1. We can only speculate about what could have been.
2. Without external pressure mounting on them, it is a lot less likely that there would have been a drastic turn around within a century or so.
1. That is the point of AH no? And Tipu Sultan did put into place many reforms before he was deposed.
2. There was already external pressure mounting. That's why Indian states were starting reforms as early as the 1750's when Britain and France really started to intervene. Clive had his opportunity to invade Bengal in large part because Siraj ud-Daulah was trying to tame the Indian bankers and consolidate power. The biggest reason that the Maratha lost Panipat is because the main commander tried to incompletely apply the lessons he'd learned against Europeans in the Deccan against the Afghans in North India. People always bang on about how European competition helped Europeans states modernize and develop. I don't see how the situation is any different in 18th c India. Furthermore, the advent of the Industrial Revolution will increase the external pressure even more.
This seem like a very narrow and simplistic (materialistic) explanation to me.
It is more likely that Islam was just a more cohesive socio-religious movement than Hinduism (as it was at the time) and that it was therefore more conducive to political dominance.
All along the history of the Muslim advance in India, more people had been converting to Islam in places that had been under Muslim domination the longest. Add 2 centuries of muslim domination and you get more muslims.
Also, it is unlikely that India would have experienced much of an industrial revolution before the mid 20th century if it had not been colonized (like any other muslim country). Therefore, the basic living conditions of the Indian population would have remained the same until then. There is little reason therefore to assume any change in past trends.
The "more cohesive socio-religious movement" thing is vague and unclear. What does that even mean? My explanation makes perfect sense-when rulers are constantly of one faith and push that faith as the one true path to success and salvation, you'll find people convert to it more. Do you think Islam was also a more cohesive movement than Christianity? How does your Hypothesis even account for the times both Christian and Muslims states ruled over each other and converted the populace?
Firstly you're assuming that a non-colonized India must be under Muslim control. This is untrue-the Maratha's came very close to taking over. Secondly, you assume that Muslims will rule exactly the same as they did before-also untrue. What exactly stops Indian states from going the Ottoman route and giving legal equality to all faiths?
The Ottoman Balkans were entering a proto-industrial state in the 1870's even with horrible forced trade treaties and the capitulations. It's absurd to ignore the huge incentives the British had to stop reforms and keep Indians subjugated. How can you point to Muslim countries of OTL as an example of the inability of industrializing without colonization when they were all colonized? You have also demonstrated no causal link between Islam and inability of industrialize. And again, you are assuming Muslim dominance. Let's get specific: why do you believe Tipu Sultans state of Mysore is incapable of industrialization, assuming it doesn't get conquered? What do you think colonization did that enhanced the ability for industrialization?
It won't necessarily happen with the Mughals either, an entrenched Muslim class has no desperate need to go on a mass literacy bid.
The current Bangladesh had been under Muslim rule for a far longer period of time, are you forgetting the expansion of the sultanate all the way to the ends of the Gangetic plains ?
Literacy is needed for a wide variety of reforms. Any state that tries to modernize will want to achieve mass literacy if they can. Not to mention that the Islamic ideal is everyone being able to read. The Ottomans certainly wanted to achieve mass literacy.
Specifically what happened - building a strongly centralised fiscal-military nation state in Japan? No, that wouldn't have happened.
But India - even Bengal - was not Edo Japan. The question here is what would happen in India, and the best guess on that, not the best guess on what would happen in Japan.
We can only compare India to the whole non-European world (and Eastern Europe to an extent), and it's economic relative trends to those and relative to its own history.
What actually would've happened in a Britain colonised Japan is quite difficult to know.
Just as a focus, you mention literacy. In 1800, there are estimate is already that Japan is comparable to France https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ivnHBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA58&ots=vR6gobOfpt&dq=literacy japan 1800&pg=PA58#v=onepage&q=literacy japan 1800&f=false, while India is at about 5%.
At the same time, there are large shifts in literacy among, Sri Lanka and Burma, both during periods of British rule (only data from 1900 - 1950 here, though) - http://www.unesco.org/education/GMR2006/full/chapt8_eng.pdf (fig 8.1).
Plus significant transformations within Europe at this time - https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ Fig 2. This is thought to be, in part, a cultural change linked to the Enlightenment. (Certainly not a top down "mass literacy program").
