STATES in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are partly the result of accident and partly of British presence in the subcontinent. India regrouped them in 1955 on a linguistic basis.

Even then, it had to reconstitute four more states in the last few years to suit political demands. Pakistan has resisted the pressure because mapping out new provinces may create more problems than solve them. Bangladesh is determined to retain the unitary system, although the decentralisation of power may be a better way of administering the country. Yet the key question has been how to avoid mixing political considerations with the people's aspirations.

After carving out 14 states since independence, New Delhi still faces the ever-growing demand for creating more new units. The most pressing demand has been for Telangana, embracing more or less the same territory which the Nizam of Hyderabad had under him before the state was amalgamated into Andhra Pradesh.

People in Telangana feel they have not got their due which the Telugu-speaking people have enjoyed. However Muslims, who constitute 41 per cent of the population in Hyderabad, are in favour of a united Andhra Pradesh because in the rest of the state they number less than five per cent.

Earlier last year, when Telangana was engulfed by fierce agitation and Telangana Rashtra Samithi leader K. Chandrasekhar Rao went on a fast unto death, the centre once again got panicky as it did when it hurriedly appointed the Commission for Reorganisation of States (CRS) in 1954. Then Potti Sreeramulu had died after fasting for the demand of a separate state for Telugu speakers. This time the government appointed a committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Sri Krishna to propose steps to deal with the problem of Telangana.

In his report Justice Sri Krishna has discussed six options but has preferred to keep Andhra Pradesh united. The question of the future status of Hyderabad city seems to have influenced the five-member commission. It has mentioned this in four out of six options. A bifurcation of the state without Hyderabad going to them is not acceptable to the people of either region, both for economic reasons and sentimental factors.

If Andhra Pradesh is disturbed, there is no doubt that the business confidence in India's fifth biggest city would be shaken. In fact the information technology industry in Hyderabad is connected more to the national (through investment) and global (through the market) economies than it is to the regional economy.

New Delhi's predicament is that if it concedes Telangana, it faces the revival of demands for new states. Local passions have become stronger than regional loyalty. Minorities in states have felt over the years that they have been pushed into the corner by the majority's chauvinism. The initial idea of citizenship has worn out because a common citizenship for the entire Indian people has not given equal rights and equal opportunities throughout the union.

New Delhi's bungling of the Telangana issue is blatant. It was announced in parliament that the process of forming Telangana would be initiated soon. And then the government went back on its word. The other parts of Andhra Pradesh were up in arms. Only the appointment of a committee restored peace.

Gorkha land — the hilly parts of West Bengal — has already started to agitate to get the demand for a new state conceded. Bodobad in Assam has threatened violence if it is not made a union territory. And Vidarbha in Maharashtra is an old demand which even the commission on reorganisation of states had recommended in 1954.

How India, or for that matter the ruling Congress, sorts out Telangana will give a peep into the government's thinking on the formation of other states. The party will be damned if it constitutes Telangana and damned if it does not. But it appears that events would meander ultimately towards constituting the state of Telangana.

Such politics of opportunism has resulted in exploiting the educated youth by politicians, causing inter-regional and inter-community differences. This articulation is as much applicable to Pakistan and Bangladesh as India. All three countries maybe treading different paths but they share the same infirmities because of unprincipled politicians.

Another CRS, which has been demanded by many, may open the floodgates. What the country does not seem to realise yet is that new demands are primarily an assertion of caste, not language. The scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes, the backward classes and the minorities have their own aspirations for political space, economic development and reservation benefits. This observation is borne out by the clear caste divisions witnessed among the Telangana joint action groups, including those on the Osmania University campus. The violence witnessed before the formation of linguistic states in the early '50s may engulf the country once again.

Unity or integration of a country does neither depend on raising slogans nor on chastising people who want to opt out because they are maltreated and denied what a dominant group in a state enjoys as its right. This leads to desperation and people come to have faith in extremism. In some cases, ethnic cleansing is considered a way out. Some evidence is visible on the border of Meghalaya and Assam where people speaking other languages have been pushed out.

Societies have to have a sense of accommodation and spirit of tolerance if they want to live together peacefully. It is the integrity of a nation on which the future is centred. Communities of different hues and different thinking are the limbs of a nation, not the nation by themselves. That the limbs should be healthy and strong is in the interest of the country. But they cannot supplant the nation.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi.