Challenge: Politically united Asia

How could one arrange for the Mongols to turn south after defeating Kwarizm instead of going due west? The problem, as I see it, is that when the Mughals went for India they were thoroughly Islamicized, and had picked up the religious hang-ups of converts to Abrahamic creeds; but their Mongol predecessors were pragmatic to a fault when it came to religion, and only cared for political submission. Could one have a gradual Mongol conquest of the Indian subcontinent mirrorring that of China to the east? Then, when the Mongol empire breaks up, India would remain under a single ruler (who would in all likelihood convert to Hinduism). An added bonus would be that, since conquest of the subcontinent would take decades, in the meantime the southern kingdoms could expand seaward in an attempt to boost revenue so as to fund their defence.

This is the thing- getting the Mongols into India. IOTL this took quite a bit of time since forcing the Khyber pass is actually quite hard with a horse archer army- if you were a Mongol Khan, after crushing Khwarazem the next logical target is Baghdad which is at least a relatively easy sweep across the Iranian plateau and then down into Mesopotamia. India has a harder shell.
 
There isn't any single form of Confucianism- there are many many different permutations of it. At one end it blends into Legalism, at the other end you get societies like Taiwan which are raucously democratic. The main difference between Confucian societies and the West is that even in the democratic societies there's less emphasis on the individual but more on the group (not necessarily the state).


Confucian-influenced societies CAN develop Democracy. Just look at Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The thing is, in each case democracy came about relatively recently and as a result of Western/foreign influence. Each of these countries developed democracy in spite of Confucianism, not because of it, and only after traditional social disruption caused by war and erosion of traditional morals.
 
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