Avoid the division of India

As far as I understand, the Muslim Liga and its leader Jinnah were prepared to discuss the possibility of a united India as long as it would be a state that secured minority rights, which could be done for instance by having a federal state and/or some sort of consociational arrangement.

What factors would have to change in order to make this possible? What factors were most important for the actual outcome? Was it a lack or trust? Or perhaps personal ambitions?
 
As far as I understand, the Muslim Liga and its leader Jinnah were prepared to discuss the possibility of a united India as long as it would be a state that secured minority rights, which could be done for instance by having a federal state and/or some sort of consociational arrangement.

What factors would have to change in order to make this possible? What factors were most important for the actual outcome? Was it a lack or trust? Or perhaps personal ambitions?

OTL something along the lines of the Consociationalism existed in Lebanon. Didn't turn out too well for them.

Acceptance of Jinnah's fourteen points is critical to getting Jinnah's support. Or at least some of the fourteen points. Some points IMHO are just counter-productive.

More importantly we need to see why the fourteen points were essential in the first place. Muslims really were a threatened minority back in the early 1900. Their population back then was a lot smaller as a proportion compared to say 1947, let alone modern times.

Considering that back the sub-continent was a pretty divided place along every possible fault line thanks to almost 150 years of British 'divide and rule', it wouldn't be surprising if minorities, not just muslims were apprehensive of living in a a hindu-majority state. Even the rights of tribal people and the backward castes were pretty much a political non-issue, if it weren't for Ambedkar and Gandhi.

If in 2001, in the Godhra riots, people could be instigated to murder innocents in the name of religion, it wouldn't be surprising if that would have happened in 1900s.

Secondly, most muslims in the sub-continent and even today to some extent were poor. They were mostly tradesmen like tailors or butchers, etc. The mercantile class was mostly of Hindu traders. As such there was a possibility that they could have been exploited by politicians in the upper classes. Interestingly enough, if anyone knows anything about politics in both India and Pakistan, they will know that this happened anyways.

So it was natural that a palpable apprehension would remain among muslims, especially after Gandhi started appealing to the hindu majority later on to increase popular support for his movement.

As i had explained in your other thread Jinnah never really liked Gandhi, and in the beginning it had nothing to do with the Hindu-Muslim equation.

Perhaps if Gandhi died in the Boer War, and the moderate faction, which included Jinnah, survived and rose to prominence in the INC then it is very possible that sub-continent would not have been divided but would have been a united dominion sometime in the late 1930s and would have a constitution that strongly protected minority rights, just as the backwards castes and the tribals are protected in OTL india.

Hope this helps.
 
Considering that back the sub-continent was a pretty divided place along every possible fault line thanks to almost 150 years of British 'divide and rule', it wouldn't be surprising if minorities, not just muslims were apprehensive of living in a a hindu-majority state. Even the rights of tribal people and the backward castes were pretty much a political non-issue, if it weren't for Ambedkar and Gandhi.
Wait, the Indian national identity benefited from the British domination, is not like the continent was united culturally or politically before the British came, even the Mughals ruled using the same decentralized way of the British.
 
When I read about the relationship between the INC and the Muslim League in the 1940s I almost get the impression that the INC did not want to avoid a division. Were they not able to see that if they did not give in, India would become divided? At least Gandhi was opposed to division. What about Nehru and the others? If they seriously wanted to avoid division, why did they not give in to the demands from Jinnah and his allies?
 
When I read about the relationship between the INC and the Muslim League in the 1940s I almost get the impression that the INC did not want to avoid a division. Were they not able to see that if they did not give in, India would become divided? At least Gandhi was opposed to division. What about Nehru and the others? If they seriously wanted to avoid division, why did they not give in to the demands from Jinnah and his allies?

The threat of an outside force was used to galvanize the domestic population behind the government. If anything, the existence of Pakistan strengthened the state of India with the "threat" it represented. I don't want to say the INC was cynical enough to think that way, but it was a way of looking at things. If there were no division, how stable would India have been?
 
The demands of Jinnah and the Muslim League were for a loose confederation of states and they wanted a very weak Central Government and powerful groups of states. The Congress wanted a strong Union which could control the states. Jinnah had favored a three way grouping where the Western group consisted of the present day Pakistan and Indian Punjab and Kashmir, an Eastern Group consisted of the present Bangladesh and also West Bengal, Assam and other Northeastern states and the Central Group that included the Rest of India, when it was put forward by the British. The Union Government were to have the minimum power only for Foreign affairs, Defense and the Currency matters. The groups were also free to leave the Union if they desired.
The Congress could never accept such a proposal and they accepted the partition as a lesser evil. Once they got rid of the Muslim majority parts, the remaining portion could be organised into a strongly bound country, with a powerful Central Government. Jinnah never expected that the provinces of Punjab and Bengal would be partitioned. But when the Government said that if the country could be partitioned, then the provinces also could be partitioned, he had no answer to that reasoning.
In fact by demanding the partition of India he weakened the Muslim community by splitting them into three countries and a much reduced minority in India. He was a Shia Muslim and his community is a persecuted minority in the country he almost created himself!
 
