Andhra State formed linguistically

Who: Telugu speakers of the old Madras Presidency; Potti Sriramulu, a Congress veteran who fasted for a Telugu state; Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who resisted and then gave way. In Punjab, Master Tara Singh's Akali Dal had made a Punjabi-speaking state the main plank of its 1952 manifesto.

What: On October 19, 1952, Sriramulu began an indefinite fast for a separate Andhra state. He died on December 15, 1952, on the 58th day, and rioting followed. Nehru announced a Telugu-speaking state on December 19. Andhra State came into being on October 1, 1953, carved out of Madras, with Kurnool as its capital. It was the first state of independent India formed on a linguistic basis.

Nehru then set up the States Reorganisation Commission in December 1953. Its report came in September 1955 and, in Jairam Ramesh's words in Scroll, "pleased nobody".

Where: Madras and the Telugu districts of the Presidency; Kurnool as the first capital; Delhi, where the question was decided.

Why it mattered: The Tribune says Andhra broke the Centre's reluctance to concede linguistic states. Punjab was left out. Punjabi Suba was still being demanded. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the Centre's earlier commission of 1948 kept northern India out of its purview, and that the 1953 commission argued that linguistic provinces would invite separation demands from groups such as Sikhs and Jats. The Encyclopaedia calls that argument "obviously weak".

The commission recommended merging PEPSU and Himachal Pradesh with Punjab, which the Akali Dal found unacceptable. The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 (section 11) formed a new Punjab from the existing Punjab and PEPSU from November 1, 1956. According to the Scroll piece, Nehru saw the Punjabi demand as "essentially a religious demand packaged as a linguistic issue". The Punjabi-speaking state came only in 1966.