alternatehistory.com

Sorry I'm late. This one's a bit of a short one, because, to be honest with you here, it's been a very, very long time since this TL has begun, and it's really not easy to gather all the energy I need to write new chapters. Especially with exams coming and all. Don't worry, the TL is not going to be put to a stop, oh no.

This train just can't stop.
The 35 year long dictator of Unitarian India, having deserved the honorific "Netaji", and one of the most influential historical personalities of Asian history in general, Sanjay Nijasure passed away from a stroke while in his summer home in the outskirts of the Himalayas on May 3rd, 1951, bringing an end to an era in the history of the subcontinent. Whether you were to like him or hate him, there was no denying that Nijasure played a central role in shaping the history of his nation and probably even the entire planet. It was during his reign that India truly advanced from the ranks of important, though still regional powers, to superpower status. Wielding the largest military force on the planet by personnel and ranking extremely close to both Germania and China in gross domestic product, it was truly a force to be reckoned with. The Nijasurist policy of Accelerationism, though brutal, certainly paid its dividends.

Officially and unofficially, there were a few potential successors to the Netaji - Priya Nijasure, Mamnoon Khan, Prakash Naidu, et cetera - however, there was no destabilizing conflict for the position, as one man quickly arose as the frontrunner, being Nijasure's preferred successor, and soon commanded much of the Indian Unitarian Party under his banner. And that man was Amrit Ahuya, Unitarian India's long-time attaché and minister of foreign affairs, holding this position since the early 1930s and overseeing the diplomatic entanglements in the War of the Danube and the reconsolidation for the Commonwealth as India's sphere of influence, as well as being an influential elderly member of the Party. Ahuya was a member of the shrinking, but still extremely influential old guard - party members who participated in the revolutionary events of the 1910s and held important positions within the government since - yet at the same time, was considerably more amiable to the ideas put forward by the rising young elite. This made him an acceptable choice both to the reactionary and the moderate wings of the party, and even the radical offshoots didn't think too bad of him. The 1952 Congress of the Indian Unitarian Party in Lucknow confirmed everyone's suspicions by officially voting Ahuya in as the new Chairman of the Unified Indian State - and as gratitude for the last moment endorsement, as well as to create a feeling of true successorship, the new dictator appointed the widow Priya Nijasure as his deputy.

Amrit Ahuya's appointment coincided with a sudden, unexpected surge of Indian belligerence - truly unexpected, as Ahuya, the same man who prevented India from joining the war in East Asia during the War of the Danube, was not seen by the West and China as a belligerent candidate at all. Was this his own doing or was something unknown pushing him? Nobody knew. Funding for the already engorged military and for the Aankhein continued to be increased at a rapid pace, while the economic field of domestic affairs saw the continuation of Nijasure-era Accelerationist policies. The Commonwealth, already pretty much India's backyard, was being centralized even further for the superpower's benefit - using massive economic and diplomatic influence as well as a threat of military intervention, the new Netaji ordered a reshuffle of the governments of Aceh and Burma, replacing the somewhat independent and ideologically different leadership with loyal puppets or sometimes even officials invited from India itself. In addition, using the guise of "strengthening defense cooperation and collaboration between fellow Unitarian states", India established positions of Generals Overseers in their Commonwealth allies, one in each - while officially branded as merely the heads of permanent Indian military missions in allied territory, they largely became the middleman between the supposedly "independent" Unitarian governments and Lucknow, relaying orders and commands from India to local politicians, thus basically becoming the de facto heads of state. The puppetization of the Commonwealth was a success and a yet another showing of the Indian "controlled revolution" policy, Ahuya's brainchild from back in the War of the Danube.

The increasingly belligerent and expansionist India would become an omnipresent destabilizing force in Asia, a region already shaken by the war in the East China Sea, the Second Turkish Civil War and the Oceanic Civil War. The expansion of the Indian sphere of influence followed two general directions - one to Southeast Asia and the Nusantara archipelago, seeking to obtain complete control over the region's strategic location and natural resources, and second to Central Asia, inhabited by rural, authoritarian, isolated monarchies such as Bukhara and Yarkand, as it was the path of least resistance. Central Asia could safely be called the least developed major region in Eurasia - although it has had some contacts with the modern world through China, India and the Volga, making cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara not too shabby compared to the rest of Asia, the absolute majority of the region was rural, poor and agricultural. Unitarianism had no roots here. However, the tribal, multiethnic nature of the region meant that all of the states living here were unstable in one way or another, and this instability could he exploited by the Indian government and the Aankhein.

