How Geography, History Ingrained The North-South Divide In India

Landscapes mould lives. Geography determines climate and resour­ces and dictates societal behaviour, from influencing the growth and movements of populations to shaping their habits. The geography of the Indian subcontinent, a geopolitical unit largely congruent with the Indian tectonic plate, gave it civilisations distinct from those of China and Central Asia.

Bound by the Arabian Sea in the west, the Indian Ocean in the south and the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Himalayas and its extensions in the north, northeast and east, the subcontinent faced repeated invasions and sustained migration of West Asian and Central Asian powers and people through the west and the northwest, where there exists no such physical barrier. From the Indus Valley in the west to the Bengal Delta in the east, migrants and invaders—from the Aryans to the Arabs—spread eastward rather quickly through the riverine plains.

However, the Vindhya, a low mountain range stretching across central India, roughly from Gujarat in the west to Bihar in the east, has served as a barrier. This is why these migrants and invaders took much longer to reach the south, leading to the development of distinct civilisations south of the Vindhya. The Vindhya, together with the roughly parallel Satpura hills range and the Narmada River, restricted the influence of northern empires and traditions in the south.

The Vindhya also serves as an anthropological border. North of the Vindhya lies the land of the speakers of Indo-Aryan languages—Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, etc. The Vindhya region is home to a large number of India라이브 바카라 tribal population, who predominantly speak Austro-Asiatic languages. South of the Vindhya live the speakers of Dravidian languages—Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu—a language group unique to the Indian subcontinent.

North India witnesses extreme climate, whereas southern India remains warm around the year. The fertile plains and the Himalayan rivers led to the development of an agrarian economy in the north. In the south, the proximity to the sea routes helped them build early connections with Europe and the Arab world, boosting maritime trade and industry-oriented economies. Mining and remittance-rich southern states urbanised faster.

Additionally, as European colonialists and Christian missionaries landed through the sea routes, English education started in the coastal provinces—Bengal, Madras and Bombay—much earlier than in north India. 

Such a range of factors has contributed to some general differences between the two regions—not watertight but distinct: caste-based discrimination is more prevalent in north India than in the south and east; the northern states are predominantly vegetarian, while more people in the southern and eastern states prefer non-veg; the purdah (veil) system is more prevalent among women in the north; and so on.

Analysing Pew Research라이브 바카라 2020-21 survey, scholars Pranav Gupta and Omkar Joshi wrote in a 2024 article that religion remains important for a vast majority of Hindus in both regions, but the intensity varies. In the Hindi heartland, 89 per cent of the Hindu respondents said that they consider religion to be extremely important in their lives, compared with 68 per cent in the states south of Andhra Pradesh.

Alice Evans, a senior lecturer at King라이브 바카라 College London, showed in a 2020 essay that southern and northeastern women are more likely to survive infancy, be educated, marry later, choose their husbands, interact more closely with their husbands, bear fewer children, own more assets, exercise more control over their dowry, socialise with friends, move more freely in their communities and work alongside men, when compared to those in north and northwest India.

“In North and North-West India, women are much more constrained and sex ratios are far higher (in favour of males),” she wrote. Noting that education, paid work and age are all associated with greater economic and physical autonomy, she added, “Even if a woman completes secondary school, she is less likely to choose her husband if she lives in the North.”

While some of these differences developed over the centuries, some are outcomes of social movements and governmental actions of recent decades.

However, regions east of the Vindhya, such as the Chotanagpur plateau, the Bengal Delta and northeast India, are socio-culturally distinct from northern India despite being predominantly populated by Indo-Aryan speakers, such as Bengalis and Assamese. Maharashtra and Odisha, though located south of the Vindhya, are lands of Indo-Aryan-speaking people and more Aryanised than Dravidian-influenced.

Politics Of Cultural Differences

The north-south differences started finding a place in political assertions in the late nineteenth century with the growing academic understanding that the Aryan-speaking people and the Dravidian speakers represented two entirely different cultures with distinct origins.

