What If: India is united like China

What if,one dinasty (in China's case the Xia) unites a piece and later all of India,and this unified state survives,changing dinasties,but being essentially always India.This is what happened to China and Persia,could it happen to India?
 
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What if,one dinasty (in China's case the Xia) unites a piece and later all of India,and this unified state survives,changing dinasties,but being essentially always India.This is what happened to China and Persia,could it happen to India?

Just get rid of Islam, or have muslims not to conquer the North. Idk much, but you could have a Buddhist India in the end. Maybe some Northern kingdom, at some point, conquer the South (ala Qing, or have some wanked Buddhist Mughals conquer everything).

But to stay united you need some pan indian empire in the antiquity, like the chinese one. So you need a very early POD, like India becoming an hellenistic successor state after a wanked Alexander.
 
Just get rid of Islam, or have muslims not to conquer the North. Idk much, but you could have a Buddhist India in the end. Maybe some Northern kingdom, at some point, conquer the South (ala Qing, or have some wanked Buddhist Mughals conquer everything).

But to stay united you need some pan indian empire in the antiquity, like the chinese one. So you need a very early POD, like India becoming an hellenistic successor state after a wanked Alexander.

Or maybe the Mauryan Empire?
 
If only the Mauryan Empire had survived long after Emperor Ashoka, it was quite possible. If even after conversion to Buddhism, had Ashoka not taken to pacifism as in OTL, but had maintained his military goals, he required only a little more effort to bring the remaining small portion in the South too under his rule. Actually the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka covered much more land than OTL India under it. The Mauryan Empire had an area of 50 million sq. kms of land compared to about 33 million sq.kms of the present Republic of India. The only portions that escaped Mauryan rule in the subcontinent was the four small kingdoms in the Far South and North East India.
If Ashoka had adopted the Buddhism as the state religion suppressing the opposition of the Brahmins and had able successors his Empire would have survived. If Mauryan Empire had survived for three or four centuries and consolidated itself, the entire story would have been different. A united Buddhist India would have developed.
 
Some great dynasty (perhaps Maurya) should last enough long that it could create unified culture and it should pressure most of Indian population use Hindi like China enforced people adapt Han Chinese culture and Mandarin Chinese language.
 
The Maurya are your best bet. Also, perhaps, short circuiting the Hindu reformation- a universalist religion like Buddhism is better suited as the basis for a huge polity. since the Mauryas won't last forever it's useful if the universalist religion then provides some form of legitimacy for a successor dynasty to consolidate around. IOTL this didn't happen since modern Hinduism developed out of the older Brahmanism and provided a strong opponent to the Buddhist hierarchy.

Alternatively (and probably more realistically) you could go for a united North India with the Indo-Gangetic valleys forming the core of a single cultural and political region.
 
The Maurya are your best bet. Also, perhaps, short circuiting the Hindu reformation- a universalist religion like Buddhism is better suited as the basis for a huge polity. since the Mauryas won't last forever it's useful if the universalist religion then provides some form of legitimacy for a successor dynasty to consolidate around. IOTL this didn't happen since modern Hinduism developed out of the older Brahmanism and provided a strong opponent to the Buddhist hierarchy.

Alternatively (and probably more realistically) you could go for a united North India with the Indo-Gangetic valleys forming the core of a single cultural and political region.

Ashoka, though he adopted Buddhism personally, he didn't make it state religion and also didn't suppress or discourage other religions. This gave an opportunity for the disgruntled Brahmin leaders to lie low for a short period and strike back after his death. Within fifty years after the death of the Emperor Ashoka, Pushyamitra Sunga, the Brahmin commander-in-chief of the Mauryan Army turned against the then emperor, unseated and murdered him in front of the assembled Army itself. The Mauryan Empire collapsed and was replaced by the Sunga dynasty.

Had Ashoka took interest in establishing a strong Buddhist order, instead of merely propagating his messages through his rock edicts, as was done by King Tissa of Lanka, it would have produced more lasting effects. Remember that it was Ashoka who sent his own son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitra to Lanka to meet King Tissa and propagate Buddhism. He should have known the opposition of Brahmins towards the Buddhism and should have taken steps to weed out all chances of a future rebellion.

If Buddhism was firmly established and steps were taken to prevent its future infiltration and internal decay by the Brahmin intelligentsia, a Brahministic revival similar to the one under Sankaracharya wouldn't have occurred. A united Buddhist India might have been more successful in blocking future Islamic and colonial onslaughts. I think that a polity based on the original Theravadi Buddhism would have produced a far better and more equal community free of caste system. This polity should also cover the entire subcontinent and could have adopted Pali as the common language.
 
Wasn't India like China in the sense the CONCEPT of India existed for a long, long time even if it never had nowhere near the lengths of unity China had under certain dynasties?
 
Compared to China, India was politically united only between long intervals. The Mauryas, the Guptas, the Palas, the Cholas, the Mughals etc. had large empires covering most parts of the subcontinent at different periods. But the intervals between the large empires was always marked by mutually fighting petty kingdoms. Even the larger empires were challenged by internal as well as external rivals. But the kings always had the dreams of becoming a "Chakravarti" or "Sarvabhouma Samrat", lording over the subcontinent.

Even in the absence of political unity, the concept of a common culture or rather a concept of a unique civilization always existed. The presence of different languages or traditions did not weaken this cultural concept. It can be said to be based on the Hindu religion and its offshoots like Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism etc. It was this concept of Bharatvarsh that survived centuries of political disunity and foreign occupation.
 
Wasn't India like China in the sense the CONCEPT of India existed for a long, long time even if it never had nowhere near the lengths of unity China had under certain dynasties?

Yes but rather than comparing it to the concept of China, I think it's more effective to compare it to the concept of Europe where you have certain shared civilisational aspects while still maintaining different ethnicities and cultures as opposed to China where Chineseness depended on assimilation.
 
The Mauryan theory is probably the main theory about getting a China-like Indian subcontinent, yet it needs some help/ stable support for it to work.

Though one reason I believe the Indian subcontinent wasn't able to unite full and form a permanent single state is the fact religion is so deeply grounded there. For most of China's imperial history Confucianism and Legalist philosophies, which to the extent of my knowledge discouraged or didn't mention deities. From what I've researched animism, and ancestor worship was where it was at (animism res-urging in the Warring States, Three Kingdom and other periods of fragmentation).

To the Chinese they were 'All-Under-The-Heaven', the Heavens and nature mandating the Celestial Emperor, quite possibly the closest thing they had to a proper deity. From a serf's point of view, who could challenge the Heaven's orders and rebel against the Emperor? And when time did come it would hit hard through extreme decadence in the Imperial court so people were definite that now was time to rebel as the dynasty was out of favor with the Heavens.

In the Indias, the closest thing you get are the Nastika schools which Jainism and Buddhism stemmed out of. Buddhism was very soft core Nastika philosophy and Jainism asked for extremities form the householder that not all could complete so it gained a substantial community, though it remained a large minority for a long time. Neither actually denounce gods, goddesses and spirits.

What you need to is to get a Nastika school which is deist to say the least. And such a school is the Carvaka thought. It actually goes insults the Vedic religion and their Brahman priesthood at many points in it's scriptures and denounces that anyone but a king or a scholar should be able to communicate and herald for God.

Get a Carvaka school student (or one of a similar thought structure) to curry favour with the Mauryan or Sungan empires. Heck you could get it to work even with the Nanda empire in the face of Alexander's invasion or the Kushan empire!
 
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