if the knowledge of
Hindi among peoples of other native languages had not progressed sufficiently. The act,

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however, was ambiguous about whether Hindi could be imposed on unwilling states by
1975. In 1964 the Ministry of Home Affairs requested all central ministries to state their
progress on the switch to Hindi and their plans for the period after the transition date in
1965. The news of this directive led to massive riots and self-immolations in Tamil Nadu in
late 1964 and early 1965, leading the central government, then run by the Congress to back
away from its stand. A conference of Congress leaders, cabinet ministers, and chief
ministers of all the states was held in New Delhi in June 1965. Non-Hindi-speaking states
were assured that Hindi would not be imposed as the sole language of communication
between the central government and the states as long as even one state objected. In
addition any of the Scheduled Languages could be used in taking examinations for entry into
the central government services.
Before independence in 1947, the Congress was committed to redrawing state boundaries
to correspond with linguistics. The States Reorganisation Commission, which was formed in
1953 to study the problems involved in redrawing state boundaries, viewed language as an
important, although by no means the sole, factor. Other factors, such as economic viability
and geographic realities, had to be taken into account. The commission issued its report in
1955; the government's request for comments from the populace generated a flood of
petitions and letters. The final bill, passed in 1956 and amended several times in the 1960s,
by no means resolved even the individual states' linguistic problems.
Even regions with a long history of agitation for a linguistic state sometimes have found the
actual transition less than smooth. For example, proponents began lobbying for a Te-luguspeaking state in the early twentieth century. In 1956 the central government formed a
single state, Andhra Pradesh, composed of the predominantly Telugu-speaking parts of
what in British India had been the Madras Presidency and the large polyglot princely state of
Hyderabad. Although more than 80 percent of the residents (some 53 million people as of
1991) of Andhra Pradesh speak Telugu, like most linguistic states it has a sizable linguistic
minority. In this case, the minority consists of Urdu speakers centred in the state's capital,
Hyderabad, where nearly 40 percent (some 1.7 million people in 1991) of the population
speak that language. Linguistic affinity did not form a firm basis for unity between the two
regions from which the state had been formed because they were separated by cultural and

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economic differences. Although there were riots in the late 1960s and early 1970s in
support of the formation of two separate states, the separation did not occur.
The violence that broke out in the state of Assam in the early 1980s reflected the
complexities of linguistic and ethnic politics in South Asia. The state has a significant number
of Bengali-speaking Muslims-immigrants and their descendants who began settling the
region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Social Context of Language: Contemporary languages and dialects, as they figure in the
lives of most Indians, are a far cry from the stylized literary forms of Indo-Aryan or Dravidian
languages. North India especially can be viewed as a continuum of village dialects. As a
proverb has it, "Every two miles the water changes, every four miles the speech." In some
cases, a variety of caste dialects coexist in the same village or region. In addition, there are
numerous regional dialects that villagers use when doing business in nearby towns or
bazaars.
Since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, regional languages, such as
Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi, have become relatively standardized and are now used
throughout their respective states for most levels of administration, business, and social
intercourse. Each is associated with a body of literature. British rule was an impetus for the
official codification of these regional tongues. British colonial administrators and
missionaries learned regional languages and often studied their literatures, and their
translations of English-language materials and the Bible encouraged the development of
written, standard languages. Industrialization, modernization, and printing gave a major
boost to the vocabulary and standardization of regional tongues, especially by making
possible the wide dissemination of dictionaries.
Such written forms still often differ widely from spoken vernaculars and village dialects.
Diglossia-the coexistence of a highly elaborate, formal language alongside a more colloquial
form of the same tongue-occurs in many instances. For example, spoken Bengali is so
divergent from written Bengali as to be nearly another tongue. Similarly, Telugu scholars
waged a bitter battle in the early twentieth century over proper language style. Reformers
favored a simplified prose format for written Telugu, while traditional classicists wished to
continue using a classical literary poetic form. In the end, the classicists won, although a
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more colloquial written form eventually began to appear in the mass media. Diglossia
reinforces social barriers because only a fraction of the populace is sufficiently educated to
master the more literary form of the language.
The standard regional language may be the household tongue of only a small group of
educated inhabitants of the region's major urban centre that has long exercised politicoeconomic hegemony in a region. Even literate villagers may have difficulty understanding it.
The more socially isolated--women and Dalits tend to be more parochial in their speech
than people of higher caste, who are often able to use a colloquial form of the regional
dialect, the caste patois, and the regional standard dialect. An educated person may master
several different speech forms that are often so different as to be considered separate
languages. Western-educated scholars may well use the regional standard language mixed
with English vocabulary with their colleagues at work. At home, a man may switch to a more
colloquial vernacular, particularly if his wife is uneducated. Even the highly educated
frequently communicate in their village dialects at home.
Only around 3 percent of the population (about 28 million people in 1995) is truly fluent in
both English and an Indian language. By necessity, a substantial minority are able to speak
two Indian languages; even in the so-called linguistic states, there are minorities who do not
speak the official language as their native tongue and must therefore learn it as a second
language. Many tribal people are bilingual. Rural-urban migrants are frequently bilingual in
the regional standard language as well as in their village dialect. In Bombay, for example,
many migrants speak Hindi or Marathi in addition to their native tongue. Religious
celebrations, popular festivals, and political meetings are typically carried on in the regional
language, which may be unintelligible to many attendees. Bilingualism in India, however, is
inextricably linked to social context. South Asia's long history of foreign rule has fostered
what Clarence Maloney terms "the linguistic flight of the elite." Language--either Sanskrit,
Persian, or English--has formed a barrier to advancement that only a few have been
fortunate enough to overcome.
Throughout the twentieth century, radio, television, and the print media have fostered
standardization of regional dialects, if only to facilitate communication. Linguistic
standardization has contributed to ethnic or regional differentiation insofar as language has
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served as a cultural marker. Mass communication forces the adoption of a single standard
regional tongue; typically, the choice is the dialect of the majority in the region or of the
region's preeminent business or cultural centre. The use of less standard forms clearly labels
speakers outside their immediate home base. To fulfil its purposes, the regional language
must be standardized and taught to an increasing percentage of the population, thereby
encroaching both on its own dialects and the minority languages of the region. The language
of instruction and administration affects the economic and career interests and the selfrespect of an ever-greater proportion of the population.

