JVP Committee of the Congress on linguistic provinces

Who: A three-man committee of the Indian National Congress: Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, known as the J.V.P. Committee.

What: The Congress appointed the committee at its Jaipur session in December 1948 to consider the question of linguistic provinces and to review the position in the light of the Dar Commission's report and the new problems since Independence. The States Reorganisation Commission records that the committee said the Congress had approved linguistic provinces in principle without facing their practical application; that the primary consideration must be the security, unity and economic prosperity of India, with every separatist and disruptive tendency rigorously discouraged; that language was not only a binding force but also a separating one; and that the old policy could be applied only after careful thought about each case. It admitted that if public sentiment was insistent and overwhelming, "we, as democrats, have to submit to it" (the Parliamentary Committee's wording), within limits: at the start the principle should apply only to well-defined areas where there was mutual agreement, and not every proposal could be carried out at once. It said a beginning could be made with Andhra. The Congress Working Committee adopted the report in April 1949.

In December 1952 Nehru told Parliament that the Government could form Andhra State only according to the committee's principles, and after the death of Potti Sriramulu the Government announced an Andhra State that did not include the city of Madras.

Where: Jaipur, where the Congress session met.

Why it mattered: The States Reorganisation Commission says the Congress broadly kept to the committee's views afterwards. The Punjabi Suba story ran through them. The Parliamentary Committee on the demand for Punjabi Suba, chaired by Hukam Singh, quoted the committee in its history of the demand in 1966. One of its members, Dr M. S. Aney, added a note that the short extract in the report understated the committee's opposition to the linguistic principle, and set out the fuller passage; he still supported the report's conclusions, saying the evidence showed the demand for Punjabi Suba had the support of a very great majority of the people of Punjab.