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Comment by sachdevap | Hacker News Reader

> India got partitioned into 3 countries ...

This is a huge simplification of the history of the Indian subcontinent. The British are the architects of the new boundary lines, but they are also the architects of what is now a unified country, India. Indian subcontinent as a unified entity prior to the arrival of the British as a major colonizing force in India is a lie. India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play their little game of "divide and rule".

None of this absolves them of responsibility, but this over-simplified statement irks me, as it is a gross misrepresentation of the politics of the Indian subcontinent prior to the British.

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> India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play their little game of "divide and rule".

The fact that entire region was called Bharat escapes you I think. Just before British India was centrally organized and ruled by Mughals and Marathas so your argument does not stand.

As far as "divide and rule" is concerned, due to the vastness of India regional leadership was always delegated. British utilized this structure to their advantage.

Linking to my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18685130

Delegation is not the same as "divide and rule". There was active animosity amongst these provinces. The British played Bengal and Punjab against each other, for example. The Marathas did resist the British in their own strongholds, but they never centrally ruled an undivided India. It was a big empire nonetheless.

> The fact that entire region was called Bharat...

I don't think that important fact inherently implies a unity that was never there. The(roughly defined) region called "Europe" has never been under the control of a unitary state or empire, even in the times of the Romans.

Europe is a continent and not a country and Romans did rule almost entire continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#/media/File:Roman...

That's incorrect IMHO. The Mughals had ruled over an area greater than India's current area. The Marathas too had almost replaced Mughals after their downfall, and the British replaced Marathas. There was infighting in a few kingdoms towards the south and the east, and that's where the British gained their initial territory.

There was a concept of a united India/Hindustan/Bharat/Aryavart in Ancient times.

You can read about the disintegration of the Mughal empire after Aurangzeb here: http://www.historydiscussion.net/empires/later-mughals-and-d...

The Marathas never controlled an "undivided India" given the extent of their empire at it's peak: https://www.mapsofindia.com/history/maratha-empire.html

Not to mention, even Akbar did not have the North east and the southernmost parts of India.

The rise of the Sikh empire, and the Deccan sultanate also limited the extent of the later Mughal and Maratha kingdoms.

I did not question that these empires had their time. But the notion of undivided India as united as one under the Mughals at the time right before the British arrived is wrong. Ancient times do not affect contemporary affairs, or in this case affairs of 1750s are not affected by the Maurya dynasty's claim on some version of modern day India/Pakistan/Bangladesh.

I don't know much about the history of India. But this video shows a huge part of present day India and Pakistan being part of the Mughal empire in 1705.

Video: https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=628 (at 10:28).

Some other interesting time lines from a union of India perspective from this video:

Maurya Empire: 270 BCE (at 2:01, https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=122)

Delhi Sultanate: 1344 (at 8:44 https://youtu.be/QN41DJLQmPk?t=524)

Edit: Found another video that matches with the above video regarding Mughal Empire: https://youtu.be/wYu2jyVTSc8?t=76 (at 1:16).

The analogous list is to point to the Romans in 100AD, and Charlemagne in 800, and Napoleon in 1800, and conclude that clearly the EU has always been a united super-state.

The peaks were quite short-lived, often only one ruler's lifespan (natural or otherwise). There were long gaps between. There were many competing powers.

And that's OK! I mean, are we sure that the world in which some Aurangzeb figure won, and created a united (persian-speaking, 100% sunni) subcontinent, is a better place?

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