During the nationalist movement, Gandhi had encouraged the use of indigenous languages, seeing them as more authentic expressions of Indian culture than the English language. After independence it was natural for regional groups to agitate for provincial reorganizations on a linguistic basis. Nehru himself hated the idea of linguistic divisions, which he believed encouraged the kind of separatism seen in partition violence and Hindu communalism,
but when a leader from the Telugu speaking region of Madras Presidency died during a protest fast in 1952, the government immediately agreed to carve a new Telugu speaking state - Andhra Pradesh - out of the old Madras Presidency.
In 1956, on the recommendation of a commission, linguistic divisions were carried further, dividing India into 14 language-based states: Kerala was created for Malayam speakers, Karnataka for Kannada speakers, and Madras (present-day Tamilnadu) for Tamil speakers.
In 1960 the old Bombay Presidency was divided into a Gujarati speaking Gujarat and a Marathi speaking Maharashtra, with the city of Bombay going to Maharashtra. The movement of refugees during partition had given the Sikhs, a religious community who spoke Punjabi, a majority presence in the western Punjab. In 1966 the old province of the Punjab was also divided into a Punjabi-speaking (Sikh) Punjab and two smaller states, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.
