How can the British Empire become the Indian Empire, while the UK is still included?

So usually people ask how the British Empire can remain British, while keeping India. But, I am wanna do something else. How can significant amounts of Indian culture spread to the UK to the point that British/ Indian intermarriage is acceptable and Indians are considered equal to Englishmen like how the Scots were? I would think that loss of all of British North America would be necessary to get Britain to treat India much better than OTL ,as they are much more paranoid about loosing colonies. A butterfly of this could be that Ireland is treated better, since loosing colonies could become traumatic to the point that lots of effort is put into not loosing them any more. I could also see maybe the Royal family doing some stuff to have Indians seen as equal, like marrying into various princely States. I don't know. What do you guys think? Is it possible and if it is , how can it be done?

To be succinct: Basically create the United Kingdoms of India and the British Isles
 
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longsword14

Banned
Never going to happen. To make the above true you would have to change the nature of empires themselves. As soon as you change that, I do not see why Britain bothers to keep India in any capacity.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Well first you'd have to eliminate the base racism that was rampant pretty much worldwide. Indians wouldn't marry Europeans, nor vice versa. Maybe if you could sweep the British Isles with widespread Orientalism you could see them adopting and adapting Indian trends enough that the dusky skin thing becomes just a mild disgruntlement. If a particularly powerful Indian prince -say, a Nizam of an extra large Hyderabad and the rest of his family- converts to Christianity and is strategic enough to the strings behind the British Crown then *maybe* you could see some royal marriage. But I don't see how to facilitate that and that's an ungodly number of butterflies to be playing with.
 
Well first you'd have to eliminate the base racism that was rampant pretty much worldwide. Indians wouldn't marry Europeans, nor vice versa. Maybe if you could sweep the British Isles with widespread Orientalism you could see them adopting and adapting Indian trends enough that the dusky skin thing becomes just a mild disgruntlement. If a particularly powerful Indian prince -say, a Nizam of an extra large Hyderabad and the rest of his family- converts to Christianity and is strategic enough to the strings behind the British Crown then *maybe* you could see some royal marriage. But I don't see how to facilitate that and that's an ungodly number of butterflies to be playing with.
Apparently, British Indian marriage was a thing until the UK took direct control of India away from the British East India Company.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Apparently, British Indian marriage was a thing until the UK took direct control of India away from the British East India Company.

Oh well that's handy. That smooths things over so long as the BEIC doesn't fuck up as badly as OTL. But among royalty is still a little different.
 
Wouldn't Britain (or just Scotland, heh) vote to secede from that, since they'd clearly be dominated politically by Indian interests and possibly "reverse-colonised" so to speak with British revenue going to prop up India.
 
Apparently, British Indian marriage was a thing until the UK took direct control of India away from the British East India Company.

No, it was more the fact that British-Indian relationships were tolerated because it was too difficult to ship your spouse and legitimate European children to live in some godforsaken jungle. Why not have a relationship with an Indian while you're away? Once steamships are a thing and the Suez Canal completed, it became much more easier for the families of British soldiers and officers to be closer. Hence the backlash.
 
Wouldn't Britain (or just Scotland, heh) vote to secede from that, since they'd clearly be dominated politically by Indian interests and possibly "reverse-colonised" so to speak with British revenue going to prop up India.
I don't think British revenue would prop up India, since India actually made money for Britain. Like I am imagining that this Empire becomes like an imperial federation with Britain,Ireland and India having free trade and movement with each other. It's generally agreed that India has a very high chance of becoming a superpower, if it had better luck than OTL and being able to govern it's domestic affairs could be the lucky break. To my knowledge, India and Pakistan made their own nukes without any help, so imagine what a industrialized/developed United India could do. I think one big the reasons why Britain may not want to secede is because it would lose out a free trade block with one of the largest markets on the planet. That's a lot of Money to be made.
 
The easiest way IMO is a combination of fetishisation and democratic suffrage.

