There are geographical bases for Indian federalism. These bases are provided by its vast size, physical contrasts, cultural (religious, linguistic, racial) diversities, regional disparities, demographic variations and historical factors.
Thus a ‘geographically intelligible isolate’ India is parceled by nature into a number of somewhat self contained units which, before the coming of modern communication, had for centuries developed in relative isolation and thus had come to possess their own distinctive, physical, cultural and linguistic complexes.
Throughout history these nuclear areas had maintained some kind of separate historical identity, though some of them were divided into a number of rival principalities.
There were continued attempts to weld the diverse regions together into a single body polity, and some measure of success was achieved in the different periods of history; but through the ages, under India’s concept of Samrajya (or paramount), the regional units, while recognizing the paramount of the central power, had retained their regional autonomy. Hence, a kind of incipient federalism was present all the time in India’s historical past.
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Despite an overall sense of belonging together, each of the regional unit has an identity of its own. The Vindhyas act as formidable barrier between the northern plain and the southern plateau. Thus the Aryan north is culturally different from the Dravidian south. But this change from north to south is not sudden.
Instead there exists a transition area consisting of the forest-covered tracts of central India inhabited by the tribal groups whose cultures differ from either two. The north and south are further divided into several smaller linguistic cultural subdivisions by certain topographical lineaments of the landscape.
The Indus valley region is separated from the Ganga-plain by the wide expanse of the Rajasthan desert, and is connected with the latter only by a narrow corridor to the north of Delhi. But from here to the Far East there is no geographical divide in the Ganga plain.
This has led to the development of a homogeneous cultural complex from west to east till the northward projected horn of the plateau in the Chotanagpur region is reached. Bengal, beyond the bottleneck between Chotanagpur and the Himalayas, though culturally one with the rest of the plains had developed its own language (though derived from Sanskrit like other north Indian languages).
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Separated from the Bengali speaking areas by the Shillong plateau is the Brahmaputra valley of Assam with its own linguistic-cultural complex. South of the Indus-Ganga plain are, from west to east, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa-each of them (except Madhya Pradesh), though still Indo- Aryan in their linguistic-cultural complex, have developed their own language and script.
South of the Deccan lava country in Maharashtra is the Kannada -speaking Karnataka. Kannada, unlike Marathi, belongs to the Dravidian Group. Further south of it is the Malayalam-speak- ing Kerala separated from the Kannada and Tamil- speaking areas to the east by the ridge of the Western Ghats.
The Tamil-speaking area is roughly separated by the Mysore Ghats from Karnataka and the Western Ghats from Kerala. North of Tamil Nadu and east of the Kannada and Marathi-speaking areas is the Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh dominated by the riverine tracts of the Krishna and Godavari.
Above description leads us to conclude that geography has played significant role in the development of regional units with distinct identity and thus helping the cause of Indian federalism. But unlike other federal countries here isolation is not well marked and the Indian culture has all pervading effect to bind regional units together. Infect for a large country like India with complex physical and cultural diversities federalism is the only practicable solution of the political and constitutional problems.
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Despite climatic and physical diversities India is not compartmentalized into discrete units. That is why while maintaining their separate identities the diverse regions are all the time conscious of their essential cultural’ unity. Infect, Hinduism has been able to build up a common culture and a uniform way of life throughout the country. British rule, though to some extent decentralized, united different regions into a single political and economic structure.
After the World War, India was internationally recognized as a single political entity, and international treaties entered into by the British Indian government had become binding on the Indian states. The railways and improved roads made inter-regional communication easy and isolation of the provincial units difficult; and the centrally governed postal, telegraph and telephone services, and the broadcasting system effectively bound the entire country together.
The republican federation of India was, therefore, not an artificial creation. It represented the genuine emergence of a single nation welded together by social, economic and political forces.