KK MISHRA Linguistic Nationalities in India IN1952EMS Namboodin^ad had published The rational Question in Xmz^Twhich in many ways attempted t6"apply the general principles of historical materialism to the evolution of the Malayalam speaking people and their emergence as a nationality. He wrote : "It is hoped comrades of the other three nationalities of Madras, as well as of all nationalities in India will interpret their own people and their problems, so that democrats and progressives all over India can better understand each other and, on the basis of this understanding, lay the necessary basis of ^the unity of the peoples of the various nationalities of India not by force but by their voluntary consent to the creation of a common State5 (Programme of the Communist Party of India )/?l Unfortunately, histories of the growth and formation of other nationalities, who together form the Indian nation, are yet to be written from this point of view* The historians of the imperialist school regarded India ^ as a mere ^geographical expression like Europe or Africa^ Sir John Seeley declared, "It does not mark the territory of a nation and a language, but the territory of many nations and many languages."2 The Simon Commission, analysing the Indian problem, had spoken of the ^rigid complication of