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The First Linguistic State:

In 1953, the movement that led to the creation of the state of Andhra Pradesh. This act was
consistent with Gandhi's wishes and with established Congress policy, yet it grated with the
Prime Minister of the day. He could see that the formation of Andhra would lead to similar
demands by other linguistic groups. The success of the Andhras did embolden other
communities to come out stinging. There was now a major campaign for Samyukta or
Greater Karnataka, aiming to unite Kannada speakers spread across the states of Madras,
Mysore and Hyderabad. The Malayalis wanted a province of their own, bringing together
the erstwhile princely states of Cochin and Travancore with Malabar. There was also a
Mahagujarat movement. But, in terms of mass base and popular appeal, the most
significant of the post-Andhra linguistic struggles was that which spoke for Samyukta
Maharashtra.
After Andhra, the Government of India set up a States Reorganisation Committee (SRC). Its
report, submitted in 1955, pretty much conceded that India would be reorganised according
to linguistic provinces. But some questions remained. The most serious was the future of
India's most prosperous city, Bombay. Would it go to Maharashtra, since it had more
Marathi speakers than speakers of other languages, and since the areas contiguous to it
would anyway form part of the state? Or would it go to Gujarat, since the Gujaratis had
invested so heavily in its development? Or, since there were many other linguistic groups in
Bombay, would it be constituted as some kind of autonomous, multicultural city-state?
The Battle of Bombay:
The question of Bombay's future came up for discussion in the Lok Sabha on November 15,
1955. Strongly pushing the city-state alternative was the Marathi-speaking M.P. from
Bombay, S.K. Patil. His city, said Patil, had a "cosmopolitan population in every respect; it
had been built upon the labour of everybody". It was, he continued, cosmopolitan in theory
as well as in practice: here "everybody thinks in terms of common citizenship".
This is what Patil said in Parliament, and he later expanded on the theme in a newspaper
interview. The prospective city-state of Bombay, he told the paper, would "be a miniature
India run on international standards ... (A) melting pot which will evolve a glorious new
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civilisation ... And it is an extraordinary coincidence that the population of the city should be
exactly one per cent of the population of the whole country. This one per cent drawn from
all parts of the country will set the pace for other states in the practice of secularism and
mutual understanding."
Patil asked the Maharashtrians to give up their claim on Bombay in the spirit of
compromise. The plea was rejected in ringing tones by the M.P. from Pune, N.V. Gadgil.
Speaking immediately after Patil in the Lok Sabha, Gadgil insisted that while he was in
favour of compromise, "there is a limit. That limit is, nobody can compromise one's selfrespect, no woman can compromise her chastity and no country its freedom". The reports
of protest meetings should make it clear "that anything short of Samyukta Maharashtra with
the city of Bombay as capital will not be acceptable". If these sentiments went unheeded,
warned Gadgil, then the future of Bombay would be decided on the streets of Bombay.
The Maharashtrians were being urged to accept the loss of Bombay in the name of national
unity. Gadgil protested against this unsubtle attempt at blackmail. The last 150 years, he
said, had seen Maharashtrians contributing selflessly to the growth of national feeling.
Marathi speakers founded the first schools and universities, and helped found the Indian
National Congress.
Note that both S.K. Patil and V.N. Gadgil belonged to the same party, the Congress. The
party's High Command finally decided to recommend to the Government of India that
Bombay be made a city-state. Regional sentiments were disregarded, sparking widespread
protests. In the 1957 elections the Congress was routed by an opposition front uniting under
the banner of Samyukta Maharashtra. The anger spilled over into the streets. In 1960, the
Government of India conceded the right of the Maharashtrians over Bombay.
To recall the debate between Patil and Gadgil is to remember a time when Indian
parliamentarians were both independent-minded and intelligent. Patil's case, for retaining
Bombay's cosmopolitan character, was made with logic and eloquence. But Gadgil's case,
for the centrality of the city to Maharashtrian identity, was compelling as well. Here were
politicians from Maharashtra who could argue on the basis of principle, and believe in what
they said, too.

