More divided post-British India

I see there's a recent thread on a unified sub-continent: have there been threads on the opposite, India leaving British rule as more than the two (disregarding Nepal, Sri Lanka, etc,) states of OTL Pakistan (later Pakistan and Bangladesh) and India?

Of course, if Britain didn't sweep the board and take all of India, and other European states remained involved, that's one way to get a more divided India, but what I'm wondering is to what extent the British Raj was "destined" to unify at least Hindu India (again, disregarding Nepal, which remained largely autonomous and really wasn't part of the Raj proper [1])

Could the British have played divide and rule with language as well as religion, or divided it up administratively in a more coherent fashion? Could the National Congress party have failed to arise as a pan-Indian (for Hindus at least) party?) Flipping it around, if Jinnah and co. had been less successful in making the Muslim League a competing power block, might a secular all-Bengal nationalism had a chance?

I've seen sometimes a couple of the Princely states surviving, but they were fairly fragile states, with their rulers badly compromised by cooperation with the British, and in most cases landlocked and therefore cut off from support from abroad: could their situation have improved with _more_ cooperation with the British, some sort of British-conservative Indian alliance to keep the socialist mob in it's place? Does a longer, slower, messier British withdrawal from India increase the chances for fragmentation, or does it just adds ideological fuel to the nationalist fire?

[1] I wonder if a stronger Sikh state could have pulled off a similar deal, or whether the Punjab was just too tempting a prize for the British to let it go.
 
One day I am thinking can we dissolve Indian union into City-country, and then making a European style union, which have authority to create union arm force and making a pact with other countries. By doing this Indian will have the majority in the united nation and will subvert it .
 
I wonder if a stronger Sikh state could have pulled off a similar deal, or whether Punjab was just too tempting a prize for the British to let it go.
problem with Sikh was that they were very few , only 20-30% were in British-united Punjab, and when you want to give a state for them, they will ask for the whole Punjab. which is not possible. and both India and Pakistan will not support any minor country between them.
 
I think avoiding the creation of the Raj might help. That way British rule is over several individual countries rather than members of any particular union. A sort of more extreme pre Confederation "Canada".
How we get there I'm not sure. Slower takeover perhaps?. Multiple India companies maybe?
 

Orangecar

Banned
United Bengal,Kashmir,Hyderbad? Sihkkim, Goa.
Perhaps an India that breaks up later coule include a commuist as well as an Islamic and Hindu one
 
Have the various Presidencies administered as separate colonies, instead of lumping them all together as one.

You could certainly have a separate Bengal, south India, west-coast India, central India, north India, Punjab etc.
 
Well, the Nizam of Hyderabad actually tried to stay out of the Indian Union.

Given my limited knowledge of the time and place, Im not the one to ask if such a state would have been feasible.
Logic, however, seems quite against it. No sea access, no economy, minority muslims ruling over hindus
 
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Gabingston

Kicked
South dravidian india VS indo—aryan North ?
That could work, but putting all of the Indo-Aryan regions of Northern India into one state is a lot like putting France, Spain, Portugal and Italy into one country just because they all speak Romance languages and (historically at least) follow the Catholic faith.
 
Why wouldn't one or the other want a buffer state between them?

I'm no expert on South Asia, but my family is from a region with strong ethnic tensions, so I think I can piece together a rough idea.

It would be land that both of them want, and both sides would see it as the other snubbing them, and they would both hate each other and the Punjabi Sikhs. Pakistan would see it as an area with a large Muslim population that they believe they have a historic claim to, and they would see it being ruled by Sikhs (who I think, from my conversations with people from South Asia, are seen as closer to the Hindus and Jains of India than to the Muslims of Pakistan, though I could be wrong due to speaking to a small sample of a massive population and possibly misremembering). Essentially, the view would be "this is rightful Pakistani land being ruled by people who are basically Indians". The Indians on the other hand, also viewing Punjab as theirs, would not like seeing it separate from India, and while India is built much less on a common religious identity than Pakistan is, Sikhs, given an independent state, would likely come to be viewed as separate, non Indian, as they already sometimes are even IOTL. It might even be seen as a "Pakistani-encouraged attempt to weaken India".

Just think of Bosnia. Serbs, Croats, and a third group (Bosniaks), mainly, like the groups of the Punjab region, divided by religion, live there. Both Serbia and Croatia have conflicting historical and demographic claims to all or part of Bosnia. Bosnia exists, and is to some extent run by the third, endemic/local ethnoreligious group. This buffer does not help though. During the war, it just added another side to the conflict. Now, it is a divided country, which both of its neighbors, though usually not directly, disapprove of, while also disapproving of each other. Of course, not all people from these groups hate each other, in fact, most don't. However, the more extreme nationalists, who tend to drive demographic-based conflicts, hate not just the "enemy" on the other side, but also the "buffer" in between them.

