Nation-Building and the Integration of States

On 15 August 1947 India became free, but it was not yet one nation. It was a patchwork of British provinces and over five hundred princely states, scarred by the violence of Partition. Welding this into a single, united, democratic country was called nation-building. It was the first great challenge of independent India. How it was met is essential history-politics.

The new nation faced a triple challenge:

• Unity: to hold together a vast land of many languages, religions and regions, and to bring in the princely states.
• Democracy: to build a working democracy with rights and free elections in a poor, largely illiterate society.
• Development: to lift millions out of poverty and develop the economy fairly.

All this had to be done amid the trauma of Partition, which uprooted millions and unleashed terrible communal violence.

The first government had Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as Deputy Prime Minister. It is useful to sort the tasks before them by horizon:

• Immediate: integrating the princely states, stopping the communal riots, rehabilitating nearly 60 lakh refugees, and avoiding war with Pakistan.
• Medium-term: framing a Constitution, building democratic institutions, holding elections, and abolishing the feudal agrarian order.
• Long-term: national integration, economic development, and the removal of poverty.

The Indian Independence Act (the British law of July 1947 that created the two dominions) left three problems to settle: the boundary, the division of the services, and the division of military assets.

• The Radcliffe Award: the British set up a Boundary Commission under Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer who had never been to India. He had to draw the line within six weeks, using out-of-date maps and the faulty 1941 census. The report was ready by 12 August 1947, but Mountbatten deliberately held it back until after 15 August, so that blame for the consequences would not fall on the British.
• The communal holocaust: the regions the Radcliffe Line cut through saw the worst killing. Punjab suffered above all, with an estimated 180,000 deaths and the mass abduction of women. Bengal suffered far less. There, Gandhi's presence and fasts had a calming effect.
• Division of resources: a Partition Council split the civil government, and about 1,60,000 employees opted to transfer between the two dominions. A joint defence council under Auchinleck, the British commander-in-chief, divided the armed forces. Muslim-majority units went to Pakistan and the rest stayed with India.

• Refugee rehabilitation: the two governments never organised an orderly exchange of populations, so resettling the displaced became the immediate task. India set up a Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation. Refugees from West Pakistan were settled in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi (colonies such as Lajpat Nagar and Rajinder Nagar). Sindhi Hindus were settled in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra (Ulhasnagar). The Bengal problem dragged on far longer.
• The Nehru-Liaquat (Delhi) Pact, 1950: to protect minorities and restore calm, especially in Bengal, Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan signed an agreement on 8 April 1950. It provided for minority commissions and the safety of minorities in both countries. Hindu nationalists like Syama Prasad Mookerjee opposed it and resigned from the cabinet.
• The assassination of Gandhi: on the evening of 30 January 1948, Nathuram Godse shot Mahatma Gandhi dead at his prayer meeting at Birla House, Delhi. Godse acted out of communal hatred and blamed Gandhi for "pandering to the Muslims". Nehru told the nation, "The light has gone out of our lives." The RSS was banned. The ban was lifted in 1949 once the organisation accepted conditions.

The new state also faced an insurgency from the left.

• In December 1947 the Communist Party of India (CPI) denounced independence as "fake". Their slogan was "Yeh azadi jhooti hai". They branded the Nehru government a stooge of imperialism.
• At its 1948 Calcutta congress, the CPI adopted a "Political Thesis" along the B. T. Ranadive line, named for the party's then general secretary. It called for revolution to overthrow the new state. The insurgency spread, fed by the Telangana peasant struggle and the revival of the Tebhaga sharecroppers' movement in Bengal.
• The government responded firmly: police action in Hyderabad, a ban on the CPI in Bengal, and detention without trial. The movement stayed localised. Mass support was thin, and divisions grew between the "Chinese" and "Russian" lines.
• At its Third Party Congress (1951), the CPI made a decisive shift. It withdrew the Telangana movement. With the ban lifted, it contested the 1951-52 general election. This moved the party from an insurrectionist path to constitutional democracy.

At independence, the princely states (over 500 of them) were technically free to join India, join Pakistan, or stay independent. Allowing them to remain separate would have shattered India.

The integration was achieved largely by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the deputy prime minister and home minister, working with his secretary V. P. Menon in the newly created States Department (set up July 1947). Their key instruments were:

• The Instrument of Accession: by which a ruler surrendered only three subjects to the Union: defence, external affairs and communications. Patel and Menon urged the rulers to sign before the 15 August 1947 transfer of power. Almost all of the states geographically inside India did so.
• The Standstill Agreement: a stopgap that kept existing administrative and trade arrangements running until a full settlement was reached.
• Privy purses: rulers who acceded were promised tax-free annual payments and the retention of titles and privileges (these privy purses were later abolished by the 26th Constitutional Amendment in 1971).

