Twenty-Ninth State

India last week got its 29th state, Andhra, a rich rice land carved from the state of Madras (see map). On hand for the inauguration ceremony, smiling and suitably festive, was India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had done everything in his power to block the new state and to delay its creation. Andhra was specifically designed to fit the largest block of Telegu-speaking people--some 20 millions--into one state. Nehru feared this would set a trend towards the Balkanization of the Indian Republic along the lines of India's 15 languages, 250 dialects. Five other linguistic groups were already demanding that new states be carved for those who spoke Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarathi, Kanarese, Malayalam.

This disruption pleases the Communists, who think they can undermine the smaller states more easily than the large. In Andhra. where the Communists are stronger than anywhere else in India, they already hold 45 seats of the 140-man state legislative assembly, and one drought might tip the political scales in their favor. But Nehru, a canny man when it comes to fighting the Communists in his own country, managed to patch together a coalition between his own Congress Party and a few independents that would give his side a handy majority in Andhra; he located the state capital at Kurnool, far from the Communist pressure groups of the seacoast; he persuaded respected, 85-year-old Tanguturu Prakasam, who quit the Congress Party 30 months ago, to rejoin the party as Andhra's chief minister of state. Then he warned 100,000 new Andhrans in Kurnool that they should not set themselves aside from India. India was the mansion, states such as Andhra its rooms. "The spirit of unity should prevail," he said, "if the country is to prosper."

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