Sanyukta Maharashtra Samiti roughly translated as United Maharashtra Committee, was an organisation that spearheaded the demand in the 1950s for the creation of a separate Marathi-speaking state out of the (then-bilingual) State of Bombay in western India, with the city of Bombay (now known as Mumbai) as its capital.
The organisation was founded on February 6, 1956, under the leadership of Keshavrao Jedhe in Pune. Prominent activists of Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti were Patramaharshi Dainik Prabhatkar Walchand Kothari, Acharya Atre, Prabodhankar Thackeray, Senapati Bapat and Shahir AmarShaikh among others. Acharya Atre criticised Jawaharlal Nehru, Morarji Desai (then chief minister of Mumbai) and S.K. Patil (a prominent MP from Mumbai city) through his firebrand editorials in Maratha.
The Indian National Congress had pledged to introduce linguistic states prior to Independence. However after Independence, Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel were adamantly opposed to linguistic states. They perceived linguistic states as a threat to the integrity of India. For the first time and perhaps the only time, RSS and its chief Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar supported Nehru and Patel against redrawing of the map along linguistic lines. The catalyst to the creation of a States Re-organization Commission was the fasting death of Telugu nationalist Potti Sriramulu. In 1956, the SRC (States Re-organisation Committee) recommended creation of linguistic states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka but recommended a bi-lingual state for Maharashtra-Gujarat,with Mumbai as its capital but vidarbha outside Maharashtra. Further, they recommended the creation of Vidharba state to unite the Marathi-speaking people of former Hyderabad state with Marathi speaking areas of Central Provinces and Berar state. This led to the creation of the predecessor movement Samyuka Maharashtra Parishad, inaugurated on November 1, 1956, causing a great political stir and, under the leadership of Keshavrao Jedhe, a whole party meeting was held in Pune and Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti was founded on February 6, 1956. In the second general election the Samiti defeated the stalwarts of Congress by securing 101 seats out of 133, including 12 from Mumbai. The Congress party could form a government only with the support of Gujarat, Marathwada and Vidharba. Yeshwantrao Chavan replaced Morarji Desai as the Chief Minister of the bi-lingual Bombay State.
S.M. Joshi, Shripad Amrit Dange, N.G. Gore and Prahlad Keshav Atre fought relentlessly for Samyukta Maharashtra, even at the cost of sacrificing the lives of several people and finally succeeded in convincing Congress leaders that Maharashtra should form a separate state. The resignation of C. D. Deshmukh, the then Finance Minister of the Nehru Cabinet, had its salutary effect.
In January 1960, demonstrators were fired upon by the police at Flora Fountain in the capital city of Mumbai. Flora Fountain was subsequently renamed Hutatma Chowk or "Martyr's Crossroads" in their memory. It is estimated that in all, 105 people were shot by security forces during the period of agitation and at different places. Morarji Desai, who was the then chief minister of Bombay state was later removed and replaced by YB Chawan as a result of criticism related to this incident.
The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti achieved its goal on May 1, 1960 when the State of Bombay was partitioned into the Marathi-speaking State of Maharashtra and the Gujarati-speaking State of Gujarat. However Goa (then a Portuguese colony), Belgaum, Karwar and adjoining areas, which were also part of the Maharashtra envisaged by the Samiti, were not included in Maharashtra state.