Sitkt cGileceetee socit smauee*" Wimieesindie — tn : - anger’** Suppressing attended the inauguration of the mew seste ot Se Npo less, was that other erstwhile enemy of Nehru. Te Iv ore of Andhra aaa with the prime minister of the por observe eer jawaharlal Nehru grimly to a colleague, ‘ped the hornet’s nest and I believe most of us are nave ay stung. : ee fe ared, the ee of Andhra led to the intensification ‘Neb ands DY other linguistic groups. Somewhat against its will, dem india appointed a States Reorganization Commission Be recommendations in regard to the broad principles “a” wern the solution of this [linguistic] problem’. Through se mbers of the Commission travelled across India. They and cities, interviewed more than 9,000 people an: gg 152,250 written submissions. mae tong and more interesting submissions was from th Bie | Gommmitiee. This was headed by a leading, cott i shottamdas ‘Thakurdas, and had within its ranks oth iE ystrialists such as J. R. D. Tata. On its masthead w t indus +, most successful lawyers, scholars and doctors. he city Citizens Committee had a one-point agenda — to k fe: Maharashtra. To make the case they prin 1 of the state 0 ‘ any e. 200-paze book replete with charts, maps and tables. a pistorical, showing how the city was settled by su cer # settlers from different linguistic communities. It cla oD peen little Maharashtrian immigration before the ere ih century and that Marathi speakers comprised phat nineter the city’s current population. The second chapter : at e ortance in the economic life of India. It was the p1 as eecey and finance, and of foreign trade. It was of PY of . more planes flew in and out of it than es combined. ‘The third and fourth chapterRePRAWING TH Map crating the multilingual ngual and multicu giiin any quarter of this orb’; wo quove anoihen ent diverse varieties an. Pe arene of tities of Cairo and nthe: aeicpate tigre ign argument for Bombay” eersen Ree el aspera om the ara speaking bean Pete co neans}the ch ae errlers were Europes chief mercha ital ea pecs ee ss the n ; ile ipiansBveD AON the working class, Marathi speakers astambered BY north Indians and Christians. For thi cans Commins, it was clear that “on the grounds of miecory, nEUAES Population or the system of law isfoitn Konkan cannot be considered as a part of the ni imed by the pr £ on 3 lai yy the protagonists of Samyukta Maha. ~~ veneer of ‘cosmopolitanism there was one language mninated the ‘save Bombay’ movement: the Gujaratis. If ® the capital of @ greater Maharashtra state, the politicians wuld be mostly Marathi speakers. The prospect was not ee the Gujarati-speaking bourgeoisie, whether Hindu or who staffed, financed, and basically ran the Bombay - jeter” esc amsell 28 somewhat sympathetic towards the idea of Neh ay out of the control of a single language group. So was eenine eri spent’ M. S. Golwalkar, this a rare meeting of minds ara! rime minister and the RSS supremo. Both thought that rhe ic states would ‘lead to bitterness and give rise to creat’ ndencies endangering the unity of the country’ 2* In May e in Bombay at the invitation of the Anti-Provincial ke kar SP° F 54 GOIN ich saw linguistic demands as a manifestation of ‘the Gi Beale Mf provincialis™ and sectionalism’. ‘Multiplicity breeds strife’ oy peo o Golwalkar: ‘One nation and one culture are my principl ms funder vf as Tamil or Maha shtrian or Bengali was to ‘sap the eee * He wished them all to use the label “Hindu, ¢ wished them all e departed from Nehru, who of cow ro-eye with w 1» 4 in. a“ india’ as some in the Congress Party did not see eye Jt a fr put jus his question, vhere were RSS cadres who departed fron am”ees fe ae nae ee ee ee re ae aes Cone nig oe ee ee tation’ of the city’s industries. Another ideologue, aaaeenore blunt. Unless Bombay city became par of eras vould have to remain content wi Maharashtrians wou! de secondary brokers to brokers, secondary agents qt professors to professors, clerks to managers (ana) yg ed gh Bere answer the Citive: Maharashtra Parishad prepared an impr hes own. The first part mounted a theoretical defence o¢ TET linguistic states. These, it argued, would deepen Teaeraige Pgh together speakers of the same language in one cong . a linguistic province with its administray ns Committee of the G Olidared, My unit. Thus, On in we Sth of the common people, would make it possible for ghe *® ly and understand the working of democracy and the neeg we in it Pa Coming specifically to their own state, the documen, a society all over the Marathi country is remarkably homogens was the same configuration of castes, the same deities ang: same folklore and legends. That the Marathi speakers wey spread out over three political units — Hyderabad, Bombay 5 Central Provinces — was an accident of history that Needed be undone rashtra had to be narashtra had to be q pital. For the land 4 new and unified state of Me the Parishad, with Bombay as ind city stood had long been inh ted by speakers ; language. While the sea lay to Bombay's west, the tern uth and east was dominated by i speakers. Th