Vol. 2, Issue 11, Part E (2016)

Abstract
The demand for demarcation of provincial boundaries on linguistic basis was not a new proposition in India. In pre-independence days, the Indian National Congress had supported the demand for the linguistic demarcation of provincial boundaries at its annual sessions in 1920, 1927, 1928, and 19371. When Independence finally came Gandhi thought that the states of the new nation should be defined on the basis language2. Nehru was also appreciative of the linguistic diversity of India. In an essay of 1937, he wrote that “a living language is a throbbing, vital thing, ever changing, ever growing and mirroring the people who speak and write it”. And “our great provincial languages are no dialects or vernaculars, as the ignorant sometimes called them……. It is axiomatic that the masses can only grow educationally and culturally through the medium of their own language.”3 That was the reason Congress formed its provincial committees based on language rather than existing provinces for example Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee, Utkal Provincial Congress Committee etc. This division was contrary to the administrative divisions made by the British during the period. So before independence, the commitment of the Congress leadership towards the creation of linguistic provinces (states) was unanimous and firm. But after Independence, the newly-born nation was confronted with more critical challenges like partition of the country on communal lines, the staggering problem of the refugees and the difficulty of integrating the princely states after the lapse of British Paramountcy.