Patel used "a skilful combination of baits and threats", backed by mass pressure. The work ran in two phases:

• Accession: by 15 August 1947, all states except Kashmir, Hyderabad and Junagadh had signed the Instrument of Accession, ceding only the three subjects they had never really controlled.
• Merger: the harder full integration of states with neighbouring provinces or into new units (the Kathiawar Union, Rajasthan, Madhya Bharat, Himachal Pradesh and others) was accomplished within a year, with privy purses for the princes, some of whom were made Rajpramukhs.

Of the 552 princely states, 549 acceded smoothly. Three were the hard cases:

• Junagadh: a Hindu-majority state on the Kathiawar coast whose Muslim ruler announced accession to Pakistan despite having no land link to it. After he fled, a plebiscite in February 1948 overwhelmingly favoured India.
• Hyderabad: the largest princely state, landlocked inside India. The Nizam held out and signed only a Standstill Agreement. Meanwhile the paramilitary Razakars unleashed violence. India sent in the army in September 1948 in "Operation Polo" (the "police action"). Hyderabad surrendered within days.
• Kashmir: Maharaja Hari Singh stayed undecided until a Pakistani tribal invasion in October 1947, after which he signed the Instrument of Accession to India. This accession is the root of the special status later given under Article 370, and remains internationally disputed.

For this achievement Patel, who oversaw the integration of more than 500 states almost bloodlessly, is remembered as the "Iron Man of India". The Statue of Unity in Gujarat commemorates him.

The princely states were not the last pieces of the territorial puzzle. Even after 1947, small pockets of the Indian coast remained under European rule. France held Pondicherry and other trading settlements; Portugal held Goa, Daman and Diu and the inland enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

France handed over its possessions peacefully. The French settlements were transferred to India in 1954, and a treaty made the transfer legally final in 1962. Portugal refused to leave, so its enclaves were freed in stages:

• Dadra and Nagar Haveli: under Portuguese colonial rule until 1954, when a popular uprising by local volunteers ended Portuguese control. The territory was formally merged with India in 1961 through the 10th Constitutional Amendment.
• Goa, Daman and Diu: liberated in December 1961 when the Indian Army moved in under Operation Vijay. The Portuguese garrison surrendered within days, and the three areas became one union territory.
• Statehood for Goa: Goa attained full statehood in 1987. The 56th Constitutional Amendment carried this out, separating Daman and Diu from Goa as a distinct union territory. Diu itself is an island in the Gulf of Khambhat, off the Gujarat coast.

The Constitution opens by describing what India is and what it is made of: "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States." Articles 1 to 4 (Part I) deal with the Union and its territory. The word Union, chosen by Dr B. R. Ambedkar over "federation", carries two deliberate meanings:

• India is not the result of an agreement among states, so no state may break away.
• No state has the right to secede. India is often called an indestructible Union of destructible states: the centre can redraw a state, but a state cannot leave the Union.

Two terms must be kept apart:

• Union of India: only the states that share federal powers with the centre.
• Territory of India: wider, covering the states, the Union Territories, and any territory India may later acquire.

Article 1 lists three categories that make up the territory of India: (i) the states, (ii) the Union Territories, and (iii) territories that may be acquired. The Union of India covers only the first category. A common exam point: Article 1 calls India a "Union of States", not a "federation of states", precisely to signal that no state can secede. The First Schedule lists the states and Union Territories. India today has 28 states and 8 Union Territories.

• Article 2: admission or establishment of new states that are not already part of India.
• Article 3: formation of a new state out of existing territory, and increasing or reducing a state's area or changing its boundaries or name.
• Article 4: laws made under Articles 2 and 3 are not treated as constitutional amendments under Article 368, the procedure for amending the Constitution.

The procedure under Article 3 keeps the power with the centre while consulting the states:

• A Bill to redraw a state can be introduced only on the President's prior recommendation.
• Before recommending, the President must refer the Bill to the affected state legislature for its views, but only to ascertain them. The President may even fix a time-limit within which the state must respond. Parliament is not bound by the views expressed, or by silence. This is consultation, not consent.
• Parliament can then pass the Bill by a simple majority, even though it changes the First and Fourth Schedules.

Note the contrast on territory:

• Acquiring foreign territory and settling internal boundaries can be done by ordinary law under Article 3.
• Ceding Indian territory to a foreign country cannot be done by ordinary law. It needs a constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court laid this down in the Berubari Union case (1960), an advisory opinion on transferring an enclave to Pakistan. It held that giving away territory requires amending Article 1 and the First Schedule. To carry out the India-Pakistan exchange, Parliament accordingly passed the Ninth Amendment Act, 1960.

Once the states had joined, a new question arose: on what basis should India's internal boundaries be drawn? Many people demanded states based on language. People who shared a language, they argued, should be able to govern themselves together. Two early enquiries advised caution:

• The Dhar Commission (1948) rejected language as the basis for reorganisation, fearing it would threaten national unity, and recommended administrative convenience instead.
• The JVP Committee (1948–49), named for Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, also formally opposed linguistic states for the time being.

