STORY OF MADRAS AND BOMBAY
In this episode is dealing with the story of two other Indian states named by Madras and
Bombay. It was like a critical and test period for Indian democracy. Because
the first election was knocking before the political parties and Nehru was
going every corners for election campaigning, people were coming to listen him
and see him, what he is talking about. But there was place called Guntur of
Madras state, where the masses were not even ready to listen what Nehru was
trying to say. During 1951 Tamilnadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were
in one state called the state of Madras. When Nehru was coming for the purpose
of election campaigning to Guntur, the people of the state stand against of him
and he was compelled to leave the stage. And he also commented during that time
that there might be civil war in the country and again partition will come to
force. So what was the reason behind this type of statement? What was happening
in the country? The biggest political problem was there were many regions which
were appealing for separate state based on a particular language. According to
Nehru separation of states based on language will be like discrimination in the
country. But on the 27th of November due to Nehru’s green signal for
separate Andhra Pradesh state, it created a huge problem. Before this statement
three class of state in our country first class category was those state which
were individual prior to independence, second class category states were those
states which were happens to be the bigger size princely dominion before the
independence like Jammu & Kashmir, Hyderabad, Travancore and PEPSU and the
third class category stares were those states which were happening to be small
princely dominion prior to independence. The system during that time was there
were few states where multilingualism or the people of different language
speaking region, states like wise Madras where Kannad, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam
speaking people were residing in on states. And similarly in state of Bombay
Guajarati, Marathi and Hindi speaking people were residing and that is why
people are asking for separate states based on a particular language. A senior
congress leader T.Prakashan announced that by April 1948 separate Andhra
Pradesh state will be done, he was a Telugu and he was once the chief minister
of the Madras.. And after that few more demand came in form of separate state
based on language. As the issue was gaining momentum and that is why the
central government of India established a commission under the chairmanship of
retired judge of supreme court named by S K Dhar and the commission was
supposed to status of the south Indian states regrading their language, geography
and reunification aspects. In 1948 the commission submitted its report.
According the report that it will be a threat to the unit and integrity for the
country if separation of states based language will be done. It just cancelled
the demand of states based on language. But after the report of Dhar commission
the demand got more momentum and intense, so Nehru himself made a committee in
which he put deputy prime minister Sardar Patel and President of Congress Party
P Sitarameiya and the committee is popularly known as JBP committee. And the
report of the committee recommended that for upcoming ten-year for national
interest just aside the separation of states based linguistic aspects. So the
popular congress leader T. Prakashan left congress party and joined Kisshan
Mazdoor Party. And this party demanded that without Madras w dontt need
separate Andhra Prdesh state. And in the first general election Telugu speaking
region gave a very rare support to congress party, where as in the whole
country congress party got good number of seats. And even after that Nehru
sticked to his statement that there will be no separation of states based on
language. But time has its own way of passage, when Telugu speaking Potti
Sriramalu went for fasting and stated that till separate Andhra state he will
not be taking any single drop of water and a spoon of food for his survival. He
demanded for separate Andhra state and Madras as the capital of the state.
Nehru wrote a letter to the Chief Minister of Madras of that time C. Rajagopal
Chari and from that letter it was visible that Nehru failed to understand the
intensity and the seriousness of the demand of P. Sriramalu. But after that the
demand got more strong and intensified, so Nehru again wrote a letter of
C.Rajagopal Chari that now the time has come that separate Andhra state should
be granted. It was almost more than fifty days of the fasting of P. Sriramalu,
but he was still not taking a drop of water, his health was deteriorating day
by day. He was so determined that even if his life will attain death but he
wanted to see separate Andhra state. But another problem was Chief Minister of
Madras C. Rajagopal Chari didn’t want to give Madras to Andhra. And that is why
he wrote a letter to Nehru that to avoid the demand of the separate Andhra
state. It was the 57th day of fasting on 15th of December
and finally he left his last breath and as a result violence got erupted
everywhere in Andhra. And as result Nehru had no other way out and at last on
19th December 1952 he declared that Andhra as a separate state soon.
After that the demand of reorganisation states in other parts of the country
got more momentum and it became more strong. Bombay was one of the major
demanding state for reorganisation cause there also the problem was similar to
Andhra state, cause here majority was Marathi but in terms of businesses the
demand was in favour of Guajarati. So the government organised a state
reorganisation committee and it gave two-year time to the committee to submit
its report. It was not that easy for the committee. Bombay the city which was
the demand of three sections first was Marathi speaking people, second was
Gujurati speaking people and third was Bombay citizen’s committee, in which big
industrialists like JRD Tata. And then the report of state reorganisation
commission came and its recommendation was not so clear that in some point it
suggested that basing on linguistic separation of states can be done and in
some suggestions it mentions it would be not good to reorganise states based on
linguistics and this is the reason for which the country was on the verge of
civil war. At that point of time Morarji Desai was happening to be the Chief
Minister of Bombay, so he proposed to make three separate state like Bombay,
Gujarat and Maharashtra. And for this Morarji was doing a rally and got injured
for rising this proposal. Violence and rioting was uprising day by day and for
Nehru it was remembering the partition feeling of with Pakistan. And he
realised there in this linguistic aspects of demanding reorganisation of states
he failed to understand the emotions of the common masses of India. Both
Guajarati and Marathi were not in a position to leave Bombay as their capital.
And he finally decided that let Bombay to be a Union Territory for coming five years
and Gujurat and Maharashtra will be separate state. But this couldn’t able to
stop the violence and riots in Bombay. The CD Deshmukh resigned after this
decision of Nehru. Most the political leaders demanded that let Bombay to be a
bilingual state. Then the State Reorganisation Committee passed and few
recommendations of SRC got avoidance likewise the proposal of Bidarbh and
Telengana got avoided by the government. And since that period there were 14
states and six union territory was the in the country. The geography of the
country got changed. But this was not the end to the main problem, even today
this problem is coming form few regions based on linguistic they are demanding
for separate state.
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