We often classify India in the simplistic divisions of south, north and north east. For the British India stretched from the north western frontier province to Burma, who's lord was of course Mountbatten. India was divided into the presidencies of madras, Calcutta and Bombay, the provinces, united provinces, central provinces and the 560 odd subsidiary princely states. During the integration of India, some parts of the federal republic morphed easily. United provinces for example became Uttar Pradesh, it even kept the same acronym. Central provinces became Madhya Pradesh. The presidencies became their own states and some of the smaller princely entities had to be clubbed together to form economically viable large enough states. Punjab was originally called pepsu. Patiala and the east Punjab states union. the raj's federalism had to be reinterpreted and it was, principally along linguistic lines. it was as early as 1925 that the congressman Periyar quit the grand old party to battle for tamil rights. through the self respect movement, opposition to hindi and the push for a dravida nadu, south india came into it's own. Later with annadurai and even after splitting with annadurai, their legacy was the state of tamil nadu, mostly of tamil speaking people. Large parts of the nizam's hyderabad comprising of telugu speaking people would become andhra pradesh. it was in the states reorganisation act in 1956 that mysore would become karnataka. there is still a dispute between maharashtra and karnataka over border areas where there is a mix of marathi and kannada speakers. in the U.S, states with smaller populations were given disproportional representation in national politics. that's why the u.s president is elected by an electoral college, not by the popular vote. In India, each constituency has around the same amount of voters. the south thereby has less heft at the centre, and it's scarcely been united. the politics in delhi has been dominated by northern leaders. now chandrababu naidu, hdk and today stalin are gathering together to make a push from the south, the one place the bjp, barring karnataka, is weak. they've invited the congress, mamata and company to join them. But are they batting for anything more than an opportunistic and perhaps desperate alliance to stay afloat against the bjp juggernaut or would they really like to see a southern face return as india's prime minister?
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