I'm not trying to discredit Bosnia here, and ofc, this is a VERY SIMPLIFIED view of the situation. I'm just using the comparison to make a point. The point is, an independent state in between India and Pakistan could exist, in fact, there is a movement to create a Sikh Khalistan in the Punjab region. However, there is certainly very little chance that India or Pakistan support the existence of such a state unless it solely takes territory away from the other, and even then, it would have to be territory that that state does not claim.

[edit: also, I could just straight up be wrong. So please don't get too mad if I did get things wrong,. I wasn't trying to offend or hurt anyone, or spread misinformation. If you know more about these situations, please tell me what's really going on instead. I want to make sure I'm not just spewing bullsh*t here.]

[edits: mainly grammar]
 
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Could the British have played divide and rule with language as well as religion, or divided it up administratively in a more coherent fashion? Could the National Congress party have failed to arise as a pan-Indian (for Hindus at least) party?) Flipping it around, if Jinnah and co. had been less successful in making the Muslim League a competing power block, might a secular all-Bengal nationalism had a chance?

Bengal separatism and the Muslim League trace their ideological origins to the same event-- the original 1905 partition of Bengal into Hindu and Muslim provinces. The lines weren't exactly the same as the 1947 partition but the general idea was (the Muslim peasants of eastern Bengal might benefit from having a provincial administration responsive to them, rather than having to fight for representation with merchants and landowners in the city of Calcutta). However, the eruption of popular demonstrations and withdrawal of elite support meant the British actually walked the decision back in a few years. Bengali separatism was simply the most extreme way of preventing a second threat to Bengali unity ("a split Bengal is only viable as a pair of subunits in a larger state" + "maybe nationalism can bridge the religious divide"). Meanwhile, the granting of legitimacy to partition meant it was possible to raise that proposal again, over larger areas. However, if no organization is around to promote partition again-- in other words, no Muslim League-- the impetus for Bengali separatism is gone too.

Linguistic differences are honestly overrated-- India's own postcolonial Dravidian movement morphed into a movement for social justice and ethnic pride rather than outright secession, because that was the more practical way of achieving its goals (also because the other southerners wanted no part of a Tamil-led secessionist state lmao). And for colonial politics, if mass movements are the best way to bring the British to the table, more masses = more relevance. No movement could afford to be solely regionalist, that would just mean bleeding votes to the subcontinental organizations/movements and finally getting shut out of Round Tables altogether (see: Bengali separatism). If you are a regionalist, it's better to form a wing within a subcontinental organization than kneecap your career by admitting it early on. For the communists, this reality is made explicit by the presence of the Comintern, which is in the market for big revolutions, not little ones. And finally, even if Indian intellectuals came from different places they all spoke English and considered each other part of the same culture in an intellectual sense, if not a national sense quite yet. Gandhi had Southern friends like Rajagopalachari, as did Bose. Rivalry was more about ideology than ethnic origin, because lawyers are lawyers the world over.

I've seen sometimes a couple of the Princely states surviving, but they were fairly fragile states, with their rulers badly compromised by cooperation with the British, and in most cases landlocked and therefore cut off from support from abroad: could their situation have improved with _more_ cooperation with the British, some sort of British-conservative Indian alliance to keep the socialist mob in it's place? Does a longer, slower, messier British withdrawal from India increase the chances for fragmentation, or does it just adds ideological fuel to the nationalist fire?

One of the most important political families in India are the Scindias, who are in fact one of the four great Maratha houses (they recently came back into the news due to the last major member still in the INC defecting to the BJP to join several other members of his family). Most of the Princely states are fragments or rump states left behind from much greater domains, and this is a bigger problem than "collaboration" (if they're collaborators, what do you call the Raj bureaucracy?). They're rich, but their states aren't large enough for them to really experiment with governance and gain political support on their own terms. For most, the political future lies in supporting the nationalist movements. It's the same logic that led the Yogyakarta Sultan to offer Sukarno safe harbor in the war against the Dutch (and that sultan's descendants remain the only precolonial rulers in modern Indonesia). They could support the British but well, the Doctrine of Lapse let the East India Company take over internally divided princely states. If there's a revolt and the British are coming to help, help may come with certain conditions that the princes will have no way to refuse. Nationalists offer the princes an opportunity to be respected and esteemed colleagues; the British offer a leash that can only shorten with time.