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In some ways one can still hear the echoes of that old Lok Sabha debate. For, tragically,
what was to N.V. Gadgil a matter or legitimate cultural pride has degenerated, under a
different kind of Maharashtrian leadership, into an insular parochialism. The battle for
Bombay continues. On the one side are those who see it as a truly cosmopolitan city, which
can still set the pace for other states in the practice of secularism and mutual
understanding. On the other side are the visceral chauvinists of Bal Thackeray's Shiv Sena.
Assam
In the case of Andhra Pradesh, the minority consists of Urdu speakers centred in the state's
capital, Hyderabad, where nearly 40 percent (some 1.7 million people in 1991) of the
population speak that language. Linguistic affinity did not form a firm basis for unity
between the two regions from which the state had been formed because they were
separated by cultural and economic differences. Although there were riots in the late 1960s
and early 1970s in support of the formation of two separate states, the separation did not
occur. The violence that broke out in the state of Assam in the early 1980s reflected the
complexities of linguistic and ethnic politics in South Asia. The state has a significant number
of Bengali-speaking Muslims -- immigrants and their descendants who began settling the
region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Muslims came in response
to a British-initiated colonization plan to bring under cultivation land left fallow by the
Assamese. By the 1931 census, the Assamese not only had lost a hefty portion of their land
but also had become a disadvantaged minority in their traditional homeland. They
represented less than 33 percent of the total population of Assam, and the Muslim
immigrants (who accounted for roughly 25 percent of the population) dominated commerce
and the government bureaucracy. Assamese-Bengali rioting started in 1950, and in the 1951
census many Bengalis listed Assamese as their native tongue in an effort to placate the
Assamese. Further immigration of Bengali speakers after the formation of Bangladesh in
1971 and a resurgence of pro-Bengali feeling among earlier immigrants and their
descendants reawakened Assamese fears of being outnumbered. Renewed violence in the
early and mid-1980s was sufficiently serious for the central government to avoid holding
general elections in Assam during December 1984.

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Punjab:
In the compound of Amritsar's Golden Temple, holy of holies to India's 6,000,000 Sikhs, long
lines of tall, bearded and turbaned Sikh men and slender Sikh women passed slowly by a
small wooden hut. When they reached the hut, each Sikh dropped a coin or a bill in an
offering box, then peered through a tiny glass window. Inside, on a hard mattress, lay Sant
Fateh Singh, 50-year-old Sikh holy man. While doctors and disciples stood anxious watch,
Sant Fateh Singh was carrying on a hunger strike. Its aim: to compel the Indian government
to create a separate linguistic state in the Punjab, traditional home of the Sikhs. In May,
1960 the Indian government arrested the Sikhs' wily political leader, Master Tara Singh, for
advocating a Sikh march on New Delhi to demand statehood. Before disappearing behind
prison walls, Tara Singh designated Sant Fateh Singh as his successor. For weeks stretching
into months, young Sikhs, shouting "Punjabi Suba Zindabad" (Long live Punjabi state), had
poured out of the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the Sikh temple at New Delhiinto the
waiting arms of tough Indian police, who hustled them off to prison. At one time India's
overburdened detention camps held 20,000 Sikhs. About the last week of December,1960
Sant Fateh Singh decided that even more effort was required to force a grant of separate
statehood. A husky 260-pounder, he announced that he was embarking on a "fast unto
death," would take water but no food of any kind until New Delhi gave in. By last week the
holy man was down to 243 lbs., and daily health bulletins, issued with Jim Hagerty-like
detail, were emphasizing the presence of ketones in the urine, indicating imminent uremic
poisoning. For India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, keeping in anxious touch with
developments while making a tour of Uttar Pradesh, the fastand the whole Sikh effort
presented a number of galling ironies. In the first place, fasting as a political weapon was
developed by Nehru's nationalist mentor, Mahatma Gandhi, but is now regarded by New
Delhi as in bad taste. Secondly, to justify keeping Master Tara Singh in jail without proof of
crime, Nehru a month ago had to insist on a further extension of the same PreventiveDetention Act passed originally under British rule to allow the imprisonment of Gandhi,
Nehru himself and other Indian freedom fighters. After the bill was rammed through by a
165-10-33 vote, loud cries of "Shame! Shame!" reverberated in the Lower House chamber.