Public pressure overrode this. Potti Sriramulu died after a 56-day fast demanding a separate Telugu-speaking state. In the agitation that followed, the government created Andhra State in 1953, the first state carved out on a linguistic basis. Its capital was Kurnool. In 1956 Andhra State merged with the Telugu-speaking areas of the old Hyderabad State to form Andhra Pradesh, and the capital shifted from Kurnool to Hyderabad.

This forced a broader review:

• The States Reorganisation Commission (1953), headed by Fazl Ali (with H. N. Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar), accepted language as a major basis for redrawing boundaries, though it rejected a rigid "one language, one state" formula.
• Its report led to the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. The Act reshaped the map into 14 states and 6 union territories. The 7th Constitutional Amendment, 1956 carried out these changes and abolished the old four-fold classification of states, the Part A, B, C and D categories that had existed since 1950, placing all the reorganised states on the same footing.
• The Act also set up the Zonal Councils as advisory bodies to promote inter-state cooperation. These are statutory bodies, not constitutional ones. The separate North-Eastern Council was created later by its own Act of 1971.

Far from breaking India apart, accommodating linguistic identity actually strengthened national unity. It gave people a sense of belonging.

The redrawing did not stop in 1956. A chain of later changes filled out the present map, and exam questions often test the order of these dates:

• Bombay, 1960: the bilingual Bombay state was split into Maharashtra and Gujarat.
• Nagaland, 1963: the 13th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1962 provided for the new state, and Nagaland attained full statehood in 1963. Its creation thus rests on a constitutional amendment act, a detail examiners like to test.
• Haryana, 1966: Punjab was divided on linguistic lines and Haryana became a separate state. The fourth general elections followed in 1967.
• Meghalaya and Tripura, 1972: both became full states. Tripura's path is a favourite trap. It was a Part C state under the original 1950 classification, became a centrally administered territory (union territory) in the 1956 reorganisation, and attained full statehood only in 1972.
• Mysore, 1973: the state of Mysore was renamed Karnataka.
• Sikkim, 1975: joined the Union as the 22nd state.
• Arunachal Pradesh, 1987: moved from union territory to full statehood. Its capital Itanagar takes its name from the historic Ita Fort, and the state contains two National Parks (Namdapha and Mouling).
• 2000: Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand were carved out of existing states.
• 2014: Telangana, the newest state, was created by bifurcating Andhra Pradesh.

A useful chronology of full statehood in the north-east and beyond: Nagaland (1963), Haryana (1966), Sikkim (1975), Arunachal Pradesh (1987).

New-state demands (Vidarbha, Bodoland, Gorkhaland and others) keep arising. The main drivers are uneven development, weak local representation and a distinct regional identity. The arguments cut both ways:

• For: sharper administrative focus, narrower regional disparities, better fiscal management.
• Against: higher administrative cost, no guarantee of better governance, risk of inter-state disputes (such as over water), and opening a "pandora's box" of further demands.

Regionalism, loyalty to one's region, is healthy when it voices genuine local aspirations. It becomes harmful when it turns militant or secessionist.

Building the nation also meant changing who owned the land. After independence the states passed laws to abolish the zamindari system, the colonial arrangement of large intermediaries between the cultivator and the state. Tenancy laws and land ceilings followed, though their results were uneven.

Alongside these laws ran a remarkable voluntary movement. Acharya Vinoba Bhave, a Gandhian, began the Bhoodan movement (the land gift movement) in April 1951 at the village of Pochampalli, in the Telangana region. A landowner there responded to Vinoba's appeal by donating 100 acres for landless families. Vinoba then walked from village to village asking landowners to gift a share of their land to the poor. The idea later widened into Gramdan, in which entire villages placed their land under common ownership. The movement collected lakhs of acres, though much of the donated land was of poor quality or was never distributed.

Running the new republic required reforming the machinery of government itself. India has set up two major commissions for this purpose:

• First Administrative Reforms Commission (1966): initially chaired by Morarji Desai and later by K. Hanumanthaiah. It reviewed the public administration India had inherited and recommended changes across the machinery of government, including the institution of Lokpal and Lokayuktas.
• Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2005): chaired by M. Veerappa Moily. It submitted a series of reports between 2005 and 2009 recommending comprehensive changes in governance, covering subjects such as the Right to Information, ethics in governance, e-governance and crisis management.

Nation-building continued long after the states had been integrated. A short timeline of milestones helps fix the sequence of the young republic's landmark events:

• 1953: Air India was nationalised and became the national carrier.
• 1955: the Imperial Bank of India, then the country's largest bank, was renamed the State Bank of India.
• 1957: Kerala formed the first democratically elected communist party government in an Indian state, under E. M. S. Namboodiripad.
• 1961: Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule and became part of India.
• 1971: Bangladesh was formed after the India-Pakistan war.
• 1974: India conducted Pokhran I, its first nuclear test, code-named Smiling Buddha.
• 1975: Sikkim became the 22nd state of the Indian Union.
• 1980: SLV-3, India's first satellite launch vehicle, placed the Rohini satellite in orbit.