Soon after independence of India, the Indian Federation formed was not unitary in principles. As a result of integration of the British states and the princely states, the four categories of states were created i.e. A, B, C and D. The states so formed were different from the point of view of population, size, financial resources and administrative convenience. In fact, in common principle was adopted to categorise them. It was in 1920 that the Congress had raised the issue of reorganisation of administrative units on linguistic basis.
After independence, the issue again arose to reorganise the states on the linguistic basis. Keeping this in view the Indian government set up a Commission under the chairmanship of Justice S.K. Das in 1948. The report was submitted on 10th October, 1948 suggesting therein that the state should be reorganised on the basis of administrative convenience rather than the linguistic basis. This report faced a great opposition in India. In December 1946, the government appointed another Commission of Sardar Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal Nehru. This Commission too did not accept the demand for reorganisation of states on the linguistic basis.
It was in October, 1953 that Telugu- speaking Andhra Pradesh had to be separated from Madras under the compelling circumstances caused due to the death of freedom fighter P. Shriramulu who had observed fast unto death to get his demand fulfilled. Thus, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were formed for the Telugu speaking and the Tamil speaking people respectively.
In December 1953, the New States Reorganisation Commission was appointed. On the basis of its report, in 1954 linguistic principle for reorganisation of states but * not in all the cases was accepted. The Government of India passed States Reorganisation Act in 1956, creating 14 states and 6 centrally administered units. Riots broke out in Bombay for getting Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra. Fifty people died in the police firing. Finally, the states of Maharashtra for the Marathispeaking and Gujarat for the Gujarati-speaking had to be formed in 1960. Similar demand was raised in Punjab and consequently the states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were reorganised for the Hindi-speaking and Punjab for the Punjabi-speaking people. In 1972, some tribal areas of Assam were separated and states of Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura, were formed. After some time. Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram were formed. All these states including Assam in North-East are known as Seven Sisters. In 1975, Sikkim was included in the Indian Republic.
The demand to reorganise states on the linguistic basis, however, could not be suppressed. In 2000, three states of Jharkhand, Uttaranchal (Uttarakhand) and Chhattisgarh were formed. At present, India consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
Thus, the states have been reorganised and their boundaries have been demarcated on different basis but language has remained the main motivating factor.