The late nineteenth century was also the time of the rise of nationalism in colonial India. There were three types of nationalism, depending on how one defined a nation or national identity. Indian nationalism visualised an inclusive India encompassing all religions and linguistic groups. Religious nationalism highlighted religion as the basis of identity. Linguistic nationalism, such as Bengali, Marathi and Tamil, identified linguistic culture as the basis of nationalism. Of course, there were overlaps.

In early 20th-century Chennai, Tamil nationalists confronted Indian nationalism, as the former objected to the latter라이브 바카라 positioning of Vedic-Aryan culture as the pinnacle of Indian glory. This was reflected in the non-Brahmin movement라이브 바카라 conflict with the Home Rule League. They had two chief reasons. First, the Vedic civilisation represents the caste-discriminatory system. Second, Tamils had their own, non-Sanskritic, non-Aryan culture no younger than Sanskrit.

By the end of the 1930s, Dravida Nadu had been conceived as a sovereign entity made of the southern Indian region, roughly congruous with the Madras Presidency of British India. The initial trigger was the government plan to introduce compulsory learning of Hindi, the dominant Indo-Aryan language, across India. In 1938, EV Ramasamy Periyar, the fountainhead of Dravidian politics, demanded a separate Tamil nation with the slogan ‘Tamil Nadu for Tamils.’ The next year, the slogan transformed into ‘Dravida Nadu for Dravidians’.

Amidst the Muslim League라이브 바카라 demand for a separate Muslim nation to be carved out of India라이브 바카라 Muslim-majority regions, this demand triggered tension and complicated political equations. Periyar라이브 바카라 supporters even opposed independence from British colonial rule before caste-based oppression had been removed from Indian societies. ‘Self-respect before self-rule,’ Periyar famously declared. 

They eventually lost out to the nationalist fervour of those days when the Indian national identity triumphed over regional identities. The principles of federalism adopted by the nationalist leaders ensured that south India became an integral part of India in 1947.

Periyar라이브 바카라 supporters went on to observe August 15, 1947—India라이브 바카라 Independence Day—as a ‘black day’; some members of the Dravidar Kazhagam unfurled black flags, and some wore black shirts. They held the transfer of power into the hands of the Indian National Congress as the re-establishment of Brahmin dominance in the Indian polity and north Indian dominance over south India. A month later, Periyar organised a conference titled ‘Separation of Dravida Nadu from Indian Union.’ It, though, failed to capture the popular imagination.

Transformation Of A Conflict

The cultural divide that the Vindhya created eased over the years through the assimilation of cultures. Dravidian politics weakened during the 1950s due to the linguistic reorganisation of states, which gave Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam-speaking people their own homelands. These people라이브 바카라 concerns over Tamil dominance under the proposed Dravida Nadu took a lot of steam out of the movement. Even though the anti-Hindi movement of the early 1960s revived the demand, the passage of the anti-secessionist law in 1963 hammered the final nail in the prospect of a sovereign South India.

Six decades later, Dravida Nadu stands as a dead idea. Dravidian identity politics is largely limited to Tamil Nadu. Nevertheless, the north-south civilisational differences that triggered the Dravidian movement라이브 바카라 anti-north Indian pitch in the early 20th century did not vanish.

Rather, since the 1970s, the northern and southern states have had different population and economic growth rates. The southern states outperformed the north in controlling population, developing infrastructure, and improving the economy and human development indicators, including education and women라이브 바카라 empowerment. The northern workforce started to increasingly migrate to the south in search of jobs. But three moves on language, fiscal distribution and political representation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi라이브 바카라 Hindu nationalist government, which has been ruling India since 2014, have reignited the geopolitical conflict, leading to hints of the emergence of a southern bloc.

First, the Modi government라이브 바카라 overwhelming push for promoting Hindi across India created backlashes in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Second, the distribution of federal funds to the southern states has not been proportional to their fiscal contribution to the federal exchequer. And third, the proposed redrawing of parliamentary seat boundaries based on the latest population puts the southern states at the risk of losing political representation in the federal structure. That PM Modi라이브 바카라 BJP is strong in north India and weak in south has added to the tussle.

