AHC: White sultans of India

What would it take to yield a significant portion of the Indian subcontinent (at least 20% of the population and land area) covered by an independent state ruled by white royalty or aristocracy that is un-associated with any European nation?

I'm specifically envisioning this having emerged from India as the British Raj, or at least a situation where Britain doesn't have any real European rivals in the area. Beyond that, I don't have any POD constrictions in mind.

Remember, this state doesn't need to last a long time, I just want to see a situation where this "white sultanate" declares independence or separation from Britain and manages to win and cement its position for at least a few years.

Can it be done?
 
Have something like the White Rajas of Sarawak come to power in a periphial area, then through their actions become well known and popular among the general population then have a situation where British power collapses in the area, leading to the corrupt existing Monarchs who'd openly sided with the British be topple and members of White Sultans family be asked to become Sultan/King/Etc. of several of the re-emergent states.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
The easiest way to fulfill this PoD is not with a Sarawak-style scenario, but with the British East India Company going rogue.

OTL it didn't, because the people running it had firm connections to the people running the UK - many MPs were major shareholders and they had the best lobby in London. Changing this on the Indian side is difficult - the company structure when it collapsed was replaced with a more, not less direct rule. But what if Britain itself was ruled by people the Anglo-Indian ruling class found unacceptable - quasi-Jacobins or Chartists or Communists or whatever, engaging in a bit of class warfare against Britain's old ruling class. With a hated regime in the mother country, going it alone could strike the company's directors as their only option.
 
The easiest way to fulfill this PoD is not with a Sarawak-style scenario, but with the British East India Company going rogue.

OTL it didn't, because the people running it had firm connections to the people running the UK - many MPs were major shareholders and they had the best lobby in London. Changing this on the Indian side is difficult - the company structure when it collapsed was replaced with a more, not less direct rule. But what if Britain itself was ruled by people the Anglo-Indian ruling class found unacceptable - quasi-Jacobins or Chartists or Communists or whatever, engaging in a bit of class warfare against Britain's old ruling class. With a hated regime in the mother country, going it alone could strike the company's directors as their only option.

In which case you'd have a corporate state, the challenge stated was not to simply have a White minority ruling over India, but for their to be a White Royal Family and/or actual Aristocracy.
 
I'm wading straight forward into butterfly territory here, but presumably, this could work as a long-term consequences of an earlier weakening of Britain by some means?

I am aware that the division of India is by no means an inevitable event, but if we presume that it nevertheless happened in one of these scenarios, we'd end up with an India split between a number of powers - Portugal, the Netherlands and France all come to mind - and if we then have a situation wherein a younger member of a royal family is appointed governor of <X>ian India, the home country suffers a coup or revolution, and the remainder of the family is either killed or flees to the colonies as well. You could then set up a government in exile, which, with time, if the separation seems sufficiently inevitable that the loss of prestige from effectively renouncing the claim is irrelevant, could become a de jure Indian state.

Granted, all of this is a bit far-fetched, and it'd likely only come to fruition somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century, and even then not last very long, but I think it might work.
 
I'm wading straight forward into butterfly territory here, but presumably, this could work as a long-term consequences of an earlier weakening of Britain by some means?

I am aware that the division of India is by no means an inevitable event, but if we presume that it nevertheless happened in one of these scenarios, we'd end up with an India split between a number of powers - Portugal, the Netherlands and France all come to mind - and if we then have a situation wherein a younger member of a royal family is appointed governor of <X>ian India, the home country suffers a coup or revolution, and the remainder of the family is either killed or flees to the colonies as well. You could then set up a government in exile, which, with time, if the separation seems sufficiently inevitable that the loss of prestige from effectively renouncing the claim is irrelevant, could become a de jure Indian state.

Granted, all of this is a bit far-fetched, and it'd likely only come to fruition somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century, and even then not last very long, but I think it might work.
How about the Royal governor of french india stays loyal to the king during the French Revolution, essentially ending up as a british ally/puppet during the napoleonic wars, and stays that way, somehow?
 
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