Well, I assume that for the democratic stability of India the division might have been a positive thing, as a united India might have been more conflict-ridden.
 
Well, I assume that for the democratic stability of India the division might have been a positive thing, as a united India might have been more conflict-ridden.

On the flip side, India would have been a bigger player in the Muslim world, as they would have one of the largest Muslim populations...in fact, they already have!
 
Actually IMHO the simplest way to ensure india is not divided is if Jinnah remains in charge. If he had the chance of being the leader of a united india, he would have taken it. And in that case he would have prefered a strong central government set up.

Also if there was no pakistan, there would always be another potential rival. Nature abhors a vacuum, most of all in politics. There is Iran, but that seems unlikely as even though North Indian kingdoms and empires, and the Shahs of Iran have historically been rivals. ITTL Iran could potentially be an easy to access source of oil. Provided they can figure out how to route a pipeline. This is because without Islamism as a political force the middle might be a radically different place.

Also there is the natural and eternal frenemy China. If china goes communist and India goes pro-west instead of non-aligned, which is a lot more probable if Nehru isn't around, then China and India will be natural rivals. With a lot more muslims in India, and possibly muslims in a coalition government or even in power we could see a lot more uproar in India about the Chinese treatment of the muslim Uighurs.

And then there is the Soviets in the North who will jockey with India for influence in Afghanistan. We could see a rerun of the Great Game in ITTL except between Russia and India this time around.

If India and Indonesia get along well, which they really have no reason not to then you can have a cultural block that can counter the influence of Saudi Arabia on the Muslim world.

Without Pakistan the idea of an Islamic state will take a lot longer to catch on. If we can somehow butterfly the formation of Israel then yes Arab nationalism instead of islamism will be the dominant force in the politics of the middle east.

It would be nice to see a world with radical political islamism as an emaciated shell and Kashmir as the Switzerland of the East.

Hope this helps, :)
 
Kalki has correctly stated that if partition has not happened, India would have been the largest Muslim country. The Muslim population would have been above half a billion, more than twice that of Indonesia. The South Asian Muslims would have been much more influential and along with the Muslims of Southeast Asia would have been a restraining influence against the extremist forces of Wahabism and Salafism which rose in the Middle East. But if this was to happen Jinnah should have been neutralized and Muslim League sidelined. Jinnah was a scheming politician who wanted power for himself and he should never have been allowed to reach such heights.
 
Kalki has correctly stated that if partition has not happened, India would have been the largest Muslim country. The Muslim population would have been above half a billion, more than twice that of Indonesia. The South Asian Muslims would have been much more influential and along with the Muslims of Southeast Asia would have been a restraining influence against the extremist forces of Wahabism and Salafism which rose in the Middle East. But if this was to happen Jinnah should have been neutralized and Muslim League sidelined. Jinnah was a scheming politician who wanted power for himself and he should never have been allowed to reach such heights.

I disagree with the scheming politician bit. Makes him sound like a bollywood movie villain imho. He was an ambitious man no doubt. He was alos very self centered and narcissistic too. ANd he thought no end to himself. None of these make him a scheeming politician. In fact his first major outing in politics, in a leadership role as the president of the Muslim League in the 1937 provincial elections saw his party fail to gain the majority even in majority muslim areas. Thats about as far from a competent and scheeming politician as one can get.

And when he was faced with growing resistance in the INC to his ideas and confronted about his reluctance to follow Gandhi, he chose to abandon politics and step into the wilderness for good part of a decade and half. In the meanwhile he even got sidelined in the Muslim League which was being courted by Gandhi in the aftermath of the Khilafat movement.

He only returned because A.R Dard and other Muslim league politicians convinced him to, but that was much later in 1929 if i remember correctly.

His true skill lay not in being a politician but being in a debater. He could convince people, important people like the Viceroys that he was right. As such the muslim league leaders knew that they needed him. They knew they couldn't turn the ML into a mass movement.

Oddly enough they did get a chance to turn ML into a mass movement in the 40s when Gandhi and Nehru were jailed and they got a chance to step into the vacuum. Even then their greatest base of support was Bengal which had suffered terribly under in the catastrophic Bengal Famine and as such the locals were really mad at the INC provincial government for not having done enough. So yeah it was a perfect storm of butterflies which catapulted Jinnah and the ML into the national consciousness, not his own political machinations.
 
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