Since no nation or state existed, why should the people of a region not organize themselves into two, three or more nations?
What is a "nation"? Versus that, what is a common land, history, and culture of an entire "people"? Please remember that what makes a "nation" is its "people" ..... and not ideologies, laws, constitutions, religions, or man-made boundaries. You ask "why not", while the vast majority of the time asked "why" ..... so are you today 62 years hence in any way better informed or more qualified or having greater moral right than those who fought and died for making the nation at that time?
The answer to your question above is staring at you today ..... 3 nations ..... Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. I will try not to play the superiority card here and ask you to compare the three and honestly judge which came out better.
I will ask you instead to tell me whether you and your country, having got what you wanted then, for the purported reasons you wanted it then, can honestly introspect and judge yourselves on a scale of what your forefathers envisaged for "Pakistan" then versus the reality of pakistan today.
And NO, unlike some pakistanis here who feel we Indians owe them explanations on our Secularism and Democracy, we Indians are not asking nor expecting you to share that private process with us.
that sense of 'Indianhood' was not strong enough to counter the competing nationalism of a separate Muslim nation. And there was no 'narrow agenda of independence' amongst the smaller States because the region was caught up primarily in the two main competing ideologies - one of a United Indian nation-state out of all the disparate ethnicities, cultures and States in the region, and the other of two nation-states, with both coming achieving consensus around the demand for independence from the British.
Your earlier post said that only a small intellectual minority wanted a united India, while the vast majority simply had religious animosity covering their eyes. Yet here you say the entire "region" (I choose to call it Nation) was caught up in the struggle ..... one way or the other.
You say the sense of Indianhood paled in front of a separate Muslim nation ..... yet the statistics of those days prove the fallacy of your contention ..... ALL or nearly all Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis chose United India as did half the Muslim population of the time ..... while only half the Muslim population chose a separate Muslim nation over United India.
So in terms of popular sentiment which sentiment was stronger AM? United India or Separate Pakistan? You and me both need to face the reality that pakistan was thrust on to us ...... you and me both, in different guises ...... by whom and why, is material for an entirely different thread.
In this thread, it is an Indian author who is dragging in Pakistan, and within the context of this thread it would behoove Indians to criticize this author and others like him who refuse to introspect and cast blame where it should be, upon Indians and India, for communal and social ills, and instead scapegoat Pakistan and the ideology of Pakistan for those ills.
That is your opinion ..... which does not necessarily have to be shared by us who see things differently. I for one feel there is serious merit in what the author says and have believed so for some time now.
Cheers, Doc