Divide modern India with a 500 A.D. POD

With the POD of 500 A.D., have it so that India remains as geographical concept. The Indian subcontinent is recognized as a cultural region, but is inhabited by many disparate sovereign states each with different majority religions, such as jainism, buddhism, hinduism, the original trinity of Indic religious tradition. on top of this, there should also be islamic states (of whatever sect that makes the most sense) and perhaps Christian states in there somewhere. Is it possible to have an India that fits the bill with that POD? how much of history would have to be changed from OTL to produce such an India?
 
You dont need a 500AD PoD. Just have the other European powers be more successful in colonizing India. India as a unified nation came about because the British claimed the lion's share of it. Without any single unifying colonial power, the borders of modern South Asia would be split along colonial lines, rather than a case of a former British colony simply annexing the minute remains of Goa and Pondicherry.
 
Yeah, such a POD is unnecessary. India as a national identity only emerged under British rule, and you can butterfly that away quite easily with a POD as late as 1757.
 
Yeah, such a POD is unnecessary. India as a national identity only emerged under British rule, and you can butterfly that away quite easily with a POD as late as 1757.

For a disunited India of course it's unnecessary, but for surviving Buddhist and Jain Indian states? i think it's absolutely necessary. Those are important to the TL.
 
For a disunited India of course it's unnecessary, but for surviving Buddhist and Jain Indian states? i think it's absolutely necessary. Those are important to the TL.

Anything you do will result in a disunited India, all the way up to modern day if you want. Unless you have a single power unite everything, you can keep India divided under different religions indefinitely.

For example, you could have a Hephthalite Buddhist Indus coexisting with a Hindu-dominated Ganges and a Jain-dominated Deccan, or a Jain kingdom on the Indus coexisting with Buddhist-dominated Ganges and a Hindu Deccan.
 
But India is already divided? Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationalism is relatively fresh and quite strongly based on not being Indian. Likewise Nepali, Bhutanese, Sri Lankan and Maldivian are quite separate and distinct from modern India, or at least identify as such. Such this is very much OTL.
 
For a disunited India of course it's unnecessary, but for surviving Buddhist and Jain Indian states? i think it's absolutely necessary. Those are important to the TL.

Well, for a Buddhist Indian state, just save the Pala Empire in Bengal. Keeping Islam from emerging also means that Kashmir, the other centre of Indian Buddhism, remains Buddhist.

A Jain Indian state, on the other hand, is much harder.
 
For a disunited India of course it's unnecessary, but for surviving Buddhist and Jain Indian states? i think it's absolutely necessary. Those are important to the TL.

Well, for a Buddhist Indian state, just save the Pala Empire in Bengal. Keeping Islam from emerging also means that Kashmir, the other centre of Indian Buddhism, remains Buddhist.

Actually, scratch that. A surviving Buddhist Indian state is even easier. Just keeping Ladakh independent means an independent Buddhist Indian state exists.
 
Keeping India divided shouldn't be a problem. Its unification is a historical anomality after all :p

If you want to keep Buddhism as a major religion on the subcontinent, you need to contain the advance of the Muslim conquerors and the advent of the Indo-Muslim centralising states. Buddhism, unlike Hinduism, is a messianic religion which meant it was a direct competitor with the call for conversion spread by the Islamic rulers. Consequently it was pretty much completely driven out of India leaving the Hindus and Jains behind (who, some claim, were actually at certain times treated as "Children of the Book" like the Jews and Christians).
 
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bhutan isnt quite indian their cultuyre is more like a subculture of Tibetan than an indian subculture.
The Buddhism of Ladakh was also influenced by the Tibetan Buddhism. Such overlaps of cultural and ethnic identities and influences occur in most border lands. There are many tribes which you can find on both sides of the India-Myanmar border. The Pathans live on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Baluchis are found in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The ethnic and linguistic borders do not always follow the international border lines drawn by the political leaders.
 
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