The inter state quarrels give an impression that we are still living in the feudal age. If we go a little deep we find that the same culture pervades throughout the country. There are some differences in dresses and eating habits because of climate in different areas. Still they are similar in vast areas comprising of a number of states.

The whole of North is a unit from this point of view. So is the whole of South. The whole North Eastern region has the same traditions. Bengal, Orissa and Eastern Bihar can be bracketed as one unit. The Western states have close similarity of habits and traditions.

Thus the formation of states on linguistic basis and then declaring the country a federation was one of the blunders we committed after independence. It took no time to let the seeds of linguistic chauvinism; partisanship and regionalism develop in a vicious shape.

The worst effect of all this is the growth of the third generation leadership that has not seen the united India giving a fight to the foreign rulers. The examples before the new generation are those of the West where fifteen countries were forcibly united to form the Soviet Federation or thirteen countries voluntarily united themselves to form a Federation of United States of America. The blunder culminated in the assertion of the people as Bengalis, Tamilians, Nagas, Gujaratis, Keralites, Andhraites, Kannadas, Biharis or Rajasthanis not as Indians. India became abstract and the artificially nomenclature states became real and substantial.

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The so called states have stopped thinking at a national level. Every issue—small or big becomes a regional issue-culminating in chauvinism and dominance of different shapes. The neoconverts to Christianity in Nagaland and Manipur denounce the non converts as foreigners.

Chennai having been the centre of activities in the south during British regime and Tamil being the richest and the oldest modern language gives an edge to the Tamil leaders to have the airs of superiority. The memories of the benign kingdom of Mysore and the supremacy of Tipu in the south in the past and the fine cultural background of Bangalore gives the Kannadas an air of sophistication. Similar are the conditions in Haryana and Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra, Orissa, Assam and Bengal.

The Cauvery water issue between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the Indira Canal water issue between Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana, the Chandigarh and the Sikh and non-Sikh issue between Haryana and Punjab, the Nepalese and non-Nepalese issue in Sikkim and Darjeeling, the tribal and non-tribal issue in the tribal belt have taken the dimension of quarrels between two countries. They have resulted in riots, killings, arson, migration and uprooting of families from a place they lived for hundreds of years.

The masses in almost all the regions are good and sensible. But good men are not in the control rooms. It is the hoodlums and mafias who rule the roost. It is very easy for them to instigate the poor and the uneducated.

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Once the lava of hatred comes out of the volcano of regionalism it spreads all around and burns the green pastures of the nation.

The segregationists in certain areas have already started talking of a loose commonwealth of states on the lines of the commonwealth of the states of former USSR. The youth have to be vigilant not to allow the interstate quarrels take a shape that may sow the seeds of further partition of the Motherland. Let them be guided not by the forces of disintegration but by those that are making concerted efforts for the consolidation and unity of the state petals to keep the flower of the nation blooming.