Why is a unified India so implausible?

[rcduggan]

And my first question: Why is a precolonial united (or at least partially united) India so derided and implausible? The Mughals, Ghurids, Delhi, etc all united some or all of India for a long time. Also, there were many, many Indian dynasties which dominated a large part of the continent. So why could one of those states not hold together?


Also, here's a bunch of semi-related queries for the India experts on this site:

Or, why is it that the many times empires have been created in India, they all collapse within a few centuries at most. Why is this? Is there something inherently unstable about the structure of the Hindu or Buddhist empires that caused the repeated collapses? Or was it just competition from the multitude of smaller states? Also, what would it take for one of the Hindu empires to survive as long as possible?

And my first question: Why is a precolonial united (or at least partially united) India so derided and implausible? The Mughals, Ghurids, Delhi, etc all united some or all of India for a long time. Also, there were many, many Indian dynasties which dominated a large part of the continent. So why could one of those states not hold together?

Also, a few more questions:

Did the Muslim invasions of northern India help or hurt the extant dynasties? What I mean is, did the threat of foreign invasion help the rulers keep their state together, or did it make them more likely to fall apart. If the latter, would no Muslim invasion have lead to stronger northern Indian states?

That's all I can think of

 

[rcduggan]

Bump.............

 

[Dave]

The easiest way to answer is that although various empires have claimed control over India, no empire has ever truly done so. It is a fractious land, without a unified language. The Northern half has often been dominated by outside empires, and the Southern half has largely been ignored.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

The easiest way to answer is that although various empires have claimed control over India, no empire has ever truly done so. It is a fractious land, without a unified language. The Northern half has often been dominated by outside empires, and the Southern half has largely been ignored.

I don't agree with that. The Mughals lasted for centuries and ruled all of India except a teeny portion of the far South. Sure it has a lot of languages, but so did the Roman Empire, and India has a lot of geographic, economic, historical, and cultural unifying factors.

Before them the Maurya Empire covered pretty much all of India, too. And then there was the British.

 

[Jasen777]

Or, why is it that the many times empires have been created in India, they all collapse within a few centuries at most.

It doesn't seem unusual compared to the Middle East. Babylonian, then Assyrian, then a different Babylonian, then Persian, then Greek empires. All the while none of them controlled the whole area.

 

[HueyLong]

I think its a lasting unified India that is derided as implausible.

It would take a lot for one of the many cultures of India to try and completely dominate the continent- it took a power with the mindset of imperialism to do the things which made India last today.

 

[Flocculencio]

And my first question: Why is a precolonial united (or at least partially united) India so derided and implausible? The Mughals, Ghurids, Delhi, etc all united some or all of India for a long time. Also, there were many, many Indian dynasties which dominated a large part of the continent. So why could one of those states not hold together?


Also, here's a bunch of semi-related queries for the India experts on this site:

Or, why is it that the many times empires have been created in India, they all collapse within a few centuries at most. Why is this? Is there something inherently unstable about the structure of the Hindu or Buddhist empires that caused the repeated collapses? Or was it just competition from the multitude of smaller states? Also, what would it take for one of the Hindu empires to survive as long as possible?

And my first question: Why is a precolonial united (or at least partially united) India so derided and implausible? The Mughals, Ghurids, Delhi, etc all united some or all of India for a long time. Also, there were many, many Indian dynasties which dominated a large part of the continent. So why could one of those states not hold together?

Also, a few more questions:

Did the Muslim invasions of northern India help or hurt the extant dynasties? What I mean is, did the threat of foreign invasion help the rulers keep their state together, or did it make them more likely to fall apart. If the latter, would no Muslim invasion have lead to stronger northern Indian states?

That's all I can think of

OK I'm not going to answer your questions specifically, I'm just going to give an overview of the situation that might help your understanding.

Firstly, what you're doing is looking at the modern nationalist India and back-projecting. Modern India is a creation of the British- India is a subcontinent that has always been populated by diverse cultural groups with a general shared metaculture. It's useful to look at it much like Europe- many different cultures with a greater, somewhat vaguely defined "European Christian" metaculture. Thus, before the late 19th C, an Indian wouldn't be likely to identify himself as an Indian but rather as a Malayalee or a Bengali or whatever, just as a Frenchman or a Swede from the 18th C would be less likely to see himself first as an European. Thus, any one Indian state pulling off a lasting unification of India is about as likely as any one European state doing the same in Europe.

Secondly, as to the seeming fragility of Indian empires, you have to look at Indian political theory- the idea of the war of national conquest never really developed. A conqueror wouldn't absorb the conquered states into his own administration- rather, conquest was regarded as more of an imposition of vassalage. Let's say Emperor Aurangzeb conquers the Deccan. What he does is execute the most troublesome of his enemies and appoint his own picked men to the thrones of the Deccan princedoms. However, these princedoms would then remain generally administratively independent, sending tribute to Aurangzeb and levies of troops to fight in the Emperor's armies. Now this works fine as long as Aurangzeb lives. If his son, the next Emperor is a strong ruler, the system works fine too. But if his grandson turns out to be a weak ruler, the vassal states then begin to get uppity and pretty soon do whatever the hell they want until you get a situation like 18th C India where most people owed theoretical allegiance to the Emperor at Delhi but in reality acted as independent rulers. This is generally been the pattern throughout Indian history- there was never any real development of an Imperial identity- the idea was always that as part of the empire you were a vassal only for so long as the Emperor had the power to make sure you stayed a vassal.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

None of that means that a united native India was extremely unlikely. Faced with the impact of the West, somewhat different circumstances could have led to the gradual establishment of a centralized regime. If the Ottomans and Japanese could pull it off, India was way better positioned to do so in terms of resources and manpower, plus a bit of physical distance, if not the same history of central rule.

OK I'm not going to answer your questions specifically, I'm just going to give an overview of the situation that might help your understanding.

Firstly, what you're doing is looking at the modern nationalist India and back-projecting. Modern India is a creation of the British- India is a subcontinent that has always been populated by diverse cultural groups with a general shared metaculture. It's useful to look at it much like Europe- many different cultures with a greater, somewhat vaguely defined "European Christian" metaculture. Thus, before the late 19th C, an Indian wouldn't be likely to identify himself as an Indian but rather as a Malayalee or a Bengali or whatever, just as a Frenchman or a Swede from the 18th C would be less likely to see himself first as an European. Thus, any one Indian state pulling off a lasting unification of India is about as likely as any one European state doing the same in Europe.

Secondly, as to the seeming fragility of Indian empires, you have to look at Indian political theory- the idea of the war of national conquest never really developed. A conqueror wouldn't absorb the conquered states into his own administration- rather, conquest was regarded as more of an imposition of vassalage. Let's say Emperor Aurangzeb conquers the Deccan. What he does is execute the most troublesome of his enemies and appoint his own picked men to the thrones of the Deccan princedoms. However, these princedoms would then remain generally administratively independent, sending tribute to Aurangzeb and levies of troops to fight in the Emperor's armies. Now this works fine as long as Aurangzeb lives. If his son, the next Emperor is a strong ruler, the system works fine too. But if his grandson turns out to be a weak ruler, the vassal states then begin to get uppity and pretty soon do whatever the hell they want until you get a situation like 18th C India where most people owed theoretical allegiance to the Emperor at Delhi but in reality acted as independent rulers. This is generally been the pattern throughout Indian history- there was never any real development of an Imperial identity- the idea was always that as part of the empire you were a vassal only for so long as the Emperor had the power to make sure you stayed a vassal.

 

[HueyLong]

None of that means that a united native India was extremely unlikely. Faced with the impact of the West, somewhat different circumstances could have led to the gradual establishment of a centralized regime. If the Ottomans and Japanese could pull it off, India was way better positioned to do so in terms of resources and manpower, plus a bit of physical distance, if not the same history of central rule.

