“There is no single pure model of federation that is applicable everywhere. Rather the basic notion of involving the combination of shared rule for some purposes and self-rule for others within a single political system so that neither is subordinate to the other has been applied in different ways to fit different circumstances.”
Regionalism has remained perhaps the most potent force in Indian politics ever since independence (1947), if not before. It has remained the main basis of many regional political parties which have been governing many states since the late 1960s. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party[1] (BJP), which ruled at the federal level from 1999 to 2004, was but a medley of various region-based parties. Interestingly enough, regionalism has also remained the main basis
of the communist movements in India which have grown in close identification with the regions, and are sustained therein . In the post-independence period, region is said to have often vied with the nation.
The post-independence resurgence of regionalism in many parts of India baffled the observers of Indian politics, and offered as the basis of prediction of the country’s ‘imminent balkanization’.
The basic question that we seek to raise in this paper relates to the role played by Indian federalism in ensuring India’s unity, stability and survival as a polity in the face of persistent regionalism, often verging on separation, rooted in manifold and complex social and cultural diversity, and mass poverty, illiteracy, extreme regional unevenness in
development, and widespread inequality. The question has assumed special significance in the aftermath of the disintegration of the multi-ethnic and multinational Soviet Union, and the split up of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. India’s record of relative unity and integrity stands in sharp contrast to many postcolonial federations, which have failed, or broken down. In the age of what Eric Hobsbawm[2] has called ‘nation-splitting’, India’s relative unity and integrity, and survival as a state is remarkable indeed.
What is Regionalism?
Regionalism refers to the expression of a common sense of identity and purpose combined with the creation and implementation of institutions that express a particular identity and shape collective action within a geographical region.
Regionalism is the idea or practice of dividing a country into smaller units for political, economic, social, and cultural purposes[3]. Politically, regionalism is linked to decentralized or federalist governments. Regionalism is both cultural and political, as its political success is linked to the development of a regional culture. Regionalism is a term also used in international relations. Regionalism constitutes one of the three constituents of the international commercial system (along with multilateralism and unilateralism). The European Union can be classified as a result of regionalism. The idea that lies behind this increased regional identity is that as a region becomes more economically integrated, it will necessarily become politically integrated as well. The European example is especially valid in this light, as the European Union as a political body grew out of more than 40 years of economic integration within Europe. The precursor to the EU, the European Economic Community (EEC)[4] was entirely an economic entity.
Roots of Regionalism in India
Indian regionalism has come in three varieties - regionalism properly so called, parochialism[5], and secessionism[6]. Regionalism is rooted in India’s manifold diversity of languages, cultures, tribes, communities, religions and so on, and encouraged by the regional concentration of those identity markers, and fuelled by a sense of regional deprivation. For many centuries, India remained the land of many lands, regions, cultures and traditions. The country of more than a billion people inhabiting some 3, 287, 263sq km., India’s broad regions, socio-culturally speaking, are distinct from one another. For instance, southern India (the home of Dravidian cultures), which is itself a region of many regions, is evidently different from the north, the west, the central and the north-east. Even the east of India is different from the North-East of India comprising today seven constituent units of Indian federation with the largest concentration of tribal peoples. The British colonial division of the Indian Territory broadly between the directly ruled provinces, and some 560 (indirectly-ruled) autocratic princely kingdoms of many sizes, religions, tribes, and languages added complexity to regionalism in India. Even after various phases of territorial reorganization since 1950, most regions of India contain many sub regions marked by some social and cultural identity symbols. In India, regionalism, or the acute sense of loyalty to the particular region manifested itself variously. It has often expressed itself in antagonistic terms to that of the nation, fuelled as it is by the sense of enduring deprivation due to long-term neglect in development, and resource redistribution. Regionalism has often expressed itself in terms, which are opposed to national unity and integrity, and challenging to the legitimacy of the state. While the rulers have most often liked to see in regionalism “a very serious threat to the development, progress and unity of the country”, some scholars have expressed similar views by seeing regionalism as “anti-system, anti-federal” and so on. But positively oriented scholar have seen values in regionalism in the context of building the nation, or national cohesion provided the political system is accommodative of timely meeting the demands of the regions . The literature on regionalism, its meaning, forms, causes and consequences in India etc are already vast, and there is perhaps little to add to clarifying the meaning of regionalism in India, or its forms and content. The basic point that we would highlight in this respect is that internal self-determination of community, whether linguistic, tribal, religious, regional, or their combinations, has remained the predominant form in which regionalism in India has sought to express itself, historically as well as contemporaneously. Most often, self-determination has been couched in terms of statehood or state autonomy.
