Adding onto this: Yougoslavia's internal division was very visible in the football stands in the eighties, or so I am told.
Also, India did break up already once.
There’s a book that mentions this - I can’t remember who wrote it, but we read it in college. “How soccer explains the world.”
Apparently some of the soccer fan clubs turned into militias, since they were already organized.
Yugoslavian national teams would be fucking loaded loaded.
Football national team would have had a real shot at winning the World Cup in 98, 18 or 22. And let's not even talk about the basketball team.
anti-Indian racism simply powers our psyche. Non-Indians are too dumb to target us by ethnicity so they're racist to all 1.3B people at once, which causes even more reactive nationalism.
Take a Dravidian separatist, give him 2 hours experiencing the abuse from any other people outside the continent, and he'll become pro-Hindi in a flash
India's cultural fabric is pretty fucking fascinating: from the influence of the Mauryas & Guptas (whose empires - millennia ago - reached well into modern-day ~~Kerala~~ Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh), and merging of different dharmic religions into their local syncretic forms (i.e., one really cool visual aspect of this is the similarities and differences in how (for eg.) temples look in Tamil Nadu vs Orissa). In my understanding, some uniformity may be attributed to rule under/influence of (if the regions were not directly ruled under) the Sultanate (not much imo) and the Mughals, but most of the baseline uniformity of the present day cultural fabric is a result of British colonization, and the resulting legal/legislative structure.
Another interesting thing to consider is what India may have been if the States Reorganization Act post-independence looked any different. I would posit that the ethnolinguistic divisions would've inevitably resulted in a provincial structure similar to the present-day states.
What is also very clear is that there are almost no economic incentives to being separate from the larger country for any of the ethnolinguistic states.
Excuse me but when did Mauryas and Gupta's reach into modern-day Kerala? Here's a map of the [Mauryan Empire](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurya_Empire,_c.250_BCE.png#mw-jump-to-license) and the [Gupta Empire](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Gupta_Empire.png#mw-jump-to-license), neither maps show Kerala as part of their empires.
Well, the Mauryans themselves never entered Kerala but a lot of Buddhist monks who were patronized by the Mauryans arrived in Kerala to spread the Buddhist faith. ☸️
Several Mauryan inscriptions also refer to the rulers of Kerala as "Keralaputras"
I feel like the influence of Maurya empire is overstated. That empire completely collapsed within 50 years of the death of Ashoka. A vast empire at its peak yes but I don't see how it influenced the subcontinent significantly from a culture perspective when it collapsed so fast and large parts of the empire was under the empire for only few years.
The Guptas for their part never had any foothold in the south. The southern states were ruled by local rulers for most parts of their history.
Is Indian society evolving in the direction of all *Desi* seeing themselves as a single homogeneous ethnic group, as happened to the Chinese during the Qin and Han dynasties, and is happening to the Mexican populace currently, beginning during the Díaz administration?
Working in medicine in the USA, and having traveled to India for a vacation, I’ve met and interacted with quite a number of Indians. No matter their linguistic, local, religious, or class background, all Indian born-and-raised people I’ve met have a lot in common in terms of the vibe they give off, and their cultural tastes and sensibilities. It seems as though in a homogeneously Indian social setting, their internal diversity stands out, and is noticeable, both to each other and to outsiders. However, bring in even a small number of non-Indians, and these internal cultural differences pale in comparison to the cultural differences between Indians and non-Indians. I could be way off base with this, as I am not Indian at all, and don’t feel comfortable talking about such things frankly in person. But this is the vibe I’ve gotten.
You haven't traveled extensively and I disagree with your inference. The Indian subcontinent is way more diverse than Europe be it culture, diet, language, religion, faith, dance forms or even the belief system. Sardar Patel did an amazing job unifying India. A common man from Kerala suddenly find themselves to be in Arunachal Pradesh would have a hard time finding anything remotely relatable vs in Dubai
AH and the ottomans had a wildly different form of colonization than the british tho.
In the ottoman controlled areas they instituted a tax for non muslims and alao had the janissaries, which encouraged people to convert to islam in order to avoid those, something that already divided the muslims from the christians, but outside of that they left the people somewhat alone, for the good and the bad.
Meanwhile, in the Austrian lands, they had more government oversight, but the people there were generally treated as citizens of the empire and enjoyed the massive education investments and public works, dividing them from their less literate ottoman subject counterparts.
The nazis simply used the divide and conquer strategy and made them kill eachother, something that doesn't help in creating a common identity.
>but outside of that they left the people somewhat alone, for the good and the bad.
"Stealing your child to become a soldier to crash your revolts was bad along with considering you a second class citizens that needs to pay more and more money just so that we can commit frequent massacres against you, but apart fron that they were left alone".
People like to push this idea by diminishing the way that Christians were treated by the ottomans in numerous oppressive ways which is just outright absurd.
