AHC: Prolong the Raj

Simple. Keep Britain in control of India for as long as possible. Bonus points if the Raj is still under British rule today.
 
Perhaps without world wars or at least second one Britain can keep India ten years longer. Keeping that to 2019 is simply ASB. There was already strong resistance against British regime. Only way keep India to 1960's or bit longer would be that Brits would be willingful fight over India many decades and commit genocide. And I can't see democratic nation going so far.
 
You can get it a few years longer easily just by not having Mountbatten suddenly announce a ludicrously near date as the official Quit deadline. He admitted later he made the date up on the spot when asked, so as to appear in command of the detail.

Have Attlee send Slim or somebody, meet with Congress and the League, and announce mid 1950 as the exit date. Gives everybody a bit more time. And maybe allows Britain to actually send teams to the areas being partitioned instead of just drawing a line on a map in London based on old and incomplete census data.
 
You can get it a few years longer easily just by not having Mountbatten suddenly announce a ludicrously near date as the official Quit deadline. He admitted later he made the date up on the spot when asked, so as to appear in command of the detail
The Indians were not exactly whinging that Mountbatten was moving too fast and demanding that the date be delayed by a few years. Britain was bankrupt, India served no purpose to them and they wanted out of the empire game. Not to mention that Indian independence was a long term aim anyway.All the planets were lining up bar partition which was 'Indian' generated anyway.
 
The Indians were not exactly whinging that Mountbatten was moving too fast and demanding that the date be delayed by a few years. Britain was bankrupt, India served no purpose to them and they wanted out of the empire game. Not to mention that Indian independence was a long term aim anyway.All the planets were lining up bar partition which was 'Indian' generated anyway.

No, but they weren’t pushing for that speed of withdrawal either. Giving it another few years would have been doable. It’s not going to get you a Raj lasting til the 60s, but 1950 you could manage.
 
Earlier recognition that India is going to achieve independence would help. How you achieve that I don't know, but it's likely to be rather challenging.

Because of [reasons] the Government of India Act recognises India's move towards Dominion status and sets out a step-by-step twenty-year programme for it, no cancellations or suspensions allowed. Considering how contentious the legislation is it passes a year later than our timeline in 1936 and commences in 1938. The franchise is gradually expanded, promising locals are identified for further and higher education, and Indians are slowly promoted up government positions. On 2nd August 1958 the British Raj retires on a century.

One interesting side-effect is that Queen Elizabeth II would be crowned Empress of India in 1953 after her father dies. Whether you would see another Delhi Durbar with only five years to go I don't know.
 
Easiest way is to avoid the World Wars, this will leave the British Empire stronger and delay decolonization by around 10-25 years. But having them retain control up to the present day is very unlikely, the independence movement isn't going to disappear.
 
One way to do this, though it would take an unusual amount of far-sightedness in governing circles in London and New Delhi, would be for Britain to grant independence to India earlier, not later. Essentially have the re-organization of the empire in 1931 that started the transition to the Commonwealth happen twenty years earlier and bee more sweeping.

I have no idea how you can do that, but the British can set up a "Union of India" in time for it to be admitted to the League of Nations, with the British sovereign as the head of state, and no India wide Parliamentary institutions, so the central government is controlled by a mixture of bureaucrats sent from Britain and co-opted Indian bureaucrats. The Princely states still exist within the union (sort of like Malaysia or the various German confederations). The provinces, however, are given representative government like they were eventually, and demands for more Indian self-governance are just met by handing more power from the center to the provinces. Sort of how the empire faded into the commonwealth, the Raj slowly fades away into a loose confederation which still retains a link to the British crown..
 
Do what Churchill wants and starve the entire population. When they rebel, the British nuke all their cities. Pretty ASB.
Not even Churchill advocated starving the entire Indian population and, in fact, the Raj had become pretty expert at famine and disaster relief by the outbreak of WW2. The Bengal Famine represented a rather unique set of circumstances (war, neighbouring rice producers in enemy hands, shipping, railcars and Indian Army in short supply due to enemy action and deployed for other equally (in the view of government at least) important purposes. It was also an illustration of the "tragedy of statistics". A report to the Cabinet (I think Cherwell was behind it but years since I studied this) concluded that slackening the war effort to relieve the famine would prolong the war by another 1-2 years but that the famine would only increase ordinary death rates in India by in the region of 0.5%. This assessment of death rate rises turned out to be absolutely spot on. The trouble is, given the population of India, that is around 3 million people in non-statistical parlance.
 
Is it possible not to have the Raj stay, but to have India accept Dominion status a la Australia and New Zealand? That is to say, have the British Monarch remain Head of State for India, although they are governed independently? They did have it between 1947 and 1950, as far as Wikipedia is concerned, before they became a federal republic. If they were given it earlier than OTL, might they accept that as the status quo up to the present day??
 
So it’s established that keeping India much past the 40s is both unworkable and not in the UK’s best interests. At least keeping all of it.

Is there any possibility of the British keeping a section of it, like even just an Indian Hong Kong?
 
Is it possible not to have the Raj stay, but to have India accept Dominion status a la Australia and New Zealand? That is to say, have the British Monarch remain Head of State for India, although they are governed independently? They did have it between 1947 and 1950, as far as Wikipedia is concerned, before they became a federal republic. If they were given it earlier than OTL, might they accept that as the status quo up to the present day??

I doubt that. India is totally different place compared with Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Australia, Canada and New Zealand are white majority Christian nations when India is Hindu/Muslim majority and ethnically dominated by Indo-Iranian and Dravidian peoples. They are not accepting British monarch as their head. There was strong urge to be totally its own nation without any signs about British opression. Even British monarch as formal head wouldn't be acceptable. Perhaps this could work couple decades but eventually India becomes republic.
 
Best option is Simon's above. You could maybe push it out as far as 1963. Britain agrees in 1938 to full Indian independence on a 25 year plan with programme of development of education, establishment of universities. Establish some naval shipyards, encourage industrial development. Start negotiating relationships between central and local/regional government. Independence movements never get impatient enough to turn violent in a no WW2 scenario with Japan and the USSR waiting in the wings.
 
Best option is Simon's above. You could maybe push it out as far as 1963. Britain agrees in 1938 to full Indian independence on a 25 year plan with programme of development of education, establishment of universities. Establish some naval shipyards, encourage industrial development. Start negotiating relationships between central and local/regional government. Independence movements never get impatient enough to turn violent in a no WW2 scenario with Japan and the USSR waiting in the wings.

Interesting. Does this avert the existence of Pakistan and Bangladesh? I can’t imagine there isn’t some sort of self-segregation along religious lines, but it may be milder than what happened OTL.
 
Jinnah and the Muslim League would probably have been satisfied with a loose federal structure. Nehru and the Congress leadership were quite centralist OTL but a gradualist independence movement might have changed that somewhat
 
Closest thing would be, as already noted, a Dominion whose vaguely federal structure and powerless Windsor Padishah appointing Viceroys from rotating demographics are as much a sop to confessional/linguistic/royalist separatists as anything. Even that is a bit of a long shot and needs a rather early POD.
 
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