Some kind of British-over-socialists order can still exist, though. People like Srinivasa Sastry stood for a slower decolonization even at the cost of their own popularity, and for a while the Swatantra Party tried to stand for liberal capitalism against the INC. If Britain avoids the world wars, or maybe just World War Two, these might even be the dominant elements of Indian politics. But I don't think that the princes could turn it into a regionalist thing, especially not when the "socialist" opposition will probably be pan-Indian.

If a divided India comes about, it would have to be due to a total failure of Indian governance, to the point where trying to preserve order in parts of India is practically easier and politically more palatable than trying to rebuild the central government. Something like an armed independence war that collapses into a civil war among factions, or a really bad post-independence period. Indian independence was never just about planting a flag and calling it yours-- it was about the promise of a better, more fulfilling life for you and yours. It would take a disaster for people to conclude that no, maybe the idea of India, as big as it is and as strong as it could possibly be, can't offer that.

Why wouldn't one or the other want a buffer state between them?

India and Pakistan both want to govern all the people they consider theirs; only a state which can't fit into either of the competing universalist visions, like Bangladesh, can be allowed to go it alone (which is why the option is never raised with Kashmir). More than that, needing a "buffer" implies India and Pakistan are scared of a fight. They are not.
 
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xsampa

Banned
I see there's a recent thread on a unified sub-continent: have there been threads on the opposite, India leaving British rule as more than the two (disregarding Nepal, Sri Lanka, etc,) states of OTL Pakistan (later Pakistan and Bangladesh) and India?

Of course, if Britain didn't sweep the board and take all of India, and other European states remained involved, that's one way to get a more divided India, but what I'm wondering is to what extent the British Raj was "destined" to unify at least Hindu India (again, disregarding Nepal, which remained largely autonomous and really wasn't part of the Raj proper [1])

Could the British have played divide and rule with language as well as religion, or divided it up administratively in a more coherent fashion? Could the National Congress party have failed to arise as a pan-Indian (for Hindus at least) party?) Flipping it around, if Jinnah and co. had been less successful in making the Muslim League a competing power block, might a secular all-Bengal nationalism had a chance?

I've seen sometimes a couple of the Princely states surviving, but they were fairly fragile states, with their rulers badly compromised by cooperation with the British, and in most cases landlocked and therefore cut off from support from abroad: could their situation have improved with _more_ cooperation with the British, some sort of British-conservative Indian alliance to keep the socialist mob in it's place? Does a longer, slower, messier British withdrawal from India increase the chances for fragmentation, or does it just adds ideological fuel to the nationalist fire?

[1] I wonder if a stronger Sikh state could have pulled off a similar deal, or whether the Punjab was just too tempting a prize for the British to let it go.
Maybe someone could invade post British India and annex a chunk, like the Americans in rvbomally’s Ad Astra per Aspera where they take India south of Goa and rule through Holodomor tactics
 
I'll note that French west Africa didn't lead to a unified Islamic Sahel: I have the impression that this was due at least in part to the French administration following a fairly strict localism in hiring Africans for lower level government positions, so no pan-Sahelian experienced "political class" emerged. If the British decide to administer India as multiple separate colonies rather than a unified Raj, could a similar fragmentation of the political class take place? (Of course, administration was simply thinner on the ground in west Africa, as well...)
 
I'll note that French west Africa didn't lead to a unified Islamic Sahel: I have the impression that this was due at least in part to the French administration following a fairly strict localism in hiring Africans for lower level government positions, so no pan-Sahelian experienced "political class" emerged. If the British decide to administer India as multiple separate colonies rather than a unified Raj, could a similar fragmentation of the political class take place? (Of course, administration was simply thinner on the ground in west Africa, as well...)

Unlikely. Administrations aside, it's not like India isn't physically connected. People can walk. I think there is a bias towards viewing the state of things post-Mughal collapse as the natural state of India, and it's post-Mughal collapse where you get the many many little kingdoms and nizamates. But as someone already said, most of these were rebellious governors, opportunists, or rump states. Arguably you have pan-Indian elites pop up again and again with the Mughals, Marathas, Vijaynagar, etc. I don't know if it's appropriate to compare a relatively unpopulated, technologically less sophisticated, and economically middling region like the Sahel to India. Furthermore, India is sort of like an island in all but name; you've got the biggest mountains in the world to the north, heavy jungles (and more mountains) to the east, and dry land (and more mountains) to the west. That will naturally tend to encourage political unity. I know Goa and Pondicherry are tiny, but it's worth noting that Goa had its own domestic home-grown Independence movement despite being under Portuguese rule for centuries. When people can walk between your administrative divisions...it's hard to prevent the spread of ideas; no more than the Congress of Vienna could choke the idea of liberalism post-Napoleon.
 