A Religious and Linguistic Perspective of Regionalism
Regionalism in India has been rooted in India’s manifold diversity. India, demographically speaking, is the second largest country (its population over a billion now) after China, and socially and culturally the most diverse in the world. India’s one billion plus people live today in 28 States (federal units) (doubled since the inauguration of the Constitution in 1950) and 7 Union Territories (centrally ruled). Formed over many thousand years as a country of immigrants who brought their own cultures and traditions, India’s diversity is proverbial. Although predominantly inhabited by the ‘Hindus’ (over 80 per cent) who are, however, regionally specific, plural in beliefs and practices, and divided by castes, and languages, India contains large proportions of Muslims (about 13%) spread over the country with more than a million in as many as 13 states (out of 28), Sikhs,
Buddhists, Christian, Jains and so on (Table.1).
Table 1: Religious Composition of Indian Population (2001)[7]
Religion Population % to total population |
| Hindus 827,578,868 80.5% |
Muslims 138,188,240 13.4% |
| Christians 24,080,016 2.3% |
| Sikhs 19,215,730 1.9% |
| Buddhists 7,955,207 0.8% |
| Jains 4,225,053 0.4% |
| Other religions 6,639,626 0.6% |
| Religion not stated n.a. 0.1% |
| Total 1,028,610, 328 100% |
Three features stand out from Table 1 above regarding regional concentration of religious groups in India. First, there is only one Muslim majority state in India, viz., Jammu & Kashmir. This was due, not to any reorganization of territory, but to the fact that the Kashmiri Muslims have been living in Kashmir for centuries. Second, there are three Christian majority states in India, all in the Northeast, viz Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram. These states, again, were created since the1960s, by carving out of Assam, not on the basis of religion, but as a method of recognizing tribal ethnicity. Third, Sikhs are concentrated in Punjab where they form a majority. Punjab was created in 1966 as a result of reorganization of Indian territories on ethno-religious basis. India’s linguistic diversity is proverbial. By one estimate, there were some 1,632 languages spoken in India . So far, eighteen languages have been ‘officially recognized’ and placed under the 8th Schedule of the Constitution as a symbolic recognition of identity (Table. 2). Today, the speakers of such 18 language constitute about 91 per cent of the population. Many of India’s languages are very ancient with strong literary traditions. Some of the so-called regional languages, most notably Tamil (a south Indian language), are, in fact, older than Hindi, spoken by the largest (but not the majority) number of Indians. During the period of British colonial rule, language and region did not always coincide. Thus, the provinces created by the British in India were not linguistically homogenous. Many of the provinces as well as the princely autocracies were bilingual, or even trilingual. In the wake of India’s national liberation movements, many of the region-based linguistic groups became self-conscious, and demanded self-determination. Linguistic Provinces Commission (popularly known as the Dar Commission) formed on 17 June 1948 to advise the Constituent Assembly (1946-49) correctly sensed the situation: “Indian nationalism is deeply wedded to its regional languages; Indian patriotism is aggressively attached to its provincial frontiers”. In the post-independence period, it is language, not religion, which, when coupled with regional and tribal identity, has provided the most powerful instrument for political recognition as an ethno-national identity.
