Would India really collapse without Pakistan?

I've read it many times before on this forum, that Pakistan is the common enemy holding all the different ethnicities, religions, cultures of India together and that without it, it'd be sure to collapse.

How true is that though? How capable is India of maintaining territorial integrity and sovereignty without Pakistan? Would it have made a difference if India was not partitioned at independence in to more than one state? Would India collapse if Pakistan somehow disappeared in the future either through disintegration or absorption by India via any means? Could a new common enemy replace Pakistan and hold India together, such as China?
 

Hendryk

Banned
India would probably need a bogeyman to keep its diverse population together. I wonder whether Iran might fit the bill? There could be Indo-Iranian competition over the satellization of Afghanistan.
 
India would probably need a bogeyman to keep its diverse population together. I wonder whether Iran might fit the bill? There could be Indo-Iranian competition over the satellization of Afghanistan.

Big country? Just to the north? Beat India in a war?
But I suppose China's inherent coolness will make the Indians incapable of seeing it as a boogeyman for too long. :D

But how diverse are we talking about? Are we talking about the Pakistan Still Part Of India TL, or the Pakistan Disintegrates Into Feuding Microstates Early On TL, the Happy Shiny Non-Threatening Includes Kashmir Pakistan TL, or the Alien Space Bats Hide Pakistan And Make People Forget It Existed TL?

Bruce
 
Are we talking about the Pakistan Still Part Of India TL, or the Pakistan Disintegrates Into Feuding Microstates Early On TL, the Happy Shiny Non-Threatening Includes Kashmir Pakistan TL, or the Alien Space Bats Hide Pakistan And Make People Forget It Existed TL?
Err, any one of them really... I wanted to explore the possibility of whether India could stay united without the presence of a common foe such as Pakistan (or if another common foe would replace Pakistan), as well as if different scenarios would yield different outcomes.
 
Err, any one of them really... I wanted to explore the possibility of whether India could stay united without the presence of a common foe such as Pakistan (or if another common foe would replace Pakistan), as well as if different scenarios would yield different outcomes.
I think Iran can fit the bill.
Pakistan is good, because it is vaguely threatening, while still being clearly less powerful then India. China is, in that regard, far more problematic.
Iran, however, would not be so very, well, equal. Of course, it would probably only work in a Pakistan(and thus East Pakistan/Bangladesh)-Remains-Indian TL, what with it being easier to have a bogeyman when you don't have another country in between you, though.

Of course, I'd say that, if we project far enough into the future, India could survive, sans bogeyman, merely on good old conservatism: no one alive remember anything then the independent India, and neither did their parents, when they were alive, so why should that change? Of course, that is quite a bit into the future!
 
India will collapse without Pakistan. Without Pakistan means that China would be the primary rival of India and as we know, China is more richer than India and China will overwhelm India if there is no Pakistan.
 
India will collapse without Pakistan. Without Pakistan means that China would be the primary rival of India and as we know, China is more richer than India and China will overwhelm India if there is no Pakistan.
Uhm... as said, it depends on when, too.
That, and did you just look at the OP, and ignore everyone else mentioning another possibility? *Will be* is a bit too strong.

China really only got richer then India because they hit first on the market economy thingy, and got all those factories staffed with cheap, cheap labour. If India had done it first, things could have been different.
You'd see far more things marked 'Made in India', and less marked 'Made in China', to begin with.
 
India is not being and never has been held together purely by the external threat posed by Pakistan. The Indian state created by Nehru was remarkably stable and well-governed. Instability was largely confined to the frontiers in Kahmir and West-Bengal.
Partition was inevitable. Mountbatten and Nehru had little choice at the time because the Muslim League had gained almost total control over all muslim members of congress and refused to cooperate in a united India.
The only region in danger of being seperated from India was Kashmir, but the situation was quickly resolved when the Maharaja gave full support to India in response to Pakistani tribal militia who were threatening to destabilise the region.
Militarily, Pakistan had never been a real threat to India until it aquired nulcear weapons. India has always enjoyed military superiority over Pakistan and always will. Also, India has had the benefit of continuous support from Europe and North America (except for the Goa crisis in 1961) since independence.
 
Eh, the Indian government is based on a British model, and has good system of governance that held together the nation through a drought, four wars, a major seperatist movement, and countless number of communist guerilla attacks in the north-east. I don't see it collapsing just because it doesn't have a bogeyman, which IMO, can always be invented.

If Pakistan didn't exist, China would have no reason to go to war with India (which would have a lot more military strength than OTL India)... too many Butterflies here.
 
Uhm... as said, it depends on when, too.
That, and did you just look at the OP, and ignore everyone else mentioning another possibility? *Will be* is a bit too strong.

China really only got richer then India because they hit first on the market economy thingy, and got all those factories staffed with cheap, cheap labour. If India had done it first, things could have been different.
You'd see far more things marked 'Made in India', and less marked 'Made in China', to begin with.

India's slowly catching up but it's taking a software rather than a hardware route.
 
Uhm... as said, it depends on when, too.
That, and did you just look at the OP, and ignore everyone else mentioning another possibility? *Will be* is a bit too strong.

China really only got richer then India because they hit first on the market economy thingy, and got all those factories staffed with cheap, cheap labour. If India had done it first, things could have been different.
You'd see far more things marked 'Made in India', and less marked 'Made in China', to begin with.

India is poor because India is more unstable than China and Chinese is more hardworking and business oriented than Indians. India is much overcrowded than China. China has higher life expectancy than India. China has many natural resources than India.
 
I would say that the reason for India's relative poverty compared to China is the governmental structure. Since the Indian constitution was created in 1950, the central Indian government in New Dehli consists of the upper and lower houses of parliament. The lower house, lead by the Prime Minister, is the executive body. But it only has control over foreign affairs, income tax, and defence. Each Indian state has its own state legislature lead by a Chief Minister. The legislature controls policing, education, health, industry and agriculture, and can overide Dehli on these matters unless the President (mostly ceremonial) uses his or her reserve powers to overule. But doing this too often would cause bitteness between Dehli and the states.
Because of this means of government, Nehru and his successors have always had a hell of a time enforcing nationwide economic reforms. India's linguistic diversity is also another major factor which will continue to hold India back.
As a nation, India has always had massive economic potential, and actually enjoys several advantages over China. Yet, as long as she continues to function like a confederacy rather than a united nation with a common purpose, she will always be restrained.
Nehru's autobiography reveals that he even considerd the merits of a temporary dictatorship over India in order to 'kick-start' the fledgling nation. This would be an interesting ATL to explore.
 
Nehru's autobiography reveals that he even considerd the merits of a temporary dictatorship over India in order to 'kick-start' the fledgling nation. This would be an interesting ATL to explore.
Sadly, that would probably have broken the blessing that India have had: mostly consistent democracy, despite being poor and having what was, in practice, a planned economy, just as the Soviet Union (India doesn't, nowadays, but it did have it).

To put it in another way: a temporary dictatorship would most likely have resulted in perpetual dictatorship, or Pakistan.

So yes, it would be an interesting TL to read!
 
Yes, I agree. A dictatorship would not be the best course for India to have taken. It would have brought about significant short-term advantages to the economy and internal unrest. But over the long term, India would have found herself isolated by the international community and more vunerable than in OTL.
I think if nobody writes a Nehru dictatorship TL in the near future, I may just write one myself. But it will require an enormous amount of research to make it plausible.
 
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