Administrations aside, it's not like India isn't physically connected.

So was French west Africa ... :)

Vijaynagar,

I'd hardly consider Vijaynagar a "pan-Indian" entity. And a divided India _is_ a historically typical India. Now, if you want to argue that the Mughal Empire created a sense of pan-Indian unity or that their court culture helped create something of a new pan-Indian culture beyond the Hindu-Muslim divide, that's another kettle of fish.


If there were a semi-independent Sikh state, would there even be a Pakistan? There would be Sind and Bahawalpur and perhaps Baluchistan, but a Sikh Punjab might be occupying a space between British India and Greater Afghanistan. Of course, the Muslim majority issue might make it ultimately untenable as a state.
 
Unlikely. Administrations aside, it's not like India isn't physically connected. People can walk. I think there is a bias towards viewing the state of things post-Mughal collapse as the natural state of India, and it's post-Mughal collapse where you get the many many little kingdoms and nizamates. But as someone already said, most of these were rebellious governors, opportunists, or rump states. Arguably you have pan-Indian elites pop up again and again with the Mughals, Marathas, Vijaynagar, etc. I don't know if it's appropriate to compare a relatively unpopulated, technologically less sophisticated, and economically middling region like the Sahel to India. Furthermore, India is sort of like an island in all but name; you've got the biggest mountains in the world to the north, heavy jungles (and more mountains) to the east, and dry land (and more mountains) to the west. That will naturally tend to encourage political unity. I know Goa and Pondicherry are tiny, but it's worth noting that Goa had its own domestic home-grown Independence movement despite being under Portuguese rule for centuries. When people can walk between your administrative divisions...it's hard to prevent the spread of ideas; no more than the Congress of Vienna could choke the idea of liberalism post-Napoleon.
Independent from Portugal and part of India, or out to be an independent city state?
 
Independent from Portugal and part of India, or out to be an independent city state?

The first. It was a little reminiscent of the idea of Germany that got all the little Hesse(s) to band together with Prussia into the North German Confederation.
 
So was French west Africa ... :)
I'd hardly consider Vijaynagar a "pan-Indian" entity. And a divided India _is_ a historically typical India. Now, if you want to argue that the Mughal Empire created a sense of pan-Indian unity or that their court culture helped create something of a new pan-Indian culture beyond the Hindu-Muslim divide, that's another kettle of fish.
If there were a semi-independent Sikh state, would there even be a Pakistan? There would be Sind and Bahawalpur and perhaps Baluchistan, but a Sikh Punjab might be occupying a space between British India and Greater Afghanistan. Of course, the Muslim majority issue might make it ultimately untenable as a state.

1. Comparing the Sahel to India is ridiculous, for a variety of reasons I've listed. Europe in the 1600s is closer (by the metrics: population, tech, etc) to the Sahel than India is, and that doesn't really change until well into the 18th century.

2. Vijaynagar ruled over more than one ethnic group; the ruling dynasty was Kannada, but they ruled over and were in some fashion comprised of Telagu and Tamil peoples as well. If there was an empire in Europe that ruled the French, the Spanish, and the Swiss, surely historians would consider it relevant in discussing a later pan-European state. Hell, the combined populations of Telagu, Tamil, and Kannada peoples under the empire's rule would have been equal to the population of the other three, if not greater. Sure, unlike the Mughals Vijaynagar didn't collect the full set of action figures, but it's a little offputting to dismiss them so easily.

3. Depends on what you mean by divided, and how divided. There's long segments when things are more or less consolidated into two or three or four empires that rule over a variety of different ethnicities. If your hypothesis is something like a Balkans scenario where every ethnic group wants its own state, well, I don't believe historically that comports well with pluralistic empires that might rule over three, four, five, six different ethnicities, usually of varying sects or faiths. And by the 20th century transportation technology has advanced to the point where the natural borders that made political unification of the subcontinent so difficult (rivers that flow east to west, the Deccan, etc) are non-factors.

On a final note, Pakistan is Muslim Panjab, and Muslim Punjab is Pakistan. I don't see how you rip out half the manpower, wealth, and land of that nascent nation and still keep the Balochis and Pashtuns in. Can Sindh alone do it? I have my doubts.
 
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