I have been wondering were there any serious alternative proposals to the partition of British India? A few questions I have are...
In OTL we obviously had Pakistan and India along with the smaller states of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Burma, Ceylon, and Hyderabad. However, with all the preexisting princely state governments did any of those, such as Mysore or Kashmir and Jammu, wish to become independent states? Also, instead of created one large state for the Muslim population, what about splitting Pakistan along ethnic lines creating and independent Punjab, Baluchistan, and Sindh? Wouldn't the UK think it better to create more small states that would be more susceptible to British influence? My last question is were there any areas in India that were more pro-British than others and would have accepted and kept Dominion status?
Nepal and Butan were only informally British client-states rather than incorporated into the Empire (let alone into 'India'), Sikhim was a British protectorate but technically wasn't a part of India either, Ceylon had always been a separate colony
(presumably because its initial conquest from the Dutch was carried out purely by British forces, with no HEIC involvement?) and although Burma had been incorporated into India when originally annexed (in three stages) it had been separated off again at local insistence some years before WW2.
Hyderabad was just one [well, the largest...] of the princely states during British rule, rather than a separate entity like those others that you've listed: Its brief independence was because that size (and wealth) led its ruler -- the Nawab -- to think that he could get away with this instead of "acceding" to either Indian or Pakistani rule, rather than as a part of the British plan. I think that the Maharajah of [Jammu and] Kashmir also hoped for independence, due to his state's size and also its location, and only chose accession to India instead reluctantly once he'd been firmly told "No"... AFAIK none of the other princes thought that they could make it successfully on their own, without getting annexed by one dominion or the other anyway, although a number of them argued that legally -- on the basis of the wording of their families' treaties with either the HEIC or the Raj -- they
should have been allowed that option. One other prince did cause a minor problem, because he chose accession to Pakistan despite his state [one of several very minor ones in Gujerat] having all of its land borders with India, but the new Indian government sent troops in and settled that matter very quickly.
Britain had actually intended IOTL to give all of India independence as
one single nation, rather than as two, and it was native politicians (mainly Muslim ones who didn't like the idea of their home areas getting included in a Hindu-majority country) who insisted on Partition, so I doubt whether splitting it into even more countries would have been tried without a fairly major POD.
If you really want to make more countries during the process then I think that the likeliest possibilities, other than allowing full independence for Hyderabad or Kashmir or
maybe one of the other large [and not too central] princely states such as [e.g.] Mysore or Travancore, would have been _
A/ Poltical separation of 'West Pakistan' (today's Pakistan) and 'East Pakistan' (today's Bangladesh) from the start, to accompany their
geographical separation.
B/ Splitting the peninsula's southern four provinces (and associated princely states) off from the rest of India, on linguistic grounds, to create a Dravidian-majority nation separate from the 'Hindustani' north.
C/ Maybe, just
maybe, a separate Sikh homeland in part of the Punjab sandwiched between India and [West] Pakistan.
