States and union territories of India
India is a union of states[1] comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are themselves further subdivided.[1]
Pre-1956
The subcontinent of India has been ruled by many different ethnic groups throughout its history, each imposing their own administrative divisions on the region. Modern India's current administrative divisions are fairly recent developments, which began to develop during British colonial rule of India. British India included almost all of present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as well as the associated protectorate of Afghanistan and province, later colony, of Burma (Myanmar). During this period, regions of India were either directly ruled by the British or under the control of local rajas. Independence in 1947 largely preserved these divisions, with the provinces of Punjab and Bengal being divided between India and Pakistan. One of the first challenges for the new nation was the integration of the multitude of princely states into the union.
Following independence, however, instability soon arose in India. Many of the provinces had been created by the British to serve their colonial purposes and as such did not reflect either the will of India's citizens or the ethnic divisions found throughout the subcontinent. Ethnic tensions spurred the Indian Parliament to reorganize the country along ethnic and linguistic lines in 1956 by means ofthe States Reorganisation Act.
After 1956
The former French and Portuguese colonies in India were incorporated into the Republic as the union territories of Pondicherry, Dadra, Nagar Haveli, Goa, Daman, and Diu in 1962.
Several new states and union territories have been created out of existing states since 1956. Bombay State was split into the linguistic states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 by the Bombay Reorganization Act. The Punjab Reorganization Act of 1966 divided the Punjab along linguistic and religious lines, creating a new Hindu and Hindi-speaking state of Haryana, transferring the northern districts of Punjab to Himachal Pradesh, and designating Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, a union territory. Nagaland was made a state in 1962, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh in 1971, and Tripura and Manipur in 1972. Arunachal Pradesh was made a union territory in 1972. The Kingdom of Sikkim joined the Indian Union as a state in 1975. Mizoram was made a state in 1986, and Goa and Arunachal Pradesh in 1987, while Goa's northern exclaves of Daman and Diu became a separate union territory. In 2000 three new states were created; Chhattisgarh(November 1, 2000) was created out of eastern Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal (November 9, 2000), since renamed Uttarakhand, was created out of the Hilly regions of northwest Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand (15 November 2000)was created out of the southern districts of Bihar. The Union Territories of Delhi and Pondicherry (renamed to Puducherry) have since been given the right to elect their own legislatures and they are now counted as small states
States and territories
See also
- List of Indian state and union territory capitals
- List of Indian States and Union Territories and their two digit codes
- List of states of India by area
- List of states of India by population
- List of Indian states ranked by population density
- List of Indian states by the etymology of their name
- States of India by size of economy
- Subdivisions of India
- Indian states rankings
- Autonomous regions of India
References
- ^ a b "States and union territories" (HTML). Retrieved 2007-09-07.