No Partition of India

What if, from the 1910s onward, the Indian National Congress manages to quell the Hindu nationalist elements, keeping the focus of the Indian Independence movement purely secular. The Muslim League are lured back into the fold and Jinnah among other Muslim leaders joins ranks with Nehru and the other Congress leaders. While outbreaks of sectarian violence do occur, Congress keeps a steady line in condemning them. Hindu and Muslim nationalists split off to form their own parties but Congress remains dominant and manages to brand itself as the party of all Indians of all ethnicities and all creeds. Just for fun, I'm going to posit that Burma is not split from British India in the 1930s ITTL but remains governed from Delhi- reforms along the lines of those instituted in India allow Burmese access to jobs in the civil service and military. Ceylon also seeks independence as part of India despite being a separate Crown Colony- a Ceylonese branch of the Indian National Congress is formed.

For the sake of argument I'm going to assume that the butterflies caused by this aren't major enough to derail wider world events- the 1920s and 30s proceed pretty much as IOTL- and when the Second World War comes around, Congress, as per OTL, demands independence as the price of supporting the British war effort.

With the end of the war in 1945, the wheels of Independence are set in motion. As per OTL Gandhi zooms around the place quelling sectarian violence but ITTL there will be no Partition- the vast numbers uprooted and dying in flight in both directions will be spared.

On 5th August 1946, British India gains independence as the Dominion of India- a new federal nation stretching from Iran to Thailand.

How might the existence of such an entity affect the post-War world. IOTL India did quite a good job of juggling it's myriad ethnicities, religions and cultural groups- I think it would do at least as well in this situation. Tensions between the Hindus and Muslims will be that much less without the awful bloodletting of Partition. IOTL India's Muslims have become as much Indian citizens as the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists or Christians and ITTL they the Sinhalese and the Burmese stand a good chance of doing so too.

That`s a bloody big country, a lot of inherent strategic reach. Firstly you won`t have Pakistan courting the US and the Soviets courting India with less success, the non-aligned bloc could be a real power. Secondly such a big India is going to be a real bastard to beat at cricket and have even more clout in international cricket organisation than OTL.

What does the need to cooperate with more (figurative) parties at the table mean for Nehru's or India's post-independence economic policy in general? Is it possible to avoid the excesses of autarky and the license Raj?

How would a united India view the historical outcome of the Chinese civil war, or decolonization in East/Southeast Asia in general? Is it fair to say that a unified India inherits the OTL frictions between New Delhi and Beijing, as well as Pakistani paranoia regarding Soviet influence in Afghanistan and threat by its frontier?

Could this larger India remain united even in the absence of a convenient next-door nemesis which in OTL has been Pakistan? You once seemed to imply that India needs an enemy to stay together, it would be interesting if it could manage it even without cultivating an external threat.

Riain said:

That`s a bloody big country, a lot of inherent strategic reach. Firstly you won`t have Pakistan courting the US and the Soviets courting India with less success, the non-aligned bloc could be a real power. Secondly such a big India is going to be a real bastard to beat at cricket and have even more clout in international cricket organisation than OTL.

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I think we'd have to demand the country be treated like the UK, so far as cricket goes, with separate nations!

Was it actually ever mooted that Burma be part of a wider Indian nation?

Would it even be called India in that event (or would they look for a new name?)

Hendryk said:

Could this larger India remain united even in the absence of a convenient next-door nemesis which in OTL has been Pakistan? You once seemed to imply that India needs an enemy to stay together, it would be interesting if it could manage it even without cultivating an external threat.

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Well, there is the convenient choice of Mao's China, especially if relations are allowed to deteriorate after the occupation of Tibet.

Tyg said:

What does the need to cooperate with more (figurative) parties at the table mean for Nehru's or India's post-independence economic policy in general? Is it possible to avoid the excesses of autarky and the license Raj?

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The thing is, IIRC, at the time planned autarkic economies were the dominant philosophy in South Asia. IOTL Sri Lanka was, if anything, more left leaning than India and Pakistan, while less overtly leftist still tended to favour autarky and a bureaucratic state, though this soon gave way to a military dominated state. I suspect that, in the short term at least, you're still going to see the rise of the License Raj. In some ways it was inevitable- the Independence movement was very much run by the English-educated elite and centralised planning and so forth would appeal to them ITTL as it did IOTL.

How would a united India view the historical outcome of the Chinese civil war, or decolonization in East/Southeast Asia in general? Is it fair to say that a unified India inherits the OTL frictions between New Delhi and Beijing, as well as Pakistani paranoia regarding Soviet influence in Afghanistan and threat by its frontier?