In late 1952, an unknown assassin's bullet struck Mohammed Alim Khan, the Emir of Bukhara, which was the beginning of a collapse of the state. With no immediate heir found, the nation devolved into a chaotic mess of claimants of various types, tribal leaders seeking to distance themselves from the Emirate and other rebel groups. In this civil war, India backed the Uzbeki warlord Abdulrauf Fitrat, who, albeit somewhat reluctant, proved to be the most receptive to aligning with the Commonwealth. The civil war in Bukhara lasted for a good year, taking so long because the arid, undeveloped Central Asian land was not the best terrain for imported Indian landships - regardless, Fitrat's Indian-backed clique overcame all opposition and founded the Emirate of Turkestan, with Abdulrauf I as its first ruler. Espousing the ideology of pan-Turkic identity, Turkestan laid claims on the lands controlled by Khiva, Yarkand and other Central Asian states - and even though the Emirate only officially followed Unitarian ideas, the Indians couldn't care less, as to the Netaji and his government, Turkestan and its claims were only useful as a sockpuppet for further expansion in Central Asia.

However, Indian expansion into Central Asia would soon reach a halt with the following Turkestani-Khivan War from 1953 to 1954. Knowing that the small Emirate housed Persian independence organizations and radical Islamists such as the Jund-e Khoda, India obviously placed priority on eliminating the state - however, once the war between the two Khanates was incited, it turned into a attritional stalemate. Even with generous support from the Commonwealth, Turkestan failed to break through the lines of their opponent, a failure attributed to leftover bad blood from the Bukharan Civil War, low legitimacy of Emir Abdulrauf I, as well as the ineffectiveness and nepotism of the Turkestani military. Reactionary factions back in Lucknow were pressuring Ahuya for a direct invasion of Khiva to end the war swiftly, but the Chairman, well aware of the tense diplomatic situation in the continent, decided against it. In 1954, a peace was finally brokered between the two Emirates, restoring the borders back to status quo, and the Commonwealth advance in Central Asia ended up defanged.

The guess on the tense diplomatic situation was correct on Ahuya's part. This was not the same as lead up to the War of the Danube, where a general pacifist atmosphere and focus on domestic problems meant that almost everyone was unaware of the tensions mounting up - the Western countries and China had learned their lesson. The unfinished War of the Danube, the chaos of the Troubles in Britannia and the ensuing Oceanic Civil War, and finally rising Indian belligerence meant that pacifist, anti-war parties which had dominated in worldwide democracies since 1942 were now losing ground to political forces calling for a more aggressive outlook to world affairs.

In the Kingdom of Germania, the postwar domination of the Democratic Unitarian party and their associate coalition members received a challenge from Volker Braun and the rebranded Centralist Party. Now standing as a party of continuing European integration, moderate Protectionist politics and an interventionist outlook on diplomacy, the Centralists challenged Prime Minister Franz Wagner in the 1953 German parliamentary elections. Foreign issues dominated the political landscape - not just regarding Asia, but also the numerous events in Europe, from the inaction Wagner's government took in the Crimean War, to whether or not France and the Netherlands should be invited to the European Defense Commission (a number of previous French governments expressed interest, but the idea went nowhere. Netherlands declined all offers until the territorial dispute over Friesland could be resolved), as well as, of course, actions regarding Britannia, especially on what had to be done to prevent the island kingdom from exploding into civil war. The slow, overcalculated reforms taken by the Wagner government also received notable criticism, and all this with the combination of a notable red-wing lunge in the attitude of the people meant that the current government's days were counted. After the results arrived and the new Congress gathered in Vienna, the Centralists and a coalition of regional Protectionists and moderates claimed the victory. Now the new Prime Minister of Germania, Volker Braun set forward a plan of expanding German influence in Central and Eastern Europe and reconciling with China in light of Indian belligerence (the most tangible result of his administration, finished with trade agreements and defensive treaties signed in 1954-55). In similar fashion, the election of Director Roland Durand, member of the Liberaux party, in France, and Antanas Garšva's retirement after two terms of serving as Democrat of Lithuania and the subsequent election of White Shroud leader Telesforas Gelažius in Lithuania followed this trend of interventionism.

