Why Uttar Pradesh Must Be Broken Up, Hindustan Times

‘Commissions of enquiry are often the stock-in-trade of governments to defuse crises and buy themselves time’. Thus writes the historian Gyanesh Kudaisya, in an excellent introduction to a new edition of the Report of the States Reorganization Commission, first published in 1955.

The States Reorganization Commission (hereafter SRC) was set up in response to persistent demands that colonial provincial boundaries be redrawn on the basis of language. It had three members: the jurist S. Fazl Ali,...