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UPSC 2017 GS-I · 15 marks · 250 words

In the context of the diversity of India, can it be said that the regions form cultural units rather than the States? Give reasons with examples for your viewpoint.

What “Justify” demands

argue positively for the stated position with evidence, and meet the obvious objection.

The characteristic failure: presenting both sides neutrally when a defence was asked for.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this question — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

  • The case for regions: cultural regions cut across state lines — Bhojpuri across UP and Bihar, Braj, Mithila, Bundelkhand, Konkan, Tulu Nadu, Vidarbha, Rayalaseema
  • States were drawn on language (States Reorganisation Act 1956), and language is only one of several cultural markers — dress, cuisine, kinship, festival calendar, folk forms
  • Cross-border cultural continuities: Punjab across the 1966 trifurcation, Bengali culture across West Bengal, Assam's Barak valley and Tripura
  • The case for states: sixty years of shared administration, textbooks, state boards, cinema and political mobilisation have themselves manufactured state identity
  • Anchors: the ASI's People of India project, and the Sarkaria and Punchhi Commissions on identity in federal design
  • Defensible conclusion: regions are the older cultural unit, states the stronger political one — take a position rather than sit between them

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