Linguistic Provinces Commission
Also called: Dhar Commission · Topic: Challenges of Nation Building: Partition, Princely States and Reorganisation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Linguistic Provinces Commission was set up in 1948 under Justice S.K. Dhar, which is why it is also called the Dhar Commission. It studied whether provinces should be reorganised by language. It advised against it and preferred administrative convenience, meaning boundaries that make a region easy to govern. Partition had just happened and the princely states were still unsettled, so leaders feared that language-based units could break up the country.
Example
Before independence, the Congress had organised its own Provincial Congress Committees by language, after its Nagpur session (1920). The Dhar Commission (1948) moved away from this old promise. The JVP Committee (1948-49) then postponed the issue as well.
Don't confuse with
- JVP Committee (1948-49): a Congress committee that put off linguistic states but left the door open for Andhra.
- States Reorganisation Commission (Fazl Ali, 1953-55): it accepted language as the main basis for state boundaries.