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Regionalism in India is rooted in India's diversity of languages, cultures, tribes and religions. It is also encouraged by the geographical concentration of these identity workers in particular regions and fuelled by a sense of regional deprivation. Indian federalism has been a means of accommodating these regional sentiments.

After independence, initially the Indian state continued with the British-Indian arrangement, dividing India into large provinces, also called 'presidencies'. These were large multi-ethnic and multilingual provincial states constituting the major political-administrative units of a semi-federal state called the Union of India. Language coupled with regional and tribal identity - and not religion - has therefore provided the most powerful instrument for the formation of ethno-national identity in India.

The three major factors for the formation of ethnonational identity in India are :

Regional, linguistic and tribal identity

Regionalism in India is rooted in India’s diversity of languages, cultures, tribes, and religions. It is also encouraged by the geographical concentration of these identity markers in particular regions, and fuelled by a sense of regional deprivation. Indian federalism has been a means of accommodating these regional sentiments.

Language coupled with regional and tribal identity – and not religion – has provided the most powerful instrument for the formation of ethnonational identity in India. However, this does not mean that all linguistic communities have got statehood. For instance, in the creation of three new states in 2000, namely Chhatisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, language did not play a prominent role. Rather, a combination of ethnicity based on tribal identity, language, regional deprivation and ecology provided the basis for intense regionalism resulting in statehood.