Integration to Reorganization - State formation after Independence

By Prof. Asha Sarangi

On the occasion of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's 150th birth anniversary, celebrated as National Unity Day, on 31 October 2025, India State Stories officially launched its new series on Integration of India. The launch event had talks from two distinguished scholars Prof. Asha Sarangi (Center for Political Studies, JNU) and Prof. Suhas Palshikar (Chief Editor, Studies in Indian Politics). We present below an extract and brief overview of Prof. Sarangi's talk.

The decade following India’s independence was not merely a period of political transition but one of profound structural reinvention. From 1946 to 1956, the nascent nation undertook two colossal projects: the integration of over 500 princely states into the Union and the democratic reorganization of its internal boundaries. This transformative decade laid the very foundation of India’s federal democracy, establishing a unique model that sought not to erase diversity, but to institutionally embrace it.

The Daunting Task of Integration

The first challenge was cartographic and constitutional. The British withdrawal left a fragmented map dotted with princely states, each with its own treaty relationship with the Crown, its own administration, and its own sense of sovereignty. Professor Sarangi emphasizes, integration was far more than a geographical assemblage. It was a complex political and administrative operation involving questions of territoriality, sovereignty, and governance.

Spearheaded by the formidable partnership of Sardar Patel and the civil servant V.P. Menon, the process was both urgent and nuanced. Building on existing frameworks like the 1935 Government of India Act, integration employed a toolkit of legal instruments: Instrument of accession, mergers, standstill agreements and Covenants, tailored to each state's context. Some rulers acceded voluntarily, others under pressure, but the outcome was the dismantling of feudal patrimonial structures and their absorption into a modern, centralized bureaucratic state. This process, Sarangi notes, created a "heterogeneous legacy," where each region’s distinct history and political culture became a layer in the new India’s foundation, setting the stage for the next democratic exercise.

The Democratic Laboratory: The State Reorganization Commission

If integration secured the map, the State Reorganization Commission (SRC) of 1953-56 sought to reshape it according to the will of its people. Professor Sarangi presents the SRC as a landmark of democratic deliberation. It distributed over 6,000 questionnaires nationwide, inviting ordinary citizens to voice their opinions on redrawing boundaries - an unprecedented act of public consultation.

The Commission’s mandate was a multi-factor balancing act. It had to weigh national unity and administrative efficiency against powerful cultural and linguistic affinities, economic viability, and geographical contiguity. The result was radical: 14 states were carved out of 28 existing units. This was not a victory for linguistic chauvinism, as Sarangi argues, but for "language-culture contiguity." The symbolic alignment of the 14 states formed in 1956 with the 14 languages initially in the Constitution’s 8^th Schedule was not an accident. It reflected a policy where language was recognized not just as a tool for communication, but as a carrier of identity, cultural expression, and historical experience.

Institutionalizing Diversity

Crucially, the SRC was not an isolated body. Professor Sarangi places it within a remarkable burst of institutional creativity in the 1950s. Alongside it worked an Educational Commission, a Language Commission, and an Emotional Integration Committee. This multi-commission approach systematically addressed India’s intertwined challenges of cultural diversity, linguistic plurality, and regional aspiration. The goal was not to impose a bland homogeneity but, as Sarangi puts it, to "emphasize and embrace heterogeneities of all sorts." The state provided the institutional mechanisms in the form of commissions, consultations, constitutional schedules, to manage this diversity democratically.

A Legacy for the Present

Professor Sarangi’s analysis concluded with a poignant reflection for contemporary times. The 1950s model viewed national unity as a project of integration, not assimilation. It trusted institutional processes and democratic participation to weave regional and linguistic identities into the national fabric. The enduring question she raised is whether current approaches to unity and representation have moved away from this inclusive, pluralistic ethos. In an era of new social and political challenges, the legacy of that transformative decade of building a state by acknowledging, rather than suppressing, its profound diversities, remains a powerful reference point for India’s ongoing democratic experiment.