In 1976, the Indian government froze the parliamentary seat share of every state based on its 1971 population. This was to be reviewed after 25 years. This was done to ensure that states implement population control policies without fearing the loss of parliamentary representation due to a dwindling population. The distribution of federal funds was also based on the 1971 population. In 2001, the review period for delimitation was renewed for another 25 years. 

The Modi government adopted a different policy of fiscal disbursement in which 50 per cent weightage was given to the population of each state, for which the 2011 census report was considered. This was a departure from the previous practice of considering a blend of 1971 and the latest population. This led to a decrease in funds released to the southern states. Now, as the freeze on parliamentary delimitation is set to be reviewed in 2026, the southern states fear a loss of political representation in parliament if constituencies are redrawn on the basis of the latest population.

From 1971 to 2011, Tamil Nadu라이브 바카라 population grew 1.75 times, much lower than the national average of 2.2 times. In contrast, the population increased in northwestern India라이브 바카라 Rajasthan, central India라이브 바카라 Madhya Pradesh, and northern India라이브 바카라 Uttar Pradesh by 2.66 times, 2.41 times, and 2.38 times, respectively.

The southern states allege that the current-population-linked disbursement of funds and parliamentary representation would reward the states that failed to control the population and punish those that fared well.

The economic rift widened so much that in February 2024, DK Suresh, a Congress parliamentarian from Karnataka, triggered a controversy when he said that the southern states would be compelled to demand a separate nation if the federal government did not rectify the unjust distribution of revenue.

In a February 2024 article, Tamil Nadu라이브 바카라 Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) parliamentarian P Wilson highlighted that the data provided by the Union finance ministry earlier that month revealed how Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala collectively contributed over Rs 22.26 lakh crore through GST and direct taxes (excluding GST) in the past five years but only Rs 6.42 lakh crore had been devolved to them. “In stark contrast, Uttar Pradesh contributed only Rs 3.41 lakh crore during the same period and was allocated a whopping Rs 6.91 lakh crore,” he wrote.

In December, Andhra라이브 바카라 Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MP Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu told the Lok Sabha that the latest population-based delimitation would result in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan having their share of Lok Sabha seats increase from 169 to 324. In contrast, those of Andhra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka will increase marginally from the present strength of 129 to 164 seats.

In March 2025, Chennai hosted the first meeting of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) for fair delimitation. The four states ruled by anti-BJP parties attended it. Only Andhra, where the ruling party is the BJP라이브 바카라 ally and the opposition is trying not to commit itself to any camp, did not participate. However, two other non-Hindi-speaking states had representation: the opposition party from eastern India라이브 바카라 Odisha and the ruling party from north India라이브 바카라 Punjab.

Tamil Nadu라이브 바카라 DMK chief minister MK Stalin called the event historic, “when states that have contributed to our nation라이브 바카라 development came together to safeguard its federal structure by ensuring #FairDelimitation.” Kerala라이브 바카라 CPI(M) Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan described the delimitation proposal as a “Sword of Damocles” over the heads of many states. Telangana라이브 바카라 Congress Chief Minister Revanth Reddy sought unity among the southern states against the “demographic penalty” being imposed on them.

In the federal structure, allotments are not always made on the basis of a province라이브 바카라 own generation. To bring parity in the growth of different segments of the national population, backward sections or regions are sometimes allotted more. One can call for large hearts from persons or entities enjoying positions of power and affluence. In the case of the northern states, one may argue that the people of those states should not be punished by insufficient allotment due to their successive governments’ failures.

However, the question becomes a little more complex when we consider that large north Indian states also hold a position of political hegemony in India라이브 바카라 federal structure. This is where the asymmetrical distribution of funds and political representation favouring northern states can trigger conflicts and become a question of concern. 

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is a journalist, author and researcher

This article is a part of 바카라's April 11, 2025 issue 'Viksit South', which explores the growing north-south divide in India. It appeared in print as 'The Vindhyan Divide'.