Politics in a bilingual province : the Central Provinces and Berar, India, 1919-1939

Abstract

The development of politics in the Central Provinces and Berar during the twentieth century is a neglected study. The historians of modern India have passed over the province in favour of provinces that enjoyed a longer history of British administration and had closer connections with the nationalist movement. As evidence of this neglect, there is only one political history of the province between 1919 and 1939> namely the History of Freedom Movement in Madhya Pradesh published in 1956 by the Government of Madhya Pradesh, the successor state to the former Central Provinces and Berar. In addition, Marathi writers have written a number of biographies of nationalists from the Marathi region, and several authors have written biographies and autobiographies in English of nationalists from both the Hindi and Marathi regions. But these apart, the general reader and historian alike will search almost in vain for a study of political developments in the province between 1919 and 1939 The writer of this thesis hopes to remedy that neglect in some measure. He also hopes to demonstrate that events of considerable significance to the Indian nationalist movement and contemporary Indian politics occurred in the province during the period under review. A study of political events in the Central Provinces and Berar between 1919 and 1939 raises the question whether multi-lingual states form viable political units. The province was similar to many of the provinces of British India in that its population comprised several large linguistic communities. The presence of these communities in the Central Provinces and Berar arose from the fact that the British authorities formed the province for administrative reasons, and took little account of the then largely Unimportant questions of history, language and ethnicity. Between 1919 and 1939 however, these questions grew rapidly in importance owing to the establishment of democratic institutions and to the fact that the political leaders raised them to win the allegiance of the people. This study focusses attention on the growing importance of language in the Central Provinces and Berar. It also shows the effect which the growth of linguistic consciousness had on the balance of power in the province, and the extent to which it interfered with the processes of stable government. In doing so, it seeks to establish whether multi-lingual states are politically viable and whether they are likely to be more or less stable than linguistic states. Show more