• Regionalism in India is rooted in India’s diversity of languages, cultures, tribes and religions.
• It is encouraged by the geographical concentration of these identity markers in particular regions, and fuelled by a sense of regional deprivation.
• Indian federalism has been a means of accommodating these regional sentiments. From Presidencies to States
• After Independence, initially the Indian state continued with the British-Indian arrangement dividing India into large provinces, called Presidencies. Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were the three major presidencies.
• Soon after Independence and the adoption of the constitution, all these units of the colonial era had to be reorganized into ethno-linguistic states within the Indian union in response to strong popular agitations.
• Language coupled with regional and tribal identity and not religion has provided the most powerful instrument for the formation of ethno-national identity in India.
• But this does not mean that all linguistic communities have got statehood. For example- Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand. In their formation, language did not play*any role. A combination of ethnicity based on tribal identity, language, regional deprivation and ecology provided the basis.
