Step 1: Set up the challenge India faced.
Right after independence, India had to decide how to draw its internal state boundaries in a country full of different languages and cultures, and many leaders worried that organising states by language could pull the country apart.
Step 2: Explain why it was risky.
The fear was that if people identified more strongly with their language than with the nation, regional loyalties could grow into demands for separation, threatening the fragile unity of a newly independent country.
Step 3: Explain how India actually handled it.
Instead of suppressing the demand, the government listened to it, set up the States Reorganisation Commission, and redrew state boundaries mainly along linguistic lines by 1956, giving people administration in their own language.
Step 4: State the outcome and answer.
This democratic response calmed regional anger rather than fuelling it, and India stayed united while accommodating diversity. That is why the creation of linguistic states is called the first big test that Indian democracy passed successfully.