Thread by @indiainpixels

When do states in India celebrate their birthdays and how old are they today?

On #NationalUnityDay2022, let's take a moment to take a trip across different states and observe how did they come into existence.

A thread 🧵 (1/16)

Different states of India celebrate their birthdays (technically called foundation days) differently. Some celebrate it on their statehood day - i.e. the day they became a state, for example, the southern states all celebrate their birthdays on 1st November. (2/16)

Some other states pick their birthday when they got some official status. Himachal for example got full statehood in 1971 but it regards its birth year as 1948 as then it was established as a Chief Commissioner's Province post Independence. It later became a UT in 1956. (3/16)

Bihar regards its birth year as 1912 as it was then that the Bihar and Orissa province was separated from the Bengal Presidency by the British. Odisha regards its birth year as 1936 when the Bihar and Orissa Province was split into Bihar and Orissa again by the British. (4/16)

About 15 states/UTs have their birthdays on 1st Novemeber 1956 - when the States Reorganisation Act reformed the boundaries based on linguistic grounds. Most states formed then are still intact today. (5/16)

But some states split further. Like the bilingual Bombay state in 1960 got split into Marathi speaking Maharashtra and Gujarati speaking Gujarat.
(6/16)

Bengal decided she would celebrate her birthday on 20 June 1947 - when the members of the Bengal Legislative Assembly decided to partition Bengal into the Indian West Bengal and the eastern half of the new nation Pakistan. (7/16)

On 21 January, 1972, the states of Tripura, Manipur, and Meghalaya became full-fledged states under the North Eastern Region (Re-organisation) Act, 1971 after being UTs for several years. Thus they all celebrate their birthday together on this day of statehood. (8/16)

Uttar Pradesh wasn't formed on linguistic basis - the previous province under the British - United Provinces was renamed as Uttar Pradesh on 24 January 1950 and hence in 2017 the governor of UP Ram Naikji decided to celebrate as Uttar Pradesh Divas. (9/16)

We annexed the Portuguese colonies in 1961 and merged the Goa, Daman and Diu UT in India. The Goa portion of the territory was granted statehood on 30 May 1987. Daman and Diu remained a separate UT until December 2019, when it was merged with Dadra and Nagar Haveli to make DNHDD.

On 14th April 1975, voters in Sikkim overwhelmingly approved abolishing that nation's monarchy and merging with neighboring India. On 16th May - Sikkim became the 22nd state of India and its 200,000 residents became citizens. (11/16)

Till 1972, Arunachal was known as the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA). It gained the Union Territory status on January 20, 1972, and was renamed Arunachal Pradesh. On 20th February 1987, Arunachal Pradesh became a full-fledged State. (12/16)

In 2000, India got three new states - Madhya Pradesh was split to form Chattisgarh. UP was split to form Uttarakhand and Bihar was split to form Jharkhand. (13/16)

Telangana was part of the Hyderabad State from 1948 1956 until it was merged with Andhra to form the Andhra Pradesh State. After decades of movement for a separate state, Telangana was created by passing the Andhra Pradesh State Reorganisation Act in 2014. (14/16)

East Punjab was a huge state at the time of independence. Hindi language movement started on 30 April 1957 paved the way for the demand for the formation of Haryana as a separate state - which finally happened in 1966 when East Punjab was dissolved to Punjab and Haryana. (!5/16)

Isn't it super cool how every state of India has as such an interesting back story? Blessed are we to be born in this country in this era, reaping the fruits of the sacrifice and bravery of the great heroes born on this land.

Wish you all a very happy Unity Day!