Potti Sriramulu's 58-Day Fast Ended on 15 December 1952, and the Andhra State It Won Led to the Fazl Ali Commission and the 1956 Act That Redrew India's Map With Language as One of Its Tests

Potti Sriramulu died in Madras on 15 December 1952, after a fast of 58 days to demand a separate state for Telugu speakers. The Government of India agreed within days. The State of Andhra came into existence on 1 October 1953, a three-member commission was appointed, and the States Reorganisation Act of 31 August 1956 took effect on 1 November 1956. It replaced the old Part A, B and C states with 14 states and six Union territories, and the Seventh Amendment rewrote the First Schedule of the Constitution to match.

This article follows that path from the people involved and the documents they left: the commission’s report of 1955, the Acts themselves and the Supreme Court’s reading of one of them. The full list of units and the later changes are in our explainer on India’s 28 states and 8 Union territories.

A fast that began in a borrowed house

Sriramulu was born in 1901, worked for the railways and became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. ThePrint’s profile says he was at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram by 1930 and was arrested several times in the Salt Satyagraha. In December 1946 he fasted in Madras to have temples there opened to Dalits, and ThePrint and DT Next both say Gandhi persuaded him to end it.

His last fast began on 19 October 1952 at the house of Bulusu Sambamurthy in Mylapore, next to Vidyamandir School, according to DT Next. The demand was an Andhra province carved out of Madras State. For weeks the Centre did not move. Open magazine quotes a letter of 3 December 1952 from Jawaharlal Nehru to the Madras Chief Minister, C. Rajagopalachari, in which Nehru wrote: “Some kind of fast is going on for the Andhra Province and I get frantic telegrams.”

The Better India reports that Nehru wrote again on 12 December, asking Rajagopalachari to accept the demand. Sriramulu died on 15 December. DT Next says he fell into a coma on the 56th day, and the count of 58 days used by ThePrint and The Better India runs to his death. Hartals spread through Andhra towns and mobs damaged public property. The Better India says seven people were killed in police firing at Anakapalle and Vijayawada, a figure this article could not check against an official record.

The Better India, citing The Hindu, gives 19 December as the date of the Government’s announcement. The commission’s own report records the wording: a state of Andhra “consisting of the Telugu-speaking areas of the present Madras State but not including the City of Madras”.

The demand was already three decades old

The States Reorganisation Commission traced the idea in its report. The Indian National Congress formed separate Congress provinces for Sind and Andhra in 1917, accepted linguistic provinces as a political objective at its Nagpur session in 1920, and adopted the principle for its own organisation the following year. The Nehru Committee of the All Parties Conference wrote in 1928 that “the main considerations must necessarily be the wishes of the people and the linguistic unity of the area concerned”. The Congress repeated the pledge in 1937, at Wardha in 1938 and in its 1945 to 1946 manifesto.

Independence and Partition changed the mood. The commission quotes Nehru’s remark to the Constituent Assembly on 27 November 1947: “First things must come first and the first thing is the security and stability of India.” A Linguistic Provinces Commission under S. K. Dar reported in December 1948 and advised against forming provinces mainly on language. The Congress committee of Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, known as the J.V.P. Committee, said language could separate as well as bind. It still allowed that Andhra could be a beginning, provided the areas were well defined and agreed. The India that Patel and others had just assembled from the princely states is the subject of our piece on Sardar Patel and the princely states.

Andhra State, with Madras city left out

After Sriramulu’s death the Government applied the J.V.P. principles, which is why Madras city, a disputed area, stayed out of the new state. A judge, Justice Wanchoo, reported in February 1953 and recommended that the Bellary district go to Andhra. The Government instead gave Andhra only the three Bellary taluks with a Telugu majority, and another inquiry under Justice Misra sent the Bellary taluk itself to Mysore.

A bill reached the House of the People on 10 August 1953. The Andhra State Act, Act 30 of 1953, formed the state on 1 October 1953 from 11 districts of Madras, from Srikakulam in the north to Chittoor in the south, and the Alur, Adoni and Rayadrug taluks of Bellary. The Better India says Kurnool served as its capital.

