India is a
federal union of states
comprising
twenty-eight states and
seven union territories. The states and territories are further
subdivided into districts and so on.
States and territories
Parts of Jammu and Kashmir are considered disputed territory claimed by India, Pakistan & China with each country administering a part of the former state of KashmirPart of Arunachal Pradesh is claimed by China as South Tibet 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 of the
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.
Nagaland was made a state on 1 December 1963. . The
Punjab Reorganization Act of 1966 divided the Punjab along linguistic and religious lines, creating a new Hindu and Hindi-speaking state of
Haryana on 1 November , transferring the northern districts of Punjab to
Himachal Pradesh, and designating
Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, a union territory.
Statehood was conferred upon
Himachal Pradesh on 25 January 1971,
Manipur,
Meghalaya and
Tripura on 21 January 1972. The Kingdom of
Sikkim joined the Indian Union as a state on 26 April 1975. In 1987,
Arunachal Pradesh and
Mizoram became states on 20 February, followed by
Goa on 30 May, 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
See also