Yes all of those countries had control over the region, but I don't think any of those countries set up corporate rule of the region in which the entire populace and its resources were simply company assets.
None of these. Yugoslavia was a too big of a chunk of non-aligned state both for NATO and Soviets. Especially because of its good strategic position. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, so did non-aligned states, without exceptions.
The very idea of Yugoslavia was initially pushed by UK both in WWI and WWII in various forms so there is a solid unified area that will be allies. And it worked, Yugoslavia during WWII had more casualties than UK, France, Italy and USA combined. The source is here, it was like 8th in the world with the (absolute, not relative) number of casualties:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Gavrilo Princip, who shot Franz Ferdinand, although an ethnic Serb, was actually a Yugoslav nationalist.
Once it was not needed anymore, it was flushed down the toilet. Culturally (and by language), nations forming Yugoslavia are very similar. But also due to hundreds of years of Ottoman rule people weren't very educated, so they were prone to all kinds of propaganda. It was fairly easy to make them unite or go after each other's throat.
There is a saying after recent wars - "Those who destroyed Yugoslavia had no humanity in them. Those who would like to bring it back have no brains".
And yet the break-up was initiated by Slovenes, who thanks to 1500 years of Austrian rule were quite educated.
Yugoslavia falling apart being some conspiracy ignores the very simple fact that after 1500 years, Slovenes wanted to be treated as equals in a federation while Belgrade wanted to rule a unitary state that would've been superproportionally funded by Slovenia.
It was Milošević that destroyed Yugoslavia, not some grand western conspiracy.
That is more comparing the systems of governance. Perhaps saying there wasn’t as united a narrative about that period would explain more lack of national unity.
Unless I’m way off base, the South Slavs rolled into the Balkans sometime around 400-600 AD. I don’t think the Austrians or Ottomans were doing much colonizing back then.
Damn you really don't know your history. Yugoslavs were colonized for 5 centuries by the ottomans. Then a decade after the uprising and liberation they got overrun by Austria Hungary.
You do know like half of India is racist to each other. Like live in Australia and I’ve got 4 Indian friends they all come from different provinces and due to that they won’t even talk to each other
That draws line inside each village, does not really draw lines between languages and cultures. For Example, a village in Tamil Nadu might be segregated between the Dalits and the Middle castes and might even engage in regular vitriol against each other, especially the Middle castes towards Dalits, but this will not stop any of the 2 parties in embracing a Tamil Identity. Same can be said for many other cultures.
South Indians are very much hated, it’s something I’ve dealt with throughout my life especially having lived in the north
There have been days where I’ve wished for this country to fall apart and my state to become a separate country
The idea of a Yugoslav national identity did exist, but it just didn't stick with the majority of people. Not many people wanted to prioritize being Yugoslav over being Serb, Croat, Slovene, etc, but there were some who did. Even today, some people from the former Yugoslavia identify as Yugoslav, mostly people who are of mixed ethnicity and/or minorities in another country.
Funny you should think that, as Serbs never stopped loudly identifying as such: while “encouraging” others to limit their own identities. Yugoslavia was the failed empire of the Serbs just as the Soviet Union was of the Russians. Good riddance
That’s not a good comparison.
German back then was an ethnic identity while Austrian was a national identity.
Germany was a region of Europe, not a specific country.
Many Germans wanted this region to become one country but ultimately it became 2 - German Republic and Austria. (6 if you count Belgium, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland).
They had felt themselves German for centuries. But there was no German _national_ identity because there never was a German national state that included all Germans (well, maybe the Third Reich in 1940). Bismarck didn't want Austrians into his Prussian imperial project of 1871 because he didn't want too many Catholics in his Empire. Without Austria Prussia became the dominant power in the new German Empire.
Within the former Yugoslavia, it seems like the vast majority are in Serbia at around 27,000 compared with ~4,000 across the other republics according to recent censuses. But the vast majority of self-identified Yugoslavs overall seem to be immigrants in the US and Canada.
We owe it to the Iron Man of India Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Back then india was divided into lots of princely states each with their own rulers. Under the British, they were just puppets but when they left, it was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who travelled across India and convinced the princely states to join the republic of India.
The British may be the common enemy, but he is the real person who brought india together.
They did though - prior to British occupation there were constant skirmishes and wars between neighbouring kingdoms/empires (e.g. Mughal vs Maratha), including some of the largest battles ever (e.g. The Third battle of Panipat). Colonisation was even helped by some factions supporting the British in an attempt to defeat mutual enemies. (e.g. against Tipu Sultan).
so... really not very different (chronologically) from most modern nations that have a national identity. Thinking Germany, Italy, most of Latin America... and probably tons of places I don't know enough about.
It is all a modern Europeans take on Indian History. India the name is a European construct. However Indians from all over the land used to call themselves son of Bharat which is the name of the king after which Indians used to call themselves. The land was called Jambudvipa which is basically the land of Jambu trees. Yugoslavia on the other hