Lines of control

We the People of the States of Bharat offers an excellent account of the considerations that have given the country its present internal boundaries to whet your appetite for history

We the People of the States of Bharat: The Making and Remaking of India’s Internal Boundaries

Author: Sanjeev Chopra

Publisher: Harper Collins

Price: Rs 799

In early 2020 when the author’s engaging columns on the stories behind the making of various Indian states began to be published regularly in a newspaper, one wondered whether he would eventually “expand” these pieces into a book, not least because of the enthusiastic response from readers. Two and half years later, Sanjeev Chopra has done just that, delivering an excellently readable book that is packed with information of the kind that most people do not try to fathom because the existence of states is considered a given and curiosity about stories of their formation is viewed as being passé.

The only time people concern themselves with state formation is when new states are established — the last was Telangana in 2014, and before that Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand in 2000 — and when there are agitations to stake claims to a part of another state. In recent weeks, we have witnessed one such conflict — the long-standing demand of Maharashtra for the bilingual district of Belagavi or Belgaum, which has been part of Karnataka since the state’s inception. But the back story to these clashes often gets lost in the daily headlines or in the government’s efforts at containing political damage and finding a “negotiated” agreement.

Mr Chopra was an IAS officer from the West Bengal cadre and retired in early 2021 as Director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie. There is perhaps an element of poignancy that someone who spent his early life in Punjab and most of his professional career as a bureaucrat in West Bengal got drawn to the issue of India’s internal boundaries because the consequences of Partition are deeply engraved on the psyche of many people in the two states. Unlike bureaucratese that he may have perforce used in three and a half decades of his career, Mr Chopra has an engaging style of writing. Even though the process of redrawing of India’s internal boundaries was occasionally perplexing, the book is lucid and logically sequenced. Perhaps this capacity is due to his short stint in a newspaper before he joined the IAS.

Although the book is essentially about the histories of the 28 states and eight Union Territories of “India that is Bharat”, it is not written from the perspective, as is widely believed, of any clear victor. In the Prologue, which Mr Chopra, but not the reviewer, considered “rather long” or a “monologue”, he said that from childhood he had a fascination for maps and cartography. The interest stayed through his career and he refurbished his earlier passion with political decisions that led to very specific lines being drawn across India.

The book explains in great detail the considerations that have given India its present internal boundaries — from the time the country became independent till August 2019, when the state of Jammu and Kashmir was hived off into separate Union Territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. Besides the political decisions, the book explains the linguistic, regional, social and even ethnic considerations that went into states, big, small and medium-sized being established. Many may complain that

Mr Chopra does not reveal his opinion on contentious developments and decisions. But his emphasis is on the histories of the states rather than a critical evaluation of the process by which they came into existence.

In deliberations on the internal reorganisation of India, there is presumption that the present structure of the country emerged directly from the colonial past. This is despite the fact that Sardar Patel’s role in the integration of princely states is part of political folklore, especially after the new-found interest in Patel. On this matter,

Mr Chopra, in a rare instance of editorialising, points to the crucial role played by Patel’s trusted lieutenant, V P Menon. It was he who was tasked with ensuring that all princely states, after agreeing with the Sardar, signed on the dotted line. And it was Menon who insisted that India, and not Hindustan, should be the “chosen name for his nation.”

Few remember that in August 1947, India comprised nine Provinces and 562 princely states, many of which were part of seven state unions. Without entering a cartographic minefield, Mr Chopra takes the readers through how India looked at different times after independence and before — in 1947, 1950, 1952, 1956 (after some recommendations of the States Reorganisation Committee were accepted), 1961 (when Goa became part of the country), 1975 (Sikkim’s accession) and so on till 2019.

Mr Chopra narrates the problematic and frequently inconsistent principle of linguistic states from 1918 onward when the Congress structured the party on those lines. He examines the dilemma that surfaced due to bilingualism or the multilingual character of geographical tracts. He also looks ahead, given that in India’s75th year of independence, the last word is yet to be said on the matter of internal boundaries.

Each of the book’s 18 chapters has separate standalone characteristics even though they are interconnected by the common theme. This gives the reader the benefit of choosing chapters whose titles draw their interest first. Thus, for the lay reader and those engaged with the issue, this book would be a useful addition to the personal library.

The reviewer is an NCR-based author and journalist. His latest book is The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India. @NilanjanUdwin