Why is India better off than Pakistan, and how can we change that?

pakistan area british ruled over only less than 80 yrs effectively , mostly garrsion towns like pindi, and some other like lahore ,lyallpur etc are well developed but from the standpoint of their military strategic importance.Karachi was a minor trading town nowhere close to bombay , it was postpartition gujraitis that rejuvinated the economy of that city

It's true that NWFP and Balochistan where rather peripheral areas, werent Sindh and Punjab highly populated, very core integral parts of the Raj?

india.Lets not forget jinnah was a difficult man to work with and muslim landlords were rooting for pak for self-serving interests but hindu nationalist and inflexible attitude of congress is no less to blame for partition. Even jaswant siggh indian FM admits to it in his book.British divide and rule worked brilliantly !
I dont think hindu nationalism as we know it now was a thing back then

Thank god for nehru and the secular leftist tendencies of congress [ here i give full marks to indians] they truly embraced minority rights despite some ugliness [like sikh uprisings ,kashmir sepratist, gujrat riots etc] overall indian treatment of minorities has been FAR BETTER than paksistans esp after 1980s.

Is there a way to change history to make Pakistan's treatment of minorities better or India's worse?

Indian religious policy includes a whole separate civil code for Muslims, meanwhile Pakistan's 2nd constitutional amendment declared the Ahmadis apostates because their end-times prophecies deviate from the Sunni standard. I'm oversimplifying, but generally religion was something that Delhi didn't want to muck around in except for purposes of keeping the peace, it wasn't interested in divide/rule. Keeping the peace, unfortunately, includes Punjab in the 80s. And though the BJP's been controversial, its religious or religion-influenced policy is for the most part framed as equalization-- taking Kashmir's privileges away because other Indian states do without, chipping away at the Muslim civil code because Hindus work on the secular civil code just fine, etc. It's kinda hypocritical (for all its former legal privileges, Kashmir still has to put up with extralegal Army-imposed burdens no other state has) but something like Pakistan's 2nd Amendment (explicitly, legally declaring religious group X to be outside the mainstream and sending militias after them) is unlikely.
I didnt know that. Wasn't Jinnah a pretty secular guy? I dont think this is something he would have wanted.
 

manav95

Banned
I think that Pakistan giving Balochistan independence and giving up the tribal parts of NWFP to Afghanistan would have been ideal. These areas are the ones with the most jihadis and separatist insurgents running around and are also areas that haven't see themselves as "Indian" for centuries. They see themselves as closer to Iranians and their languages are also more closely related to Farsi than Hindi/Urdu/Sanskrit. They just happened to be fought over by Afghans, Safavids, Mongols, Sikhs, and the British, with the latter annexing them into the British Raj. These areas also have less sedentary cultures, with many tribes involved in herding and other nomadic activities. By sticking with a core Sindh and Punjab, Pakistan is a more compact state with fewer internal problems and can focus on developing it's infrastructure as opposed to weapons and units to fight insurgents.
 
Is there a way to change history to make Pakistan's treatment of minorities better or India's worse?

India worse: Gandhi isn't assassinated, letting the RSS stay aboveground and question the INC's authority openly; it then wins the elections after India's defeat in the 1962 war in China, and goes nuts on the power the early INC attached to the PM office (and that's a lot of power, Indira built Emergency Rule on that foundation)? Spitballing here, but it sounds plausible enough. They key is generally to make the character of the Indian state shift from legal protection of minorities to legal persecution. Oh, and have a bunch of unemployed louts swell the ranks of RSS-affiliate street paramilitaries so Delhi's mean words have some oomph behind them.

Pakistan better: No Zia is a start, but the problem is way bigger than one guy. Having religion be the foundation of national unity makes religious dissenters stick out like sore thumbs. Just ask the Puritans on the Mayflower how they felt about the Anglican Church back home. Or Irish Catholics lmao

I didnt know that. Wasn't Jinnah a pretty secular guy? I dont think this is something he would have wanted.