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Nehru tended to be idiotically idealistic about foreign relations- however one suspects that Nehru will be somewhat less dominant ITTL.

Lets look at the USSR first. I supect that TTLs India will be very wary about the Soviets. IOTL they had Pakistan as a nice buffer to Central Asia- ITTL they pretty much inherit the North-West Frontier problems of the British Empire. No matter what their socialist autarkic domestic leanings, TTLs India is most likely not going to be part of the Soviet camp. I suspect that it will instead reach out to the US- IOTL Eisenhower's visit to India seemed to promise great things for the future but the Indo-Pakistani Wars served only to sour relations. ITTL there will be no Indo-Pakistani Wars- Indo-American relations are likely to be much better.

As for China- the Indo-Chinese border is now a lot longer and is somewhat more passable. One suspects that tensions will be high, especially if China annexes Tibet as in OTL. The Indo-Chinese border in Burma is going to be a major deployment zone, methinks. I don't think outright hostilities are likely, at first at least, but the situation will not be friendly. ITTL China and the Soviet Union are going to be the external threats that will be used to build an Indian national identity, just as Pakistan was used IOTL.

India is going to be very vocal about the decolonisation process and perhaps this might actually lead the US to be more pro-active here. With India as a major Asian ally, the US may be less likely to support the French war in Indochina. If you really want a best case scenario, perhaps the Americans broker a deal for decolonisation between Ho Chi Minh and the French in New Delhi. Allying with India establishes a precedent for supporting left-leaning but non-Soviet aligned nations in Asia. Ho establishes a nationalist republic of Vietnam in the early 50s, another American ally.

Me and Ganesha were just hashing this out for my TL, which has a united India. I'll get back to you later.

mowque said:

Me and Ganesha were just hashing this out for my TL, which has a united India. I'll get back to you later.

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Consider me subscribed already!

Keep Posting. This is good stuff.

(Although the cricket would be a b...tch)

On cricket, the most popular sport in 1947 and for at least 30 years afterwards was not cricket, but rather Hockey.

I would say its good news for North Central India, not much good news for everyone else. The West Punjab never gets the heavy investment that brought an agricultural revolution and later generated heavy industrailsation, espcially in the North West. I would also say that the Central Government policy would be different to the NW Tribes then the Pakistan Government's, the Pakistan Government in OTL pretty much replaced the British system with a new system whereby the Tribes were encouraged to settle in the rest of the country and most troops were withrawn. As most observers felt, would have led to a massive rebellion in about 10 years

I can't imagine the Burmese would be too happy about being part of India. Before the British took over they had quite an empire and were feared in surrounding areas.

India would probably be even more federal a state than OTL India, with lots of regionalism. Religious sectarian parties would have no traction at federal level but might be popular at state level. Islam might have a better image in the world and India would not be thought of as a 'Hindu nation'. Using current numbers, a united India would have something like:

Total population = 1.6 billion
Hindus: 823 + 11 + 2 + 3 = 839 million
Muslims: 161 + 182 + 145 + 3 = 491 million
Others (Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists etc): ~267 million

So while Hindus would be a plurality they would only be just over half the population. "India" would also have almost half the world's Muslim population.

One interesting thing that always strikes me about the possibility of a united India post-independence is that it would be this India, not China, that would be the world's most populous state. Just a statistic but I suspect it would strongly shape western (especially American) attitudes towards Asia and the relative importance of regions in it.

tonsofun said:

I can't imagine the Burmese would be too happy about being part of India. Before the British took over they had quite an empire and were feared in surrounding areas.

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Seconded. I don't see how you keep Burma in a United India.

It's feasible to see a collective "Indian" identity which encompasses OTL India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Three might be Muslim, one Hindu, and one Buddhist, but all share common links of language, culture, and ethnicity

In contrast, Burma is very different. The people are clearly of a different "race." The culture has been influenced by India, but not much more than Thailand or Indonesia. I just don't see how you work them into a collective Indian identity.

About the only way I could see this working is if the early Indian leaders chopped up Burma a great deal, hemming in the dominant Bamar and allowing other groups, like the Karen, Mon, Shan, and Rakhine, to have their own states. That would make it likely most of the smaller ethnicity would prefer being part of a federal India than subjugated by the Bamar. Still, it would be a hard needle to thread, and I'd expect worse problems than India had IOTL with the "seven sisters."

eschaton said:

Seconded. I don't see how you keep Burma in a United India.

