Regionalism, Communalism and State Politics

India has accommodated almost every regional demand it could translate into a constitutional form, and fought almost every one it could not. The record suggests that federalism, not force, has been the effective counter-insurgency instrument.

This is chapter 33 of the PSIR Optional Notes, from the part on Indian Government and Politics in the Paper I syllabus. The complete book is a free download.

Regionalism and its accommodation

Linguistic reorganisation

The Dhar Commission (1948) and the JVP Committee (1949, Nehru, Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya) both advised against reorganisation on linguistic lines. Potti Sriramulu’s fast unto death and his death in December 1952 produced Andhra State in 1953; the Fazl Ali Commission (1953) then recommended general reorganisation, and the States Reorganisation Act 1956 created fourteen states and six union territories.

The analytical point, and it is the one examiners reward: reorganisation was expected to encourage fissiparous tendencies and did the opposite. By making the state the vehicle of linguistic identity, it removed language from the national agenda and converted a potential secessionist grievance into ordinary state politics. Contrast the trajectory of language politics in Pakistan, where the refusal to accommodate Bengali contributed directly to 1971.

Bombay was divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat in 1960, Punjab reorganised in 1966, and the later creations, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand in 2000 and Telangana in 2014, rested on development grievance and sub-regional identity rather than on language.

Asymmetric arrangements

Article 371 and 371A to 371J provide special arrangements for Maharashtra and Gujarat, Nagaland, Assam, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Sikkim, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka. Article 371A for Nagaland is the strongest: no Act of Parliament on Naga religious or social practices, customary law and procedure, administration of civil and criminal justice involving Naga customary law, or ownership and transfer of land applies unless the state assembly so decides.

The Sixth Schedule provides autonomous district and regional councils in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, with legislative powers over land, forest, shifting cultivation, inheritance and social custom, and their own courts.

Punjab

The sequence is examinable and should be compact.

The Punjabi Suba demand, pressed by the Akali Dal from the 1950s, was resisted as a religious demand in linguistic clothing, and conceded in 1966 when Punjab was reorganised into Punjab, Haryana and the union territory of Chandigarh, with hill areas to Himachal Pradesh. Chandigarh’s status and river-water sharing were left unresolved, and remain so.

The Anandpur Sahib Resolution (1973) is the key text and is systematically misdescribed. Its political content was a demand for greater state autonomy, limiting the centre to defence, foreign affairs, currency and communications, along with religious and economic demands. It was read by the centre as a secessionist charter, which hardened positions on both sides.

Militancy grew through the early 1980s. Operation Blue Star in June 1984 removed armed groups from the Golden Temple complex at very high cost to the shrine and to Sikh sentiment; the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984 was followed by the anti-Sikh violence in Delhi and elsewhere, whose accountability remains a live grievance. The Rajiv-Longowal Accord of July 1985 conceded Chandigarh to Punjab, referred river waters and territorial questions to tribunals, and was undermined by Longowal’s assassination and by non-implementation. Militancy was suppressed by the early 1990s, at a heavy cost in extrajudicial killings that the civil liberties movement of Chapter 32 documented.

Jammu and Kashmir

To 2019

Accession in October 1947 under the Instrument of Accession, on the same terms as other princely states but with the state’s own constituent assembly to determine the remaining relationship. Article 370 gave temporary special status: Parliament’s power limited to defence, external affairs and communications, with concurrence required for other subjects. The Delhi Agreement (1952) between Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah settled the terms; Abdullah’s dismissal in 1953 began a long erosion of autonomy through successive presidential orders extending central provisions.

Insurgency from 1989 followed the disputed election of 1987, and brought the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, mass displacement of Kashmiri Pandits, and a security presence that became the dominant fact of political life. The intervening decades saw elections, periods of relative normalcy, and repeated failures of dialogue.

After 2019

The 2025 question asked for the key factors shaping the political landscape after 2019, and the answer needs the sequence and the effects rather than an opinion.

• August 2019. A presidential order under Article 370(1) applied the whole Constitution to the state and amended Article 367 to reinterpret the reference to the constituent assembly as the legislative assembly, which was then under President’s Rule and dissolved. A statutory resolution and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019 split the state into two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir with a legislature and Ladakh without.
• Judicial validation. In Re: Article 370 (December 2023) upheld the abrogation, held Article 370 to be a temporary provision, and directed restoration of statehood at the earliest and elections by September 2024, recording the Solicitor General’s undertaking.
• Delimitation. The Delimitation Commission (2020–22) raised assembly seats from 83 to 90, with six added to Jammu and one to Kashmir, altering the regional balance and generating its own controversy.
• Political realignment. The People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration formed in 2020 around restoration of the pre-2019 position; district development council elections were held in 2020; and assembly elections in September–October 2024, the first in a decade, returned a National Conference-led government.
• Continuing questions. Restoration of statehood; the position of Ladakh, where the demand is for Sixth Schedule protection and statehood; land and domicile rules and their demographic implications; and the security situation, which has changed in character rather than ended.

The analytically useful framing: 2019 replaced an asymmetric federal accommodation with a centralised administrative arrangement, and the test is whether ordinary federal politics can now do the work that special status was designed to do.

The North-East

Three overlapping problems, and answers should organise by them rather than by state.

Indigeneity and migration. The Assam movement of 1979–85 against undocumented migration produced the Assam Accord of 1985, with 24 March 1971 as the cut-off date, and, much later, the National Register of Citizens exercise completed in 2019 and the controversy over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019. Tripura’s demographic transformation, where the indigenous population became a minority, produced its own insurgency and its Sixth Schedule council.

Autonomy and statehood. Nagaland (1963), Meghalaya (1972), Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh (1987) were created from Assam. The Mizo Accord of 1986 is the most successful settlement in Indian counter-insurgency: the Mizo National Front’s leadership entered government and the state has been peaceful since. The Naga question remains unresolved: the ceasefire of 1997, the framework agreement of 2015, and the outstanding demands for a separate flag, constitution and Nagalim spanning state boundaries.

Territory and ethnicity within states. Bodoland’s councils and the accords of 1993, 2003 and 2020; the Assam–Mizoram and Assam–Meghalaya boundary disputes; and the Manipur conflict from 2023 between Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities, which combines scheduled-tribe status, land rights in hill and valley, and administrative separation.

AFSPA runs through all three. Its progressive withdrawal from parts of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur since 2022, following the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee’s 2005 recommendation for repeal, is the current direction, and the Supreme Court’s Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families Association judgment (2016) held that the armed forces’ immunity does not extend to excessive force.

Uttar Pradesh, and state politics generally

Uttar Pradesh is the standard case because the national realignment happened there first and most completely. Congress dominance rested on the coalition of Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims. Mandal detached the OBC vote to the Samajwadi Party; the Bahujan Samaj Party built an independent Dalit base from Kanshi Ram’s organising in the 1980s; the Ram Janmabhoomi movement consolidated a counter-mobilisation; and Congress collapsed to fourth place. The state ran a four-cornered contest through the 1990s and 2000s, then consolidated toward a two-cornered one after 2014.

The general lessons for state politics: state party systems are increasingly distinct from the national one; regional parties dominate where a coherent linguistic or sub-regional identity exists and are weak where it does not; and coalition and alliance arithmetic at state level determines national outcomes far more than national campaigns do.

Read the rest. This chapter is one of 58 in the complete PSIR Optional Notes, covering Paper I and Paper II in full — free to download.

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