China went through an important political realignment as well, as the 1952 Chinese legislative elections coincided with the death of the Jiaqing Emperor, the ruler of the Middle Kingdom for over three decades, and the ascension of Princess Li Wei, the first Empress of China since Wu Zetian of the medieval era. With the new regnal name Chunhua, the empress appointed the leader of the once again victorious Progressive Union Party, Xiao Xuegang, as the new Chancellor of China. Much like his famous predecessor Yang Long, Xuegang was a member of the progressive wing of Chinese politics, but with the rising tensions in Southeast Asia, the party started to slowly distance itself from their Democratic Unitarian roots. This uncomfortable atmosphere is also what pressed the new Chinese government to adopt a containment policy aimed towards India - "Not one step back" (Yībù yě bùxǔ hòutuì), declaring that any attempts to challenge the independence or territorial integrity against any member of the EASA alliance (and, unofficially, also any members of the Chinese sphere of influence, which included many parts of Central Asia) will be responded to offensively without questions asked.

Not that India feared such a statement.

The Kingdom of Ayutthaya, one of China's most loyal allies ever since the foundation of the EASA, had been a thorn in the Commonwealth's side for years. This constitutional monarchy was quite literally in between Indian-dominated Burma, the occupied Malay Peninsula, which housed the formerly French naval base of De-Foix, now renamed to Sanjay and turned into a stronghold for India's blue-water naval fleet, and Unitarian Indochina. Obviously, Chinese governments were just as well aware of Ayutthaya's strategic location, numerous politologists and diplomatic experts described this Thai state as "the key to dominating Southeast Asia", and for good reason - and as a result, the kingdom enjoyed preferential status in the EASA. To prevent a revolution born out of poverty and public resentment, similar to what happened in Burma, the Shun Dynasty generously encouraged businesses and corporations to invest in Ayutthaya, numerous monetary donations and concessions were sent to buy the loyalty of the royal family, all of which soon turned the kingdom into one of the wealthiest states in East Asia. Regardless, it all could only delay a potential clash with the Unitarian superpower next door.

Hoping to knock the Ayutthayan domino down, the geopolitical experts in the Indian government and the Aankhein turned to the Bamar minority in the kingdom. Colloquially known as Burmese and common in the western peripheries of the Kingdom, they were the predominant ethnic group in nearby Burma, and irredentist thoughts were bubbling up little by little ever since the 1920s. Indian propaganda networks and the Aankhein had been running an extensive campaign within Ayutthaya to stir up dissent in the country and potentially destabilize it since the 1940s - and while the beginning of the campaign yielded little results, thanks to successful Chinese counter-espionage and little receptivity to such messages within the Bamar population, soon a slowly growing irredentist movement led by the former factory worker Htain Lin began to form and campaign in the city of Ayutthaya and other places. What eventually saved the Indian effort, however, was a Thai overreaction to this rising irredentist movement. Fearing for Ayutthaya suffer the same fate as Bukhara, King Sanphet XII ordered a crackdown on Bamar nationalists in 1955, which, while it alleviated the tensions in the short term, only ended up martyring a number of activists and strengthening the movement - and what's even worse, India "out of nowhere" stood up in favor of the Bamar people, declaring the recent events as "a showcare of the brutality of the feudal regime in Ayutthaya" and demanding to invoke a right to self-determination.

Obviously, China and it's "not one step back" policy was having none of it, and thus the Ayutthaya Crisis rose to the spotlight. While some talks between the rival governments of China and India were initially made over resolving the conflict, it soon became clear that Amrit Ahuya and his subordinates were not looking forward to a peaceful resolution. Indian troops were being amassed in Burma, Malaya and Indochina, to which the Chinese were quick to respond in action - by strengthening their own military presence in Southeast Asia and the provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi. Article upon article was being published across the planet on Asia being only one wrong shoe step away from reigniting the War of the Danube. Or, more accurately, starting a new, even greater conflict in the middle of what appeared to be an era of peace...