Assam
When India started carving out states in 1953, the States Reorganisation Commission said “territorial readjustments between (states) should not assume the form of disputes between alien powers.” Yet, it is the panel’s 1955 report that, political scientists say, most inter-state disputes in the country trace their roots to.
Many inter-state border disputes have their roots in the reorganisation of states in the 1950s … was primarily based on language … As a result, there is a border dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, and so on,” said Dr Amarjeet Singh, honorary director of Jamia Millia Islamia’s Centre for North Eastern Studies and Policy Research.
State identity was linked to language. So, if a pocket that spoke the majority language of, for instance, Maharashtra, was clubbed with Karnataka, it opened up the possibility of a future conflict.
Besides, many of these state demarcations were based on district boundaries created by the British. “Not village boundaries,” said Prof L Lam Khan Piang from JNU. Borders are tied to maps. If a map does not lay out in excruciating detail where the administrative border lies, it can lead to a dispute.
“Yet, most states are carved out of host states on the basis of colonial cartographies … They seldom acknowledge the socio-cultural liminality of borders,” said Prof Rajesh Dev from Delhi University.
