Vol. 1 · pages 161–165

146 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES but he cannot be an Indian in the real sense of the word except in a geographical sense. If my suggestion is not accepted India will then cease to be India. It will be a collection of different nationalities engaged in rivalries and wars against one another. God seems to have laid a heavy curse on India and Indians, saying ‘Ye Indians shall always remain divided and ye shall always be slaves !’ I was glad that India was separated from Pakistan. I was the philosopher, so to say, of Pakistan. I advocated partition because I felt that it was only by partition that Hindus would not only be independent but free. If India and Pakistan had remained united in one State Hindus though independent would have been at the mercy of the Muslims. A merely independent India would not have been a free India from the point of view of the Hindus. It would have been a Government of one country by two nations and of these two the Muslims without question would have been the ruling race notwithstanding Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangh. When the partition took place I felt that God was willing to lift his curse and let India be one, great and prosperous. But I fear that the curse may fall again. For I find that those who are advocating linguistic States have at heart the ideal of making the regional language their official language. This will be a death knell to the idea of a United India. With regional languages as official languages the ideal to make India one United country and to make Indians, Indians first and Indians last, will vanish. I can do no more than to suggest a way out. It is for Indians to consider it. CHAPTER 4 MUST THERE BE ONE STATE FOR ONE LANGUAGE ? What does a linguistic State mean ? It can mean one of two things. It can mean that all people speaking one language must be brought under the jurisdiction of one State. It can also mean that people speaking one language may be grouped under many States provided each State has under its jurisdiction people who are speaking one language. Which is the correct interpretation ? The Commission took the view that the creation of one single State for all people speaking one and the same language was the only rule to be observed. Let the reader have a look at map No. 1. He will at once note the disparity between the Northern and Southern States. This disparity is tremendous. It will be impossible for the small States to bear the weight of the big States. How dangerous this disparity is, the Commission has not realized. Such disparity no doubt exists in the United States. But the mischief it might

THOUGHTS ON LINGUISTIC STATES 147 cause has been prevented by the provisions in the Constitution of the United States. One such safeguard in the Constitution of the United States has been referred to by Mr. Pannikar in his dissenting minute to the Report ( See Table No. 2). I give below the following extract from his minute : “I consider it essential for the successful working of a federation that the units should be fairly evenly balanced. Too great a disparity is likely to create not only suspicion and resentment but generate forces likely to undermine the federal structure itself and thereby be a danger to the unity of the country. This is clearly recognised everywhere. In most federal constitutions, though wide variation exists in respect of the population and resources of the unit, care is taken to limit the influence and authority of the larger States. Thus in the United States of America, for example, though the States are of varying population and resources and the State of New York has many times the population, say of Nevada, the constitution provides for equal representation of every State in the Senate.” On this point Mr. Pannikar also refers to the Soviet Union and old Germany. This is what he says: “In the Soviet Union also, in which great Russia has a larger population than most other units of the Federation taken together, representation in the House of Nationalities is weighed against her so that the other units of the Federation may not be dominated by the larger unit. In the Bismarckian Reich again, though Prussia had a dominant position from the point of view of population, she was given less representation in the Reichsrat or the house representing the states than she was entitled to (less than one-third) and the permanent presidency of that body was vested in Bavaria, clearly demonstrating that even here—where there was concentration of political, military and economic power in one State—it was considered necessary, in the interest of the union, to give weightage to the smaller units and also to reduce Prussia to the position of minority in the Reichsrat, States Council, which enjoyed greater powers than the Reichstag or the House of the People.” Mr. Pannikar has however not mentioned one other safeguard in the Constitution of the United States against the evils of disparity. In our Constitution the two Houses are not co-equal in authority. But the position in the Constitution of the United States is quite different. In the U.S.A. the two Houses are co-equal in authority. Even for money bills the consent of the Senate is necessary. This is not so in India. This makes a great difference to the disparity in the population. This disparity in the population and power between the States is sure to plague the country. To provide a remedy against it is most essential.

148 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES CHAPTER 5 THE NORTH VERSUS THE SOUTH What the Commission has created is not a mere disparity between the States by leaving U.P. and Bihar as they are, by adding to them a new and a bigger Madhya Pradesh with Rajasthan it creates a new problem of North versus South. The North is Hindi speaking. The South is non-Hindi speaking. Most people do not know what is the size of the Hindi-speaking population. It is as much as 48 per cent of the total population of India. Fixing one’s eye on this fact one cannot fail to say that the Commission’s effort will result in the consolidation of the North and the balkanization of the South. Can the South tolerate the dominance of the North? It may now not be a breach of a secret if I revealed to the public what happened in the Congress Party meeting when the Draft Constitution of India was being considered, on the issue of adopting Hindi as the national language. There was no article which proved more controversial than Article 115 which deals with the question. No article produced more opposition. No article, more heat. After a prolonged discussion when the question was put, the vote was 78 against 78. The tie could not be resolved. After a long time when the question was put to the Party meeting the result was 77 against 78 for Hindi. Hindi won its place as a national language by one vote. I am stating these facts from my personal knowledge. As Chairman of the Drafting Committee I had naturally entry to the Congress Party enclosure. These facts reveal how much the South dislikes the North. This dislike may grow into hatred if the North remains consolidated and the South becomes disintegrated and if the North continues to exercise a disproportionate influence on the politics of India ( See Map 1). To allow one State to have such preponderating influence in the Centre is a dangerous thing. Mr. Pannikar has referred to this aspect of the case. In his dissenting minute he says : “The consequence of the present imbalance, caused by the denial of the federal principal of equality of units, has been to create feelings of distrust and resentment in all the States outside Uttar Pradesh. Not only in the Southern States but also in the Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere the view was generally expressed before the Commission that the present structure of government led to the dominance of Uttar Pradesh in all-India matters. The existence of this feeling will hardly be denied by anyone. That it will be a danger to our unity, if such feelings are allowed to exist and remedies are not sought and found now, will also not be denied.”

THOUGHTS ON LINGUISTIC STATES 149 There is a vast difference between the North and the South. The North is conservative. The South is progressive. The North is superstitious, the South is rational. The South is educationally forward, the North is educationally backward. The culture of the South is modern. The culture of the North is ancient. Did not Prime Minister Nehru on the 15th of August 1947 sit at the Yajna performed by the Brahmins of Benares to celebrate the event of a Brahmin becoming the first Prime Minister of free and independent India and wear the Raja Danda given to him by these Brahmins and drink the water of the Ganges brought by them ? How many women have been forced to go Sati in recent days and immolate themselves on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands. Did not the President recently go to Benares and worship the Brahmins, washed their toes and drank the water ? The North still has its Satis, its Nanga Sadhus. What havoc the Nanga Sadhus made at the last Hardwar Fair ! Did anyone in U.P. protest against it ? How can the rule of the North be tolerated by the South ? Already there signs of the South wanting to break away from the North. Mr. Rajagopalachari has made a statement on the recommendations of the States Reorganization Commission which has appeared in the Times of India of the 27th November, 1955. This is what he says : “If it is impossible to put the States Reorganization Schemes in cold storage for the next 15 years, the only alternative is for the Centre to govern India as a unitary state and deal with district officers and district boards directly, with regional commissioners’ supervision. “It would be utterly wrong to fritter away national energy in dispute over boundaries and divisions conceived in the drawing room and not on the background of conditions that have resulted historically. “Apart from the general convictions of mine, I feel that a large southern State is absolutely essential for preserving the political significance of that part of the country. To cut the South up into Tamil, Malayalam and other small States will result only in complete insignificance of everybody and, in the net result, India as a whole will be the poorer.” Mr. Rajagopalachari has not expressed himself fully. He did do so fully and openly to me when he was the Head of the State and I was the Law Minister in charge of drafting the constitution. I went to Mr. Rajagopalachari for my usual interview which was the practice of the day. At one such interview Mr. Rajagopalachari, referring to the sort of constitution which the Constituent Assembly was making, said to me, “You are committing a great mistake. One federation for the whole of India with equal

150 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES representation for all areas will not work. In such a federation the Prime Minister and President of India will always be from the Hindi speaking area. You should have two Federations, one Federation of the North and one Federation of the South and a Confederation of the North and the South with three subjects for the Confederation to legislate upon and equal representation for both the federations.” These are the real thoughts of Mr. Rajagopalachari. They came to me as a revelation coming as they did from the innermost heart of a Congressman. I now regard Mr. Rajagopalachari as a prophet predicting the break-up of India into the North and the South. We must do everything to falsify Mr. Rajagopalachari’s prophecy. It must not be forgotten that there was a civil war in the U.S.A. between the North and the South. There may also be a civil war between the North and the South in India. Time will supply many grounds for such a conflict. It must not be forgotten that there is a vast cultural difference between the North and the South and cultural differences are very combustible. In creating this consolidation of the North and balkanization of the South the Commission did not realize that they were dealing with a political and not a merely linguistic problem. It would be most unstatesmanlike not to take steps right now to prevent such a thing happening. What is the remedy ? PART III SOLUTION CHAPTER 6 THE DIVISION OF THE NORTH The problem having been realized we must now search for a solution. The solution lies obviously in adopting some standard for determining the size of a State. It is not easy to fix such a standard. If two crores of population be adopted as a standard measure most of the Southern States will become mixed States. The enlargement of the Southern States to meet the menace of the Northern States is therefore impossible. The only remedy is to break up the Nothern States of U.P., Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. How did this solution not strike the Congress Working Committee I am unable to understand. It is so obvious. Division of the Northern States As I have said the Commission in designing linguistic States has created a consolidation of the North and balkanization of the South. The Commission has not I am sure done this intentionally. But intentionally or unintentionally the fact is there. Its evil consequences are also clear.