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Finally, the Sikh demand for a separate state is an embarrassing end result of Nehru's own
mistakes. After the Prime Minister backed down spring and allowed the division of Bombay
State between the Marathi and Gujarati language groups, the Punjabi-speaking Sikhs
became the only one of India's 14 major constitutionally recognized linguistic groups
without a separate state. Nehru and the reigning Congress Party contend that the Sikhs are
less a linguistic entity than a religious community.
Recent Divisions:
The recent creation of three small states - Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh - within
India has raised some interesting issues about the territorial scale of such constitutional
units and their relationship with the Republic as a whole. These issues need to be spelt out
at some length; in order to enable us to comprehend the prospect they hold out for the
social and economic growth of the Republic, collectively, and the states of the Republic,
individually, in the future. To throw some light on the issues, the political map of our
country is still substantially a legacy of the mapping exercises carried out during the colonial
dispensation in the 19th century. The political context for the crystallisation of the three
small states referred to above - Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh - is provided by the
recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) of 1955, which took a
retrospective look at the map of India, as reflected in the provinces created under British
rule. How has the recent emergence of three small states - Uttaranchal, Jharkhand and
Chattisgarh - affected the states of the Indian Union as they were mapped out in the 1950s?
Three observations need to be voiced before we can answer this question: first, a variety of
sub-regional units within the existing states of the Republic have staked a claim for a
separate identity of their own; second, the level of economic development which India has
attained today calls for a more spatially dispersed pattern of industrialisation, than has been
carried out hitherto; and third, the development of democratic institutions within the
villages plus the need for a second generation green revolution. Therefore, that the recent
creation of three small states within the Indian Union necessarily calls for a novel
reorganisation of the territorial units within the Republic. But the process of territorial
reorganisation unleashed in the last few years is likely to stimulate similar demands in other
parts of the country. Smaller states, it is generally believed, lend themselves readily to
efficient political and economic management.
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Pros and cons of having linguistic states:

"One State, one language" is a universal feature of almost every State. Examine the
constitution of Germany, France, Italy, England, and U.S.A. "One State, one language" is the
rule. Wherever there has been a departure from this rule there has been a danger to the
State. The illustrations of the mixed States are to be found in the old Austrian Empire and
the old Turkish Empire. India cannot escape this fate if it continues to be a conger of mixed
States. The reasons why a unilingual State is stable and a multi-lingual State unstable are
quite obvious. A State is built on fellow feeling. What is this fellow-feeling? To state briefly it
is a feeling of a corporate sentiment of oneness which makes those who are charged with it
feel that they are kith and kin. This feeling is a double-edged feeling. It is at once a feeling of
fellowship for ones own kith and kin and anti-fellowship for those who are not one's own
kith and kin. It is a feeling of "consciousness of kind " which on the one hand, binds together
those who have it so strongly that it over-rides all differences arising out of economic
conflicts or social gradations and, on the other, severs them from those who are not of their
kind. It is a longing not to belong to any other group.
The existence of this fellow-feeling is the foundation of a stable and democratic State. This is
one reason why a linguistic State is so essential. But there are other reasons why a State
should be unilingual. There are two other reasons why the rule "one State, one language" is
necessary. One reason is that democracy cannot work without friction unless there is fellowfeeling among those who constitute the State. Faction fights for leadership and
discrimination in administration are factors ever present in a mixed State and are
incompatible with democracy.
The present State of Bombay is the best illustration of the failure of democracy in a mixed
State. With Bombay as a mixed State for the last 20 years, with the intense enmity between
the Maharashtrians and Gujaratis, only a thought less or an absent-minded person could put
forth such a senseless proposal.

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Conclusion
The former State of Madras is another illustration of the failure of democracy in a mixed
State. The formation of a mixed State of United India and the compulsory division of India
into India and Pakistan are other illustrations of the impossibility of having democracy in a
mixed State. We therefore want linguistic States for two reasons. To make easy the way to
democracy and to remove racial and cultural tension. But the dangers of a Linguistic state
can be stated as follows. A linguistic State with its regional language as its official language
may easily develop into an independent nationality. The road between an independent
nationality and an independent State is very narrow. If this happens, India will cease to be
Modern India we have and will become the medieval India consisting of a variety of States
indulging in rivalry and warfare.

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Bibliography:
1.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

2.http://www.time.com

3.http://dol.nic.in

4.http://en.wikipedia.org

5.http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag

6.http://www.ambedkar.org

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