Table 2: India’s Official Languages (1991)[8]
| Language Number of Speakers |
| Assamese 13,079,696 |
| Bengali 69,595,738 |
| Gujarati 40,673,814 |
| Hindi 337,272,114 |
| Kannada 32,753,676 |
| Kashmiri 56,693 |
| Konkani 1,760,607 |
| Malayalam 30,337,176 |
| Manipuri 1,270,216 |
| Marathi 62,481,681 |
| Nepali 2,076,645 |
| Oriya 28,061,313 |
| Punjabi 32,753,676 |
| Sanskrit 49,736 |
| Sindhi 2,122,848 |
| Tamil 53,006,368 |
| Telugu 66,017,615 |
| Urdu 43,406,932 |
Excludes figures from Jammu & Kashmir
Except Sindhi, Urdu and Sanskrit, all the languages listed above are strongly regionally rooted, and states or sub-states have been created with autonomous powers in order to accommodate, politically, linguistic identity. That does not mean, however, that all the linguistic communities have got statehood, or political association in India. Beyond such ‘official languages’ there are some 96 languages (Census Report of India, 1991), which are ‘non-scheduled’ languages (with, or without scripts) with significant number of speakers regionally rooted as well as spread throughout India. Also, even after successive waves of reorganization of federal territory since the 1950s, there are numerically significant minority languages in State and Union Territory (Census Report of India, 1991). Thus, the issue of regionalism, whether based on languages, tribal ethnicity, or a combination of region, tribal ethnicity, and/or language, remains open. For instance, in the creation of the last three states in 2000, namely, Uttaranchal, Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand, language did not play the predominant role. A complex of tribal ethnicity, language, regional deprivation and ecology provided the basis of intense regionalism, and its resolution in statehood. The Tripura Tribal Autonomous District Council (TTADC)[9] in Tripura, in India’s North-East, formed in 1983, under the 6th Schedule of the Indian Constitution with autonomous powers covering some two-thirds areas of the state predominantly inhabited by the aboriginal peoples (minorities in the state), and provides a successful example of accommodation of regionalism, which is protective of endangered tribal identity. The other successful case is the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC)[10] in the northern most district of West Bengal. In the proposed Bodoland Territorial Council in Assam, in India’s North-East, to be created under the 6th Schedule of the Indian Constitution, the Bodos[11], the minority in Assam, will not, however, be in majority in the Bodoland, but this is going to be an attempt to protect their identity in the regions in which they live.
[1] The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) created in 1980, is one of the two major national political parties in India. It projects itself as a champion of the socio-religious cultural values of the country's Hindu majority, conservative social policies, and strong national defense.
Retreived from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatiya_Janata_Party
[2] Eric John Earnest Hobsbawm CH (born June 8, 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt) is a British Marxist historian and author. Hobsbawm was a long-standing member of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain and the associated Communist Party Historians Group. He is president of Birkbeck, University of London
[3] Definition from
[4] Association of European countries designed to promote European economic unity. It was established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to develop the economies of the member states into a single common market and to build a political union of the states of western Europe. The liberalized trade policies it sponsored from the 1950s were highly successful in increasing trade and economic prosperity in western Europe. In 1967 its governing bodies were merged into the European Community. In 1993 the EEC was renamed the European Community (EC); it is now the principal organization within the European Union. Reference; Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, entry ‘EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY’.
[5] Parochialism is the attitude or state of being parochial in its sense of a rather polite adjective to point out showing an interest only in the close (at heart) aspects of what is mainly a much broader subject:Like in countries where every village and every part of town has a parish ([Late] Latin: parochia) — with typically locally organized circles, events, etc — possibly having little attention for what goes on in the much larger Church that mainly has more, other, and perhaps more important things in mind: focused on the local scale (thus within a particular point of view), by having (too) little contact with the broader outside, showing meager interest for and possibly knowledge about the universal scale.
[6] A doctrine that maintains the right of secession; Secession in history is best defined as the removal of a political entity from the federal Union. It is closely related to, but not synonymous with, NULLIFICATION; it can only be understood in contrast with Unionism
[9] The Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) is an independent council administering the tribal areas of the state of Tripura, India. Its council and assembly are situated in Khumulwng, a town 26 km away from Agartala, the state capital
[10] The Darjeeling Gorkha Autonomous Hill Council (DGAHC), previously known as Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) is an autonomous body that looks after the District of Darjeeling in the state of West Bengal, India
[11] The Bodos are an ethnic and linguistic community, early settlers of Assam in the North-East India. According to the 1991 census, there are 1.2 million Bodos in Assam which makes for 5.3% of the total population in the state, from HUNDRED-SECOND REPORT ON THE SIXTH SCHEDULE TO THE CONSTITUTION (AMENDMENT) BILL, 2003
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