Reorganisation of States in India: Text And Content

Over sixty years ago, following the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1953, demands for the creation of new states soon came up. Powerful regional sentiments unleashed such political fury that they forced Jawaharlal Nehru's government to set up the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) to investigate these demands and to formulate principles upon which new states could be created. Saiyid Fazl Ali, Hriday Nath Kunzru and K.M. Panikkar, three eminent public figures much respected for their integrity, experience and impartiality, made up this high-powered Commission, whose recommendations reconfigured India's political boundaries and launched India on its momentous journey as a vernacular democracy. Sixty years on, the principles which provided the building-blocks for India's federalism, seem to have become unstable. The search for newer principles has become pressing, with campaigns underway throughout India for Report of 1955 becomes a valuable text. The Report left tengible legacies in the reconstruction of India's political boundaries. Its efforts led to certain principles being adopted for creating new states as well as ideas of co-operative federalism. More than its concrete recommendations, the Commission's ideas and method of working and the manner in which its recommendations were dealt with by Nehru's government may have important insights for all those interested in the history of contemporary India and the political challenges it faces in our times. Compellingly relevant, the Report is now being reissued for a wider readership.

Gyanesh Kudaisya is Associate Professor in the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. He has co-authored The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (2000), authored Region, Nation, Heartland: Uttar Pradesh in India's Body Politic (2006) and co-edited Partition and Post Colonial South Asia, A Reader (2008, in 3 volumes).

**Contents and Sample Pages**