WI India partitioned under cultural and religious lines.

The otl partition the British Raj was divided into Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist states, so WI they where divided by culture first then religion if needed, e.g. instead of Pakistan you get the states of Sindh, Baluchistan etc, and in areas like Punjab and Bengal where the people have the same culture but have different religion they divided into separate states eg a Sikh state. If this happened how would that effect these new countries and would the British be able to maintain a degree of influence.
 
Don't forget the Tamil, Christian, Dravidian, etc. states. Most of which would be promptly invaded by the Hindu state.
 
There was something like that done with Pakistan and India. It did not work well.
A similar debates often pops up with Africa. Nation states are something that works in Europe because they were in the making for hundred of years. Unless you go back to the old kingdoms (which had been gone for two hundred years at the time of independance for most of them, excluding Punjab, Sind and a few others).

Basically, you'd see ethnic cleansing. And ethnic cleansing on an Indian scale is not pretty
 
Religious lines are impossible to draw outside area like OTL Pakistan and Bangladesh, people were too mixed.
The cultural one could work, you could create 3-4 Dravidian states, a Marathi one, a Punjabi, a Sindi, a Kashmir Bangladeshi one. Assam,Manipuri and little brothers could also create or a decentralized but single country or multiple one. Also some territories like Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchazi could be detached to countries like Tibet or Nepal.
I don´t think the the central part of India could be divided more though.
 
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Religious lines are impossible to draw outside area like OTL Pakistan and Bangladesh, people were too mixed.
The cultural one could work, you could create 3-4 Dravidian states, a Marathi one, a Punjabi, a Sindi, a Kashmir Bangladeshi one. Assam,Manipuri and little brothers could also create or a decentralized but single country or multiple one. Also some territories like Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchazi could be detached to countries like Tibet or Nepal.
I don´t the the central part of India being divided more though.

It is certainly possible (but very in actual history, unlikely; see below) to do that, at least the part where someone in London and/or Delhi draws lines on a map. But the overwhelming odds are that it would end as a major clusterfuck. As in, humanitarian crisis on a WWII scale or worse, with warfare all over the subcontinent (most of it low-level), tens of millions refugees everywhere, messed up and contested borders, and probably internal violence and likely military rule in many of the resulting states as a consequence. In short bloodbath and a constant mess afterwards. While India is hardly paradise IOTL, trying to carve semi-homogenous nation-states out of it in 1947 would arguably make it MUCH worse. A peaceful division is hardly workable: hell, even the division of the federal states within the Indian Union IOTL has led to violence. Guess what happens if the corresponding conflicting claims are backed by sovereign states with actual armies and, in all likelyhood, a nationalistic frenzy. Think OTL's India/Pakistan is bad? That would be like ten of those.
Not that it had any significant chance to happen anyway in OTL conditions. Calls for such a thing, AFAIK, were rare and nobody whose opinion really mattered ever considered it seriously.
 
I think it could happen if the States Reorganization Act 1955 doesn't happen...

That is precisely why they set out to reorganize the states in the first place (and also, why it took so long to work out the new states).
But yes, is Delhi for some ASB attack of enduring idiocy decides to stick to Raj-inherited states forevermore, the possibility of India balkanizing at some point becomes realistic. I shudder at the thought of what charnel house would come out of that.
Pakistan is already there though, which migh counsel the nationalist leaderships in the North at least, a degree of caution.
 
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It is certainly possible (but very in actual history, unlikely; see below) to do that, at least the part where someone in London and/or Delhi draws lines on a map. But the overwhelming odds are that it would end as a major clusterfuck. As in, humanitarian crisis on a WWII scale or worse, with warfare all over the subcontinent (most of it low-level), tens of millions refugees everywhere, messed up and contested borders, and probably internal violence and likely military rule in many of the resulting states as a consequence. In short bloodbath and a constant mess afterwards. While India is hardly paradise IOTL, trying to carve semi-homogenous nation-states out of it in 1947 would arguably make it MUCH worse. A peaceful division is hardly workable: hell, even the division of the federal states within the Indian Union IOTL has led to violence. Guess what happens if the corresponding conflicting claims are backed by sovereign states with actual armies and, in all likelyhood, a nationalistic frenzy. Think OTL's India/Pakistan is bad? That would be like ten of those.
Not that it had any significant chance to happen anyway in OTL conditions. Calls for such a thing, AFAIK, were rare and nobody whose opinion really mattered ever considered it seriously.
Dividing by cultural and lingustic lines would not create problems in the scale of OTL religious division, though. Plus the division lines are more defined than the religious one, and when they are not most of the people "left" on the wrong side either belong to a very small ethnic group or could just migrate(without any real violent enforcement unlike OTL).
 
For this to be even possible, you need to either completely reverse the main communalist (Hindu/Muslim) divide on the sub-continent or marginalize it to such a degree that 'cultural' lines become more of a contested point. That alone is bordering ASB territory with a POD after 1900.
 
There was something like that done with Pakistan and India. It did not work well.
A similar debates often pops up with Africa. Nation states are something that works in Europe because they were in the making for hundred of years. Unless you go back to the old kingdoms (which had been gone for two hundred years at the time of independance for most of them, excluding Punjab, Sind and a few others).

Basically, you'd see ethnic cleansing. And ethnic cleansing on an Indian scale is not pretty

No, they weren't. Nation states formed in most of Europe successfully because of the awful ethnic cleansing at the end of the Second World War.
 
Dividing by cultural and lingustic lines would not create problems in the scale of OTL religious division, though. Plus the division lines are more defined than the religious one, and when they are not most of the people "left" on the wrong side either belong to a very small ethnic group or could just migrate(without any real violent enforcement unlike OTL).

It is true that linguistic areas are somewhat better defined than the religious makeup, but there's is no way the religious factor does not come into play anyway, and there's plenty of possibility for contested border areas/conflicting claims/areas wanting to form their own nation and being prevented to do so by bigger neighbours. I don't think it is likely to keep the nationalistic genie into the bottle in this context. Also, the resulting states would be caught in the security dilemma.
The most likely outcome remains bloodbath and/or refugee crisis in my opinion, although I admit that it could be barely possible to achieve a mostly peaceful settlement IF everything turns just right. A thin thread to walk, though...
 
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