Aryavartha wrote:China is much more diverse than being a 'monoculture'. And India is even more so. what is the point of taking 6 small european countries and saying 6 is better than one giant subcontinental country?
So is Germany, with many hundred regional varieties. Every group has its subgroups, and every culture has its subcultures. China, however, has stubbornly resisted any non-Chinese influences, while Germany, for the better or worse has not resisted non-German influences. India is a neologism politically, as far as I know, and any mentioning of "India" requires finding common Indian traits, which happens to be Hinduism. Again, regional varieties exist everywhere, so the specific difference between Rajasthan and Bengal don't play much of a role on a larger scale. Neither do the specific differences between the Rhineland and Bavaria. In both cases we're speaking about one umbrella culture, Indian (or Chinese) and German respectively. India, unlike China has imported foreign ideas, but has exported little beyond Bollywood - and I'm talking about cultural values, ideas, worldviews, not goods, technology or similar objects. As far as I know, English is spoken in India, but Marathi isn't an official language in any anglophone country.
I never claimed that six European countries are better than one giant super country. You're being overly sensitive about it, and you're deliberately interpreting it in terms of "who's better". I'm merely stating that there's six recognisably different cultures on the Rhine and only two to three on the Indus and Ganges. There's no such thing as better or worse cultures in terms of quality. The Rhine goes through more different countries/cultures than either of the paired rivers which have been mentioned in this thread. I think that means that the Rhine is simply more culturally diverse. And those six mentioned countries also have their regional varieties and differences like India or China or Albania or Palau or any other polity on the planet.