DBWI:Was Indian Unification ever feasible?

All right, after watching the News on BBC, and, well, we all know how much India is a mess today, with all of the warlords, bandits, outlaws, and the little fiefdoms, and whatnot. So, I thought, "Could India ever have been united?"
 

~The Doctor~

It was united under the Raj.

Or do you mean after Britain pulled out in the Great War?

I think that's what he means.

Frankly I can't see it happening. The culture, language and religions are just too diverse. The Muslims in Kashmir and Punjab would oppose it, for one.

A united India, or a India still under British control, would have been a huge barrier to Japanese hegemony. They might have even been forced to go to war with the US to keep their little war in China going!
 
I think that's what he means.

Frankly I can't see it happening. The culture, language and religions are just too diverse. The Muslims in Kashmir and Punjab would oppose it, for one.

A united India, or a India still under British control, would have been a huge barrier to Japanese hegemony. They might have even been forced to go to war with the US to keep their little war in China going!

Why? It'd benefit them much more to invade India, whether it's united or British.
 
I'd say it's possible, but really difficult. European integration only occurred because of the neo-Napoleonic campaign. It'll take a conqueror or a shared enemy to get the Indians to come together as one people.
 

~The Doctor~

Why? It'd benefit them much more to invade India, whether it's united or British.

Yes, but a United India would be united against the Japanese. IOTL there were more than a few Indians that fought on the side of the Japanese.
 
My guess is no, there are too many many differences between the various groups. You might as well try to unify the Balkens.
 
Yes, but a United India would be united against the Japanese. IOTL there were more than a few Indians that fought on the side of the Japanese.

That kind of depends who it is doing the uniting, doesn't it? There were warlords who were willing to work with the Japanese after all...
 
(OOC: Noob rant)

It is clear that a small (ooc: looks small on a map) and densly populated area such as India could be united. What they need is technology, which as we all know is the driving force of history. A early invention of a heliograph system would unite India fairly quickly considering that they are Indians anyway (OOC: some on noob rant, remember). And they could invent printing press and maybe even one of the flying devices like a ballon or some airships. Even a system of highways would do but I have always liked channals.
 
For all the good it did them. :p

True, it didn't work out too well for them, but it was certainly possible that they could have won had things turned out differentely. The outcome of the Second Battle of Plassey was just a total fluke, there's no way it should have turned out the way it did except for massive amounts of dumb luck.
 

Keenir

Banned
I'd say it's possible, but really difficult. European integration only occurred because of the neo-Napoleonic campaign. It'll take a conqueror or a shared enemy to get the Indians to come together as one people.

wasn't there a try at united rebellion when the British tried to abolish the caste system?
 
I think it's highly unlikely. The only time the Indian subcontinent has ever been completely unified was under the British, and that was just a facade of order to begin with. Control of India, whether British, Mughal, or Japanese (because they had quite a bit, it was just more than they could chew), relied on gaining allies in the many diverse provinces and city-states.

Second of all, what good would a united India be anyways? It would either be incredibly unstable to due tribal infighting, or would end up being a puppet of the Japanese or Russians (just like Persia or the old Ottomans are). No, it may be bloody, but some things happen for a reason, and Indian disunity is one of them...
 
Well, the Sikhs were always the cat's paws of the Empire.

Personally, I think that a united India would be a lot like Europa. A whole big mess of rival ethnicities and languages loosely tied together by a culture imposed from the top. Perhaps Hindi could have been the Esperanto of this 'Unindia", but what about a common faith? Europa only worked because the religious struggles of the centuries plum tuckered the continent out.
 
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