Japan is at the least, a false comparison. Japan had basically, one national identity for a very long time, with only a few holdouts.

And the fate of the Ottomans is well known, especially to you.

 

[sphinxeguy]

Japan is at the least, a false comparison. Japan had basically, one national identity for a very long time, with only a few holdouts.

And the fate of the Ottomans is well known, especially to you.

It's telling that the British controlled India has stayed together even without the British whereas the Ottoman Empire fell apart.

 

[Flocculencio]

None of that means that a united native India was extremely unlikely. Faced with the impact of the West, somewhat different circumstances could have led to the gradual establishment of a centralized regime. If the Ottomans and Japanese could pull it off, India was way better positioned to do so in terms of resources and manpower, plus a bit of physical distance, if not the same history of central rule.

I don't think so. My contention is still that the problem is that to an 18th C Tamil, an Englishman and, say, a Bengali are both going to be seen as nothing more than foreigners. Since there's no shared identity and not even a shared language, how are you going to build a national identity? In OTL it took a shared opposition to British rule and the common use of English among the political elites to unite the Tamil and the Bengali and the Gujurati and every other sort of Indian.

 

[Flocculencio]

It's telling that the British controlled India has stayed together even without the British whereas the Ottoman Empire fell apart.

Let's not bring the Ottoman Empire into this- I don't think it's germane to the debate.

 

[sphinxeguy]

Let's not bring the Ottoman Empire into this- I don't think it's germane to the debate.

I'm just pointing out that maybe the various cultures of India perhaps weren't as disparate as some people think. You could generalize all of India as Hindu (bad generalization, but for the sake of argument) and all of the Ottoman Empire as Muslim, but there are plenty of nations in the Middle East and only a few on the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangaladesh). Maybe the cultures were relatively similiar to one another.

 

[Flocculencio]

I'm just pointing out that maybe the various cultures of India perhaps weren't as disparate as some people think. You could generalize all of India as Hindu (bad generalization, but for the sake of argument) and all of the Ottoman Empire as Muslim, but there are plenty of nations in the Middle East and only a few on the subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangaladesh). Maybe the cultures were relatively similiar to one another.

But those nations you're referring to are modern creations (with the exception of Bhutan) of early 20th C politics. The reason there are more nations in the Middle East, incidentally, is because that's the way the former Ottoman possessions were dished out after WW1 while India was never carved up by the Western powers in that way. It was divided into India and West and East Pakistan (East Pakistan being modern Bangladesh) in the '40s because of religious concerns.

In short, modern Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi borders don't have any relevance to states in in the precolonial era. If you looked at a political map of 18th C India, it would actually look a lot like a map of 18th C Europe- a few big powers, tons of little princedoms all over the place, no one power really dominant.

The cultures certainly were similar to each other- the cultures and languages of Gujurat and Tamil Nadu are about as similar as Spain and Sweden. There is an overarching cultural commonality but tell me the chances of unifying a coherent Spanish-Swedish state in the 18th C? That's the sort of problem you face with unifying India without 100 years of colonialism and the introduction of nationalism to galvanise everyone against the occupying British.

 

[sphinxeguy]

In short, modern Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi borders don't have any relevance to states in in the precolonial era. If you looked at a political map of 18th C India, it would actually look a lot like a map of 18th C Europe- a few big powers, tons of little princedoms all over the place, no one power really dominant.

And the borders of the modernday Middle East make any more sense to the people who lived there? The borders were drawn by the Europeans in both the Middle East and the subcontinent, though the civil war thingy between Pakistan and India is wierd. I need to read up on my Indian history.

 

[Flocculencio]

And the borders of the modernday Middle East make any more sense to the people who lived there? The borders were drawn by the Europeans in both the Middle East and the subcontinent, though the civil war thingy between Pakistan and India is wierd. I need to read up on my Indian history.