It's feasible to see a collective "Indian" identity which encompasses OTL India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Three might be Muslim, one Hindu, and one Buddhist, but all share common links of language, culture, and ethnicity

In contrast, Burma is very different. The people are clearly of a different "race." The culture has been influenced by India, but not much more than Thailand or Indonesia. I just don't see how you work them into a collective Indian identity.

About the only way I could see this working is if the early Indian leaders chopped up Burma a great deal, hemming in the dominant Bamar and allowing other groups, like the Karen, Mon, Shan, and Rakhine, to have their own states. That would make it likely most of the smaller ethnicity would prefer being part of a federal India than subjugated by the Bamar. Still, it would be a hard needle to thread, and I'd expect worse problems than India had IOTL with the "seven sisters."

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I think Burma in India is a bit more plausible than other people on this thread do. In OTL its separation was in part due to WW2 events there and also because Britain tried to hang on to it afterwards so had an interest in separating it. Remember that while the Burmans might be made up of 'proud warrior race guys', the Burmese aren't the Burmans, and all Burma's ridiculous number of ethnic minorities might well prefer to be part of India rather than in a Burma where they might be subject to oppression by a Burman-supremacist regime, as indeed has happened in OTL.

Thande said:

I think Burma in India is a bit more plausible than other people on this thread do. In OTL its separation was in part due to WW2 events there and also because Britain tried to hang on to it afterwards so had an interest in separating it. Remember that while the Burmans might be made up of 'proud warrior race guys', the Burmese aren't the Burmans, and all Burma's ridiculous number of ethnic minorities might well prefer to be part of India rather than in a Burma where they might be subject to oppression by a Burman-supremacist regime, as indeed has happened in OTL.

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Oh no, I agree with you here. It's pretty much what I tried to say in the last paragraph. But keep in mind the problems that India has had in Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram, particularly in the 1960s. These three states have essentially no cultural links to "India," and are in fact close cultural relatives to groups in Burma. Hence I think even if the Bamar are sidelined, India could easily be dealing with twice as many insurgent campaigns in OTL's Burma, some of which involve much more populous ethnicities. India should be able to deal with it if it has the will (they certainly have the manpower), but the question is if the politicians at that time would have the political will to either make the needed concessions or ruthlessly smash the insurgencies.

eschaton said:

It's feasible to see a collective "Indian" identity which encompasses OTL India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Three might be Muslim, one Hindu, and one Buddhist, but all share common links of language, culture, and ethnicity

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No, maybe, no.

There is no indian language, but several dozens which even belong to four different language families, (incidently one of those four families is called tibeto-burman). When in 1965 Hindi was about to become the only official language of india at a federal level, there was strong opposition, and the parlament decided to continue the usage of both English and Hindi as official languages.

You can make an argument that there is a common indian culture (like there is a european), but if you do than the definition can easily include Burma as well.

There is no single ethnicity either. The northern parts are descendants of the indo-aryan, the south of the darvidian and the slopes of the Himalaya are inhabited by the afromentioned tibeto-burman peoples.

Indeed, I suspect super-India would end up using English as a de facto lingua franca despite the colonial connotations even more than OTL India has.

Urdu might actually be more popular in TTL given that it was spoken by elites across a wide range of India back in the day.

Kalan said:

There is no Indian language, but several dozens which even belong to four different language families, (incidentally one of those four families is called tibeto-burman). When in 1965 Hindi was about to become the only official language of India at a federal level, there was strong opposition, and the parliament decided to continue the usage of both English and Hindi as official languages.

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I know all of this. The main languages in Pakistan, Bangledesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka are all Indo-European however, which means they're closer in some ways to North India than the latter is to South India. Only around six million Indians speek Tibeto-Burman languages, and they indeed live on the fringes (Himalayan foothills or Burmese Border) and don't have much in common with India culturally. It's just aside from the Manipuri they're not numerous enough to cause trouble or clamor for their own states.

Kalan said:

You can make an argument that there is a common indian culture (like there is a european), but if you do than the definition can easily include Burma as well.

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I'm aware of the idea of the "Indosphere." But IIRC, this is either South Asia, or South Asia plus Southeast Asia minus Vietnam. Burma certainly has a few more cultural influences of India than say Thailand, but arguably much of Malaysia and Indonesia have even more.

eschaton said:

Seconded. I don't see how you keep Burma in a United India.

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I'm no expert on Indian culture, but if this India can accommodate a cultural diversity that encompasses everyone from Pashtus to Tamils, then it doesn't seem like so much of a stretch to add the Burmese.