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.