BigBlueBox
Banned
You assume that a political party must try to appeal to the entire population in order to be successful. This is false - a political party only needs 50%+1 support, and sometimes even less to gain power.
Would a United India be a good thing or a disaster?
- Thread starter kernals12
- Start date
On the one hand, the Hindutva crowd and their goals are tailor made for "X disagrees with me, but Y wants me dead, ergo I am voting X", but in terms of garden variety Theocracy Lite? I can see various MPs voting as a block on/against particular bills even if the place is centralized although any sort of coalition government would be pretty unstable.
This presumes the Hindutva crowd can manage a supermajority of nominally Hindu votes nationwide whilst avoiding everyone else moving to block them. If 'minority' participation in cabinet/government is an established tradition (and to keep Jinnah on-board it is far more likely than not) this is a real stretch.
What I mean is that, with the greater Muslim presence, the development of a more secular political climate will assist in the easing of Hindu-Muslim tensions and organizations such as the RSS will most likely have little to no influence.
Why would the addition of some more Muslims in the North-West and Bengal stem the rise of RSS ideology? It would still be popular in the so-called "Cow Belt".
Muslims would still be a 15-20% minority in the rest of India. And we can see how politically marginalized they are today despite being 170 million strong.
Zachariah
Banned
Something else that's also worth addressing, which no-one else has yet- how much less emigration might there be from this united India? How much smaller might the south Asian diaspora be than IOTL, without the waves of emigration created by the partition of the Raj? Or could it actually wind up going the other way- could the south Asian diaspora actually be even larger ITTL than it is IOTL? And what sort of butterfly effects might those vastly altered historical migration patterns generate?
Pop of Pakistan = 197 mil
Pop of Bangaldesh = 164.7 (assuming both are near 100% Muslim)
Muslim Pop of India = 201 mil
Total Muslim pop of an ATL United India = 562.7 mil
Pop of Pakistan + Bangladesh + India = roughly 1.7 billion people
562.7 mil/ 1.7 billion = around 33%
Now that is a very rough estimate, but the Muslim population in this new India would at least double OTL India's Muslim population. You cannot say that that would not have an affect on India's politics. And it isn't, as you say, "some more Muslims in the North-west and Bengal", this is completely changing the recent history of some of the most populous and affluent provinces in all of India. An unpartitioned Bengal and Punjab would have immense influence on the national politics of an ATL India, and not to mention the Muslims that left from the central provinces. Listen, I understand why a lot of people get the impression that Muslims and Hindus (specifically Indians and Pakistanis) have and always will have an undying resentment for one another, but that hatred is the result of the bloodshed and horrors of partition, several wars and territorial disputes, and seething tension over Kashmir. These things have all occurred as a result of the British doing a shit job at leaving the subcontinent in peace, and the fact that some Indian independence leaders who could not foresee what their squabbles and disagreements over Indian independence would cause. In summary, with all the economic destruction, political and social tension, and instability that partition caused, there is absolutely no way that a united India would not be better than what we have today.
Metaverse
Banned
Adding to this, well off Muslims in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan would be pro India and less religious. The only and only place where India could face a problem would be in what is today called the Cow Belt and the Pashtun tribal regions in the Northwest.
Kashmir wouldn't be an issue. In a more developed Kashmir, the Muslims wouldn't have any issue with India.
The Pakistan theory began to sprout in the Cow Belt, which continues to be communally sensitive even today, as per few sources(Maroof Raza of India). The insecurity always creeps up at district and city levels rather than state and country levels. That's how it has been in India. The rich Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, Bengal and Sindh would quickly Secularize and so would the the rich Hindu provinces. The Cow Belt would continue to be a bit sensitive for a few more years but lesser than OTL. There you have districts with various distributions and with a increased rate of poverty and overpopulation, you have people on the edge. Divided or not, that would hold true.
The partition is called by many as a messy process on the part of the British, who left India in just a few weeks as opposed to a planned decolonization and a peaceful switch of Govts that was planned over a decade. This was the effect of a bankrupt Britain post WW2.
I could see an Albania or Turkey like country if everything had gone well.
Kashmir wouldn't be an issue. In a more developed Kashmir, the Muslims wouldn't have any issue with India.
The Pakistan theory began to sprout in the Cow Belt, which continues to be communally sensitive even today, as per few sources(Maroof Raza of India). The insecurity always creeps up at district and city levels rather than state and country levels. That's how it has been in India. The rich Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, Bengal and Sindh would quickly Secularize and so would the the rich Hindu provinces. The Cow Belt would continue to be a bit sensitive for a few more years but lesser than OTL. There you have districts with various distributions and with a increased rate of poverty and overpopulation, you have people on the edge. Divided or not, that would hold true.
The partition is called by many as a messy process on the part of the British, who left India in just a few weeks as opposed to a planned decolonization and a peaceful switch of Govts that was planned over a decade. This was the effect of a bankrupt Britain post WW2.
I could see an Albania or Turkey like country if everything had gone well.
Metaverse
Banned
Even in the case of Pashtuns, only the minority of Rural/tribal people would give a trouble. Others would be proud Indians like Shah Rukh Khan(himself a Pashtun) along with Aamir Khan and Salman Khan(also Pashtuns), who grew up in a Secular family and treats all religions equal.