Ostroeuropa wrote:Impractical. Also "Reunification."?
They were never united except under British rule.
Jamal was right, Indian unity is an artificial unity, preserved by British Bayonets.
This is simply untrue; see the map of the Mughal Empire in 1707 as posted in my previous contribution to the thread.
The British East India Company and the British Empire of India was self-consciously modelled on the empire of the Mughals, which meant that there was an existing historical tradition of the overwhelming majority of the subcontinent being united under a single state.
The Great Rebellion / India Mutiny / the Uprising even attempted to unite the various factions opposing the British under Bahadur Shah II, thereby nominally restoring the Mughal state.
It would be fair to say that Indian unity had always been transient, and past periods of united imperial rule had always been followed by chaotic periods of even more transient minor states, so Indian had no longstanding tradition of united imperial rule - only brief imperial bursts uniting most but not all of the continent - but given the precedent of the Mughals, it's simply not true to state that India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were never united except under British rule.
Britain instead took advantage of one of those chaotic periods of even transient minor states in the wake of the decline of the previous empire to reunite the territories of that previous empire, plus a small extra piece of territory in the far south.
Note that this post is not an argument for or against British rule in India - merely an observation about the accuracy of the statement "They were never united except under British rule".
