PUNJABI SUBA MOVEMENT, a longdrawn political agitation launched by the Sikhs demanding the creation of Punjabi Suba or Punjabispeaking state in the Punjab. At Independence it was commonly recognized that the Indian states then comprising the country did not have any rational or scientific basis. They were more the result of the exigencies of British conquest. To have some of these demographic imbalances corrected and inconvenient bulges expunged with a view to drawing up cleancut boundaries a commis sion was set up by Government of India in 1948. The commission had its jurisdiction limited to the southern states such as Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra. Northern India, it seems, was deliberately kept out of the purview of the commission especially to prevent problems like those o