Indian-Pakistani re-unification

Markus

Banned
This just popped into my mind in light of recent events. Probably ASB-ish but let´s do it anyway:

Pakistan is a mess and has been for most of the time since independance. India on the other hand has always been a stable democracy and it´s got a muslim population roughly as large as Pakistan´s. Let´s suppose the corrupt and inept pakistani elites screw up bad enough for the population to rid themself of them for good.

What are the chances of the new regime advocating undoing the partition of India and how would India react?
 
Very low, I'd say.

However, Pakistan was originally East and West Pakistan, the former being modern Bangladesh. I think it's possible that Bangladesh could be re-absorbed in the right circumstances, and as a democracy that would have dramatic consequences for Indian politics.

I'm afraid I know too little on the topic, alas.
 
Too many corrupt officials on both sides of the border....

They would rather stay independent and continue to hold power over their "portfolios" than be united and possibly share anything...

Sad but true :(
 
Extremely low. I think you would need a POD that has a united Indian subcontinent regardless of religious affiliation to begin with.
 
Religious issues...

These people (religious zealots on both sides) despise one another, and the bad blood would poison any attempt to reunify the sub-continent. Take a look at the deaths following the Partition (and the rather nasty ethnic cleansing the followed it), and you will see that this TL is a non-starter...

The only way that India and Pakistan are going to be reunified is in the aftermath of a mass nuclear exchange when they are all dead.
 
This just popped into my mind in light of recent events. Probably ASB-ish but let´s do it anyway:

Pakistan is a mess and has been for most of the time since independance. India on the other hand has always been a stable democracy and it´s got a muslim population roughly as large as Pakistan´s. Let´s suppose the corrupt and inept pakistani elites screw up bad enough for the population to rid themself of them for good.

What are the chances of the new regime advocating undoing the partition of India and how would India react?

Absolutely impossible. Although there are plenty of reasonable POD's that have a united India prior to 1947, once Partition happened, it's pretty much permanent. At this point, the political identities of both states have sharply diverged and India would not the demographic destabilization that would come even with reunification with Bangladesh.

The closest thing to a reunification would be an EU-style South Asian confederation including Sri Lanka, Nepal and maybe Burma. Free trade, common market, open borders, common currency, etc. However, this is probably decades away and I actually think that even in the event of Indo-Pak peace, a U.S./Canada style relationship is more likely. India's sheer size makes something like the EU a little bit unlikely, as it would dominate too thoroughly for it to be a true partnership of equals.
 

ninebucks

Banned
India is in as much of a mess as Pakistan, the difference is that Pakistan just has a couple of really big messes, while India has hundreds and hundreds of smaller messes.
 
Very, very low. The two might have considered themselves one country in 1900, but the violence of Partition (large-scale ethnic cleansing on both sides, and possibly a million deaths in total, making both countries much more homogenious then they otherwise would be) and four wars have driven Pakistanis and Indians so far apart that a merger would be a non-starter for either. Even if Pakistan's central government collapsed and the country Somalia-ized (an unlikely worst-case scenario that is extremely overhyped by the media), I very much doubt that India would absorb any of it beyond Kashmir-and even that would be extremely unpopular with the local population.
 
Ok, ok but what are the PODs and scenarios that could have prevented the partition:confused:

Possibly your timeline?

With a Britain that doesn't suffer the Fall of Singapore and the widespread capture of British Indian Army troops there is unlikely to be a Quit India campaign in 1942 or quite so much pressure for Britain to withdraw in such haste post war. They'd still have to leave but maybe they could so so in a slightly more relaxed, in control manner
 
Hence the question. SlideAway said there are plenty of reasonable POD's that have a united India prior to 1947 but given my limited knowledge I like to know what PODs.

Lets see...sometime in the 1930's, the British government implemented a policy called the Communal Award that divided the electorate into separate Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh portions that elected their own representatives. Get rid of it, and you might see a marginalization of parties like the Muslim League (the main pressure group behind the formation of Pakistan).

Or, as Julius Vogel suggested, have a POD that makes Congress more cooperative with the British during and after WWII.

Also, you can have the British leave more slowly than OTL, and not implement partition hastily and with little input from actual Indians, like they did IOTL (example-the border between the Pakistani and Indian parts of Punjab was drawn by a British judge who had never even visited India prior to that occasion. He sailed in, was given a map of Punjab showing the population density of Hindus and Muslims, drew a line across it, and sailed back to Britain. Said line became the India-Pakistan border). No one anticipated the violence that would occur surrounding Partition-it mostly happened because people learned that the country was going to suddenly be split into Hindu and Muslim parts, and the fanatics decided to secure their local areas for their "side".

I'm by no means an expert in this period, but I hope the above helps.
 
Another POD would be one suggested by Pipisme is his rather good British Liberal Party doesn't collapse in the 1920s timeline. I have pasted his POD below. Relating to India (if I've remember rightly) an earlier supportive British government of self rule for India would make it more likely that the united India movement dominates. BAsically the premise is that a powerful Liberal Party would advance the cause


"The POD for this TL is the British general election of 6 December 1923. That was called by Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in order to win a majority for imposing tariffs on imported goods. The Liberal and Labour Parties fought on a policy of maintaining free trade. In OTL the result was Conservative 258 seats (38.1% of the vote), Labour 191 seats (30.5%), Liberal 159 seats (29.6%), others 7 seats (1.8%).* Baldwin didn't resign but when Parliament met in January 1924, his government was defeated in the House of Commons in a vote of no confidence and Ramsay McDonald, the leader of the Labour Party, became Prime Minister of a minority Labour government on 22 January 1924.

It is likely that if the Liberals rather than Labour had come second to the Tories in 1923, the Liberal leader Herbert Asquith would have become Prime Minister. In this TL the Liberal vote is up by 3%, the Labour vote is down by 2% and the Conservative is down by 1%. "
 
Ok, ok but what are the PODs and scenarios that could have prevented the partition:confused:

Some potential ones:

1920s: There was a major civil disobedience campaign by Gandhi and the Congress which was done in conjunction with a mass Muslim protest movement - the Khilafat Movement. Gandhi, however, called off the protests when they started turning violent. The move infuriated much of the Khilafat leadership, and the result was a major lost opportunity for making the self-rule movement a pan-communal affair.

1937: In elections for the Indian Constituent Assembly and the Indian provincial councils, the Muslim League wound up getting severely beaten. Thereafter, Jinnah approached Nehru and the Congress to inquire about a coalition in the United Provinces. Had Congress accepted, they could have formed an alliance with the League. Brushing off the advances wound up convincing Jinnah that no cooperation with Nehru was possible.

1937: Also, as someone else pointed out up thread, had dominion status been granted in the 1930s, Partition would not have happened. I don't think it would even have emerged as an issue down the road, as the Hindu vote is hardly a bloc, and very quickly, electoral politics would have made Muslims into a highly sought after vote by various coalitions.

1946: Harder, but possible. The Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 envisioned a confederal India, which Jinnah accepted but which the Congress back off from. Had they committed to it, there may not have been a partition, although the stability of the proposed government is open to question.

The thing about the Muslim League was that it wasn't necessarily pushing for a totally independent Pakistan. As late as 1946, Jinnah and the leadership were open to some sort of subcontinental confederation or federation, but they wanted to assure Muslim autonomy and a strong Muslim voice at the center. The problem is simply that while it's theoretically quite possible to envision a workable solution - something like large-scale provincial autonomy with guarantees or proportional representation in a federal parliament - neither side was really willing to budge. The very least Jinnah could accept was a loose confederation, while the Congress was deeply committed to a highly-centralized, near-unitary state.
 
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