AHC: Unified India

The present day Republic of India is only 3.3 million sq.kms in area while The Mauryan Empire under Ashoka The Great, covered about 5 million sq.kms of land in Third century B.C.E. If Ashoka had able successors and had the Mauryan Empire lasted for a longer period, a more unified India could have developed. Later empires under the Guptas, the Palas, the Cholas, the Mughals etc. had brought major portions of the country under their control. Hence the assumption that the British were the first rulers to unite the country is not entirely correct. If there were no external interventions the Mahrattas could have developed a Pan-Indian Empire in the eighteenth century.
 
The present day Republic of India is only 3.3 million sq.kms in area while The Mauryan Empire under Ashoka The Great, covered about 5 million sq.kms of land in Third century B.C.E. If Ashoka had able successors and had the Mauryan Empire lasted for a longer period, a more unified India could have developed. Later empires under the Guptas, the Palas, the Cholas, the Mughals etc. had brought major portions of the country under their control. Hence the assumption that the British were the first rulers to unite the country is not entirely correct. If there were no external interventions the Mahrattas could have developed a Pan-Indian Empire in the eighteenth century.

The Mahrattas didn't have a stable governing structure.

What the British did is unite India because they gave all Indians a reason to see themselves as Indian first and not Marathi or Punjabi or Malayalee or Tamil first. Struggling together against Britain is what gave Indians unity.

At any time before this any power which managed to unite most of the subcontinent would still be seen as a foreign power by many of its subjects. If it was a North Indian power the South Indians would resent it and vice versa.
 
Even if a concept of India as a nation,as Europeans define it,did not exist prior to the British rule, a cultural concept did exist from ancient times.A pilgrimage to Kashi in the North and Rameswaram in the South was a hope cherished by many devout Hindus from long ago.Sankaracharya established his peedoms in the four corners of the country ie. Sringeri in the South,Dwarka in the West,Badrinath in the North and Puri in the East.He is believed to have lived in the the nineth century CE. It is true that the term 'India' was never used by Indians themselves. Names like Bharat, Aryavart, Jambudweep in Ancient period and Hindustan in Middle Ages were more familiar. The subnationalisms based on languages came up only in the twentieth century.Perhaps Bengali subnationalism was the first to appear as a result of the division of the Province of Bengal by the then Viceroy,Lord Curson in 1905. Indians never thought of themselves as Bengalees,Punjabis,Gujarathis,Marathis, Malayalis or Tamilians before the 20th century. The concept of North Indians or South Indians also did not exist. Such concepts developed only after the concept of India took roots. Hence the question of viewing North Indians as foreigners by Southerners would not have risen.The people viewed themselves as the subjects of a particular king utmost. For a Travancorean, a Tamilian or a Mysorean was same as a Punjabi or a Bengali. Even today a Malayali is not likely to prefer a Tamilian or Kannadiga over a Bengali or a Punjabi,just because he is a Southerner.
 
A united india prior to 1500 would be nearly impossible...
in the case of india as such geography is irrelevant. what becomes of utmost importance is the culture of the peoples inhabiting the land. The Vijayanagar Empire at its peak came very close to mirroring a modern structure. It allowed a large number of local developements while maintaining a separate system of languages for the court to function. the greatest difficulty that arises is the issue of the language. there could not be a unifying language in India for the simple reason that inspite of the fact that a majority of the spoken languages were derived from sanskrit which was spoken only amongst the extremely learned there was no common language at any point of time. Until the British came and introduced english. though all are hindu cultures they are all at the same time unique. In the South the Dravidian races of Tamil and Malayalam and the Eastern Assam and Tribes of Naga and meghalaya are still very different inspite of a large number of similarities. However if for some reason all these varied kings could be brought together and form a federation which slowly starts correcting the language barrier while allowing each state to prosper on its own while taking a collective responsibility of the group as a whole then it could be possible.
 
It is true that a common language did not develop in India.Absence of a continued political unity and earnest effort on the parts of the rulers were the reasons for this situation.Sanskrit and Persian have both served as Court languages in Ancient and Medieval Periods almost throughout India. Even after attaining Independence the Government under Nehru did not exhibit required imagination to develop a common language.The choice of a comparatively undeveloped language like Hindi as official language was not right. If Sanskrit, the mother of all Northern languages and which has heavily contributed to the Dravidian languages, was chosen as the link language non-Hindi speaking people would not have felt the alienation that the choice of Hindi caused.The action of the Government of Indonesia which faced a similar situation invites our attention.Though Javanese was the major language and spoken in Java,the most populous Island they created a new language, Bahasa Indonesia borrowing from different Indonesian languages, as the national language. Even if all the present languages remain, a simple common script can be devised for all the Indian languages as alphabetical system of all languages are similar.If a common alphabet is adopted people speaking different languages can understand how similar these languages are.
 
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