Linguistic nationalism rather than Religious divisions in India

Indian nations haven't usually been language based so I am not sure if such nationalism can rise. It seems being European thing. It is possible that there is language based nations but most Indian nations probably not.
 
India peacefully reorganized its inherited states in 1956, redrawing their boundaries along linguistic lines. If instead, the British had done this, say, 50 or 75 years earlier, you could have had language-based (princely?) states at the height of the era of nationalism. Probably would have been a horrible mess, especially if states dispute linguistic enclaves between themselves.
 
Maybe if India wasn't administered as a single unit, but as several, perhaps this could work. But there are a lot of minority languages - what happens to those areas?

Here's a map to illustrate:

himal1992max.jpg


I could see an independent south India, Baluchistan, Greater Bengal, Kashmir etc., an alternate Durand Line, and so on, but it isn't going to be easy.
 
I can think of a few things that might be able to help.

  1. Unified Bengal instead of being divided between India and East Pakistan. This would help create a precedent for linguistic states, especially if united Bengal does well.
  2. No States Reorganisation Act. This will piss off a lot of people in favour of it, which is likely to strengthen local separatist movements.
  3. Have the Indian government face a major crisis of legitimacy, possibly with the INC collapsing in the 60s-70s.
  4. Stronger Tamil nationalist movement.
 
Here is how I think it goes -
  1. India is not divided
  2. It is communist like USSR
  3. It creates SSRs like the USSR
  4. It in invades its neighbouring nations of Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and annexes them along with a Portion of Afghanistan
  5. There is a severe problem of overextension, However, they are able to manage
  6. It collapses in 1991
  7. The SSR are now countries
 
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oTL there were riots in Tamil Nadu when the Indian government planned to make Hindi the sole official language. As a compromise, Hindi and English were both made official. Had the government continued on with its plans to make only Hindi official, support for an independent Dravidian-speaking state could have increased. oTL there was only minor support for secession, but in this ATL, there could be majority support.
 
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