Yes, you certainly do because you don't seem to understand the historical context. The difference is that the borders in the Indian subcontinent were drafted in accordance to the demands of Jinnah's Muslim League- that's the reason why India was divided.

My point, which you missed entirely, is that looking at a modern map of the subcontinent and saying "oh there are only three divisions thus the cultural differences can't have been that great" isn't a valid conclusion because said modern borders are modern constructs derived from the colonial development of nationalism. It's like looking at a map of the EU and saying "Oh that looks like a relatively stable confederation" and trying to extrapolate an overview of 18th C European history from that.

This is why modern India is such a miracle- its triumph is that it's managed to maintain a national identity for a billion people as diverse culturally as Europe is.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I don't think so. My contention is still that the problem is that to an 18th C Tamil, an Englishman and, say, a Bengali are both going to be seen as nothing more than foreigners. Since there's no shared identity and not even a shared language, how are you going to build a national identity? In OTL it took a shared opposition to British rule and the common use of English among the political elites to unite the Tamil and the Bengali and the Gujurati and every other sort of Indian.

Most had the shared experience of at least nominal Mughal overlordship, and the core areas of Mughal power are great enough to serve as the basis for a centralized and powerful state. The Ottomans had virtually no control over anything whatsoever around 1800, and the bucket of icewater in the face that was Napoleon in Egypt sent them down the path to centralization; to many notables and peoples of the empire, remaining within the empire was the lesser of evils - they could at least negotiate their place in it, rather than endure alien domination.

Admittedly this is tougher for the Mughals or anyone else, but they have some advantages as well - in much greater wealth, population, and lack of direct proximity to every single one of the Powers.

 

[Flocculencio]

Most had the shared experience of at least nominal Mughal overlordship, and the core areas of Mughal power are great enough to serve as the basis for a centralized and powerful state. The Ottomans had virtually no control over anything whatsoever around 1800, and the bucket of icewater in the face that was Napoleon in Egypt sent them down the path to centralization; to many notables and peoples of the empire, remaining within the empire was the lesser of evils - they could at least negotiate their place in it, rather than endure alien domination.

Admittedly this is tougher for the Mughals or anyone else, but they have some advantages as well - in much greater wealth, population, and lack of direct proximity to every single one of the Powers.

In response to the bolded point above, I don't think this is the case at all. Mughal leadership was so nominal that by the 18th C it was hardly even acknowledged. It certainly proved no base for rallying the people- even when you had people like the Tippoo Sultan who tried to rally his people against the invaders he certainly didn't try to use the image of the Mughals to do so. In fact, the fact that he was a descendant of the Persianised Mughal nobility worked against him- to most Indians, if I may reiterate, I think you overlook the fact the Mughals were as much a bunch of foreign overlords as the British were. To the average Indian of the time, there's not much choice between a Persianised Mughal and a Briton, both out to milk your country.

If you want to use the Mughals as a core I think you have to start much further back than the 18th C, possibly continuing the process of Indianisation that Akbar engaged in.

 

[Ridwan Asher]

Surely Pasha didn't point to the 18th century Mughals, did he ? I also see the potential of a united India under the Gurkanis. I'm sure that if it was someone who's more tolerant and/or pragmatic ascended to the Peacock throne in the place of Aurangzeb, integration of the Mughals into Indian society would haven't been halted. It was only because of Aurangzeb's fanaticism and recklessness the Mughals turned quickly into decline, away from the ongoing process to reach their truly maximum peak.

 

[Flocculencio]

Surely Pasha didn't point to the 18th century Mughals, did he ?

I may have misinterpreted his intent. If you start with your POD at Akbar or Aurangzeb then it's possible to lay the roots of a stable empire in Northern India where the Mughals maintain a centralised administration and become more Indianised. This Northern Indian state would then be a powerful adversary to colonial powers and might thus be able to extend it's influence over Southern India, creating a unified polity by the late 19th C.

Any POD after that is too late, though.