British India was nothing more than several States and peoples conquered one by one and put into a single colony for administrative purposes.
Not really British India was the Mughal India, Mauryan India etc. The Indika of Greeks, Hindustan of Mughals, Hind of Persians/Arabs, Aryavarta of Buddhists and Jains... Historically this land bounded by the Mountains in the north and by the sea on the south where the great rivers flow was and is called India..
In any case whether you believe India to be a collection of nations, I believe India to be a collection of provinces where people are united on similarity of their beliefs, ideals, culture and history.
PS: The same way Pakistan's binding chord is the singular Islam, India is bound by multiple chords.
Just because the British combined the region into one for administrative purposes does not then somehow justify the argument that India was "one nation".
How do you define a nation? better how do you define nationalism?
How can you define that China or Iran or Russia is one nation then? They were all adminstrative units of their Kings or rulers.
AM, There is no doubt in the minds of people that if Muslims were not in the subcontinent, Pakistan or Bangladesh wouldn't have been created? So your justification that India is not a nation and Pakistan is, bears no weight.
If Muslims were given the state of Rajasthan they would've accepted it...
This is about secondary justification of the partition but fundamentally one must argue on ideology not convoluted secondary justifications.
Then by your logic Balochistan is a different nation from Punjab which is different from Sindh which is different from NWFP which is different from Kashmir. Pakistan is just one administrative unit lumped together where Muslims of Indian origin voted to get a nation because of religious loyalty and and whose borders were arbitrarily decided by the British. Their nationalism stems from Islam, an organised religion of Arabic origins. Pakistanis share no commonality to a large degree with other people.
"India is as much a nation as the equator". Ring a bell? Even the British realized that all they had was a hodge podge of different peoples and nations under one administrative umbrella.
Winston Churchill also made other comments,
"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
* Letter to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, as quoted in "Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways" by Vinay Lal in Times of India (15 January 2007)
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual ******* may show splendid qualities but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."
The River War, volume II pp. 24850 (1899)
It was all part of divide and rule policy and some are still prey to it. One must bow to the diabolical British mind.
It was the Indian political elite that started thinking about a "United nation", out of that British administrative unit, and this myth of a united India has been in the making ever since.
Actually it was the muslim elite which thought of a land for Indian muslims.
Gandhi's followers were largely not elite neither was Gandhi an elitist nor were revolutionaries elitist nor were there supporters.
Many Indians thought of this collection of nations aka India to be a single nation also their motherland and fought for it, nationalism is unfathomable mostly and to say that this nation existed or not is not the question.
(PS: If you happen to read Buddhist, Jain, Hindu or Sikh historical texts, they quite clearly mention various places located within the country of India.)
A section of the political elite yes - but not all. You have to remember that there was one common enemy and occupier of all the nations and peoples of the subcontinent, the British, and many went along because the supreme goal of ending occupation was being served.
all the nations? I think you are interchanging province with nation...
Pakistan, India, Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, Nepal, Sri Lanka etc. are all then a collection of nations...
Perhaps - especially as prosperity remains elusive, but each successive generation is more secure in its identity, and Pakistan's Islamic nature ( I would prefer secular) has inadvertently strengthened its identity, or rather the process of cementing its identity, as distinct and separate from India.
Pakistan's identity of today is diametrically opposite to the ideology of Tehreek-e-Pakistan.
Pakistan was to be a homeland of Indian Muslims, today Pakistanis think of themselves as a different people. Pakistan was to be a secular country, today Pakistan is an Islamic republic. etc.
Referendum in NWFP, referendum and consultative process with Sardars in Baluchistan, Sindh Assembly voted to join Pakistan, and Punjab and Bengal voted the Muslim League to power in a landslide in the elections of 1946.
So yes - the people comprising the nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh did indeed decide that they shared neither social consciousness nor nationhood with the upcoming Indian State, and chose to become part of a Pakistani State.
Lets put this way the Muslims who voted for the Muslim League felt a greater sense of loyalty to their religion and to protect their elitist tag. The idea of Hindus ruling the ruling class was unthinkable it was a massive blow to their ego.
Muslims of these provinces did not identify with a lump of land on either side of India to be distinct from India but it was supremacy of religious loyalty.
AM it is tough to convince a person who believes in a concept right down to his very bones but Pakistan was not created because Pakistan as a land was distinct from India or that Jinnah felt that India was not a nation.
My point is that your attempt to use a British administrative unit (British India) as validation for the idea of a "United India" is flawed, since the British cared nothing for the fact that all these peoples had existed for thousands of years as divided Kingdoms.
Divided Kingdoms have existed throughout history, The cultural, social, ethnic etc. of the subcontinent is largely homogenous with some variations but distinct from areas outside the subcontinent. Indians have always identified India as their motherland.
Even Italy was always a divided nation only recently unified so was Germany.
Britain was a divided nation, France was a divided nation etc.
It was a contiguous geographic area, and the British simply combined it into one unit for administrative purposes - if they had controlled Afghanistan, that too would have been included into British India.
They controlled Burma too.. why wasn't that included in India? why didn't anyone shed tears when it was separated?