Have at least one or two rulers who read up on old Indian Kings, and visit the great monuments of India (I don't even know whether any British Monarchs did!), even better if one was raised in India (say a cadet branch who by unusual circumstance take the throne, or marry into the primary branch).

Then it is simply a case of democracy - for all.

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An alternative is to do something very different. Have the EIC fail and the monarch of the UK becomes Emperor/Empress of India as per OTL - BUT grants the titles of the various Kingdoms of India to their second child. This creates the monarch of India and the Monarch of the UK, with India technically subservient to the UK dynastically (ignoring the administrative factors). Have the heir of the UK and the heir of all the Indias (ideally a daughter) marry, and create the personal union.

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However most of that is fluff, the important thing is the cultural intrigue, and if modern Britains love of curry is anything to go by, shouldn't be too difficult to expand to different areas. Another option is that you avoid WW1 and WW2 and let the British Empire continue the plans they had for their Empire - let the Indians be a vast middle class across Africa, meaning any Brits settled anywhere will be exposed to Indian culture, this would normalise it to an extent (especially the bits that are made fashionable), these ideas are later taken to the UK.
 
A few people in one of the Reds! threads have suggested that as the Cold War continues and India becomes more and more wealthy, it will usurp Britain and France's position as the dominant capitalist power, while still remaining tied to the British. I think that is one plausible way of achieving this - have Britain be locked in a Cold War with America (or another major world power) to the extent that it cannot afford to lose India and makes increasingly significant concessions to keep them in the empire. After a few decades, the British Empire is an imperial federation and a de facto Indian empire.

teg
 
A few people in one of the Reds! threads have suggested that as the Cold War continues and India becomes more and more wealthy, it will usurp Britain and France's position as the dominant capitalist power, while still remaining tied to the British. I think that is one plausible way of achieving this - have Britain be locked in a Cold War with America (or another major world power) to the extent that it cannot afford to lose India and makes increasingly significant concessions to keep them in the empire. After a few decades, the British Empire is an imperial federation and a de facto Indian empire.

teg

This. All it takes is a situation in which Britain needs India more than it fears being subsumed by it, and one where India sees holding on to/supporting Britain worth the expense. Not a nice world, but it's easy to imagine plenty of things worse for Britain than becoming a part of a democratic Indian empire.
 
The main problem IMO is that there's simply a lot more Indians than Brits. With that fact in mind you wouldn't have to be a racist to oppose any such arrangement, you'd simply need to do the math about what that means in a democratic society.
 
Never going to happen. To make the above true you would have to change the nature of empires themselves. As soon as you change that, I do not see why Britain bothers to keep India in any capacity.

A bloody Scot on the throne of England? Never going to happen! (Circa pre-Jacobite era.)

IOW, it could happen...but I agree it would require some pretty extreme circumstances, probably along the same lines, ie royal intermarriage, end of direct line, political reality melded to accommodate royal reality.
 
There's that funny AH satire, King Ludd by Roy Lewis, where this sorta happens. He gets some of the history wrong, but there's a Hanover/Mughal royal marriage involved (Victoria with one Bahadur Shah IIRC).
 
So usually people ask how the British Empire can remain British, while keeping India. But, I am wanna do something else. How can significant amounts of Indian culture spread to the UK to the point that British/ Indian intermarriage is acceptable and Indians are considered equal to Englishmen like how the Scots were? I would think that loss of all of British North America would be necessary to get Britain to treat India much better than OTL ,as they are much more paranoid about loosing colonies. A butterfly of this could be that Ireland is treated better, since loosing colonies could become traumatic to the point that lots of effort is put into not loosing them any more. I could also see maybe the Royal family doing some stuff to have Indians seen as equal, like marrying into various princely States. I don't know. What do you guys think? Is it possible and if it is , how can it be done?

To be succinct: Basically create the United Kingdoms of India and the British Isles

Indian princes becoming members of the House of Lords, some even becoming earls and lords and dukes.
 
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You would need to have a Revolutionary England type thing where the whole thing ends up in a massive civil war where India wins, and Britain ends up as basically an Indian colony. But that is... quite unlikely.
 
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