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.
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.