Estimates vary, and I'm no expert on this subfield at all, but it seems quite likely Late Edo Japan is already through a cultural shift in literacy and education which accelerates with Meiji. This seems to be what happens under the Tokugawa period.
While the British Raj in India was certainly no help in primary education, would they be likely to stop a trend in Japan? There doesn't particularly seem to be any sign of them having done so in Sri Lanka or Burma.
We can imagine; a wide range of things are possible in an India which managed to avoid colonisation. If we're establishing a kind of best guess and baseline (with a a huge margin of variation around it), and so we can't just kind of be assuming that everything that was an advantage to growth, modernisation, etc. in somewhere like Japan was an effect of avoiding colonization.
We can't know everything about what would have happened but we can guess a few things.
That Japan would be used as a captive market for British goods.
That indigenous merchants would be discriminated against in favor of British merchants.
That Japanese people would be unable to gain meaningful high positions in the colonial regime-at best minor clerks.
That the British would promote a racist white supremacist ideology that degraded the Japanese people in favor of Orientalist paternalism.
That divide-and-conquer tactics would be used to promote division and hatred in order to more easily rule.
That the traditional education system would be neglected or ruined in favor of a system fundamentally oriented towards the needs of the colonial regime.
That infrastructure would be built for the benefit of Britain and not the Japanese.
That democracy would be suppressed in favor of autocratic rule.
That British whites would be treated as superior and preferred to the Japanese
That reactionary indigenous forces would be strengthened and used to "fossilize" Japan for stability.
And so on.
Somewhere in a 560 page text is a bit of an ask, but I do thank you for providing the source anyway.
Just searching for Leitner and literacy rates, I do come across this -
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AljOYqEnuKAC&lpg=PA285&ots=YpwztHzC2Z&dq=punjab leitner literacy rates&pg=PA285#v=onepage&q=punjab leitner literacy rates&f=false
"In 1881, the literacy rate for males was put at just 4.73 per cent. As referred to in Chapter 1, this compared badly to European estimates of the same thirty years earlier (1851) of 6 per cent in the centre of the province, which had been mostly the result of the work of pre-existing indigenous schools."
This article gives specific quotes from the book-unless you think they're outright lying which is possible.
I'm not sure what you're saying with that quote. It refers to the "center" of the province-that's rather vague. It also cuts off all female literacy which was also supposedly major in the Sikh Empire. The link in general seems to be talking about how the British conquest had a detrimental effect on the Punjab.
BTW Leitner isn't even the only criticism of British colonialism by Europeans. From British and French Ethnographies of India: Dubois and His English Commentators by Jyoti Mohan:
Dubois's work continued to be used as an ethnographic manual during the nineteenth century, but the prevailing (and changing) British concerns about their Indian empire were clearly enunciated in a series of introductions to the text. The most obvious addition Dubois himself made in his final version of the text was a lengthy chapter describing the poverty and the ills that the introduction of British industry and manufactures had wrought. Despite his admiration for the introduction of British government in India, Dubois was not willing to excuse the ravages of colonial rule completely. While blaming the Indian for his stubbornness and resistance to change, Dubois also admitted that the effects of British manufacture had been disastrous for the local economy. This was possibly the first instance of the economic critique of British colonialism in India. The abbé's forthrightness in expressing opinions about the nature of colonial rule may not have been directly responsible for the delay in publishing the second English edition, but this could not have been a recommendation either.
I'll add my 2 cents..
I think you're all focusing on the wrong aspect of the Meiji Revolution, which is the creation of a centralized, functional and modern state. Rapid modernization and industrialization was mostly a consequence of that.
I just can't see anywhere in India where such strong westernized state can quickly develop overcoming both internal strife in the subcontinent and inevitable European influence. IMHO, the best scenario for India is a stronger Mughal Empire that can slowly modernize à la Ottoman Empire and Tsarist Russia.
Mysore OTL had a modernized army and administration. From contemporary accounts, it was flourishing and prosperous. A Bengal that avoids the British conquest is also in an excellent position to modernize given its wealth and relative lack of watan noblity. And of course, the Marathas before Panipat looked like they were going to be taking over all of India.