Three members and a brief that put unity first

On 22 December 1953 Nehru told Parliament that a commission would examine reorganisation “objectively and dispassionately”. A Home Ministry resolution of 29 December 1953 named Saiyid Fazl Ali as chairman, with Hriday Nath Kunzru and K. M. Panikkar as members. The resolution set out the Government’s order of priorities: “The first essential consideration is the preservation and strengthening of the unity and security of India.”

The three signed the report in New Delhi on 30 September 1955. Panikkar signed subject to a separate note on Uttar Pradesh, and Fazl Ali took no part in the Bihar border disputes because of his long connection with the state. On language, the report says it is “neither possible nor desirable” to reorganise states on the single test of language or culture. It recognised linguistic homogeneity as an important factor, rejected the theory of “one language one state”, and rejected the idea that a language group has a single homeland to which its speakers owe loyalty wherever they live. It asked for safeguards for linguistic minorities. Its scheme was sixteen states and three centrally administered territories.

Hyderabad, and what Parliament changed

The commission weighed the case for a Vishalandhra, a larger Andhra joined to the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad State. It listed the advantages: a state of about 32 million people, the Krishna and Godavari valleys under one government, and a settled capital in Hyderabad and Secunderabad. It also recorded the fears of Telangana leaders, who worried that settled revenue would give way to the financial uncertainty Andhra had faced since 1953. Its proposal was a separate Hyderabad State for the time being, with union with Andhra possible after the general elections around 1961 if two thirds of its legislature agreed.

Parliament moved faster. The States Reorganisation Bill went to the Lok Sabha on 18 April 1956, a joint committee of both Houses reported on 16 July, and the President gave assent on 31 August. Section 3 of the Act added to Andhra the districts of Hyderabad, Medak, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar, most of Adilabad and several taluks of the Raichur, Gulbarga, Bidar and Nanded districts. It also renamed the enlarged state Andhra Pradesh.

The Seventh Amendment came into force on 1 November 1956, the same day as the Act’s appointed day. Its Statement of Objects says it abolished the three categories of states, and its new First Schedule lists 14 states and six Union territories. It inserted Articles 350A and 350B, which the Statement says implement one of the commission’s recommendations on linguistic minorities: the first asks states to provide primary instruction in the mother tongue to children of linguistic minority groups, and the second creates a Special Officer for linguistic minorities. A rewritten Article 371 let the President set up regional committees of the Andhra Pradesh and Punjab assemblies. Our explainer on Article 371 and its sub-articles follows that provision to the present. The state of Telangana was formed separately on 2 June 2014, as set out in our Telangana profile.

Bombay: three units on paper, one state in law, two by 1960

The commission proposed a bilingual Bombay State that would take in Marathwada, Saurashtra and Kutch, and a separate Vidarbha. The Bill as introduced in April 1956 offered yet another pattern: a Union territory of Bombay, a Maharashtra with Marathwada and Vidarbha, and a Gujarat with Saurashtra and Kutch. The Act that passed instead formed one composite State of Bombay under section 8, with the Marathi-speaking districts of Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad and the former states of Saurashtra and Kutch inside it.

A petitioner argued that Bombay’s legislature should have been consulted again on the changed plan. In Babulal Parate v. State of Bombay, decided on 28 August 1959, the Supreme Court held that the proviso to Article 3 requires the President to refer the Bill’s proposal to the state legislature for its views, not that Parliament must follow them or refer an amended proposal a second time. The same Seventh Amendment gave the President power to direct the Governor to set up separate development boards for Vidarbha, Marathwada, the rest of Maharashtra, Saurashtra, Kutch and the rest of Gujarat.

The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti kept up its demand that the bilingual state be split into a Marathi state and a Gujarati one. A March 2012 issue of the Maharashtra government’s magazine Maharashtra Ahead refers to the 105 people who died in that movement, and records that Y. B. Chavan became chief minister of the bilingual state in 1956. Parliament then passed the Bombay Reorganisation Act, Act 11 of 1960, which received assent on 25 April 1960. From the appointed day, 1 May 1960, it formed Gujarat from 17 districts of Bombay State and a set of border villages, and the residuary Bombay State became the State of Maharashtra.