Well he was, but the guy who inspired him and many others to action (Muhammad Iqbal) was not. Jinnah's good at negotiating with Brits and Hindus, but as an ideologue, as a definer of what Pakistan is, he pales in comparison to his contemporaries-- which should be inevitable considering he was a somewhat late addition to the Muslim League. This is why Jinnah's highest government office actually wasn't prime minister, but Governor-General-- it was Liaqat Ali Khan who became Pakistan's first head of actual government. Oh, and Jinnah died in 1948 from lung disease, one year after independence. So that sort of muted his personal influence over the nation's future trajectory too.

I think that Pakistan giving Balochistan independence and giving up the tribal parts of NWFP to Afghanistan would have been ideal. These areas are the ones with the most jihadis and separatist insurgents running around and are also areas that haven't see themselves as "Indian" for centuries.

I talked about independent Balochistan's unfeasibility before but here's an idea-- Balochistan remains British. At least for a few decades, for the amount of time it takes to develop a staple industry that pays the bills (exporting meat to the Gulf States?) and for the princely states to sort out their powers in relation to each other. Then, come the 70s, they get released as a princely federation like the United Arab Emirates or something. Kalat will probably be the Abu-Dhabi-style hegemon, it already held suzerainty over the other 3 local Baloch principalities before the Qajar-British conflicts over the region.
 
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Khanzeer

Banned
^ just to add to your post, it was the leftist secular bhutto who
1-made ahmedis nonmuslims
2-started the muslim militia/bandit business in afghanistan
3-used islam as a political weapon after the 1974 lahore OIC conference
so zia himself is not solely responsible for pakistans flirtation with being a muslim ideological state
 
Pakistan was ahead of India for most of the Post Independence Era, often by close to a full 50% higher GDP per capita. India has only overtaken Pakistan in 2010 after India’s reforms caused an explosion in growth.

I don’t think British colonialism has anything to do with this. Just have India avoid its reforms in the early 1990s or have Pakistan make its own reforms to increase growth, or both.
 
I suppose a way for pakistan to overtake india , would be if the princely state of Hyderabad either successfully gets independence, or joins pakistan.

Perhaps the Nizam purchases Portugese Goa,purchases a large amount of weapons and is able to prepare a large army for its defence. Hyderabad then becomes a a place of muslim migration and a muslim majority.

While India is unsuccessfully attempting to take Hyderabad, Pakistan then swoops in and takes Jammu & Kashmir.

Then there could be 3 pakistans formed, West, East & Central.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
I suppose a way for pakistan to overtake india , would be if the princely state of Hyderabad either successfully gets independence, or joins pakistan.

Perhaps the Nizam purchases Portugese Goa,purchases a large amount of weapons and is able to prepare a large army for its defence. Hyderabad then becomes a a place of muslim migration and a muslim majority.

While India is unsuccessfully attempting to take Hyderabad, Pakistan then swoops in and takes Jammu & Kashmir.

Then there could be 3 pakistans formed, West, East & Central.
Problem is getting the weapons in, and majority of population is hindu in Hyderabad

If muslims are mobilized paramilitary style since 1905 then I can see Muslim militias starting a civil war scenario even as early as 1942 in response to Gandhi's quit india , Muslim league supporting the british in violently quelling Congress and its hindu supporters and as a reward British carve out a much more generous pakistan or muslim states and guarantee their sovereignty
 
Problem is getting the weapons in, and majority of population is hindu in Hyderabad

If muslims are mobilized paramilitary style since 1905 then I can see Muslim militias starting a civil war scenario even as early as 1942 in response to Gandhi's quit india , Muslim league supporting the british in violently quelling Congress and its hindu supporters and as a reward British carve out a much more generous pakistan or muslim states and guarantee their sovereignty

that is why getting Goa is important, Hyderabad can then trade with the outside world.
the Nizam would have to far sighted and prepare an army.
demographics can be changed, with outflow of indians into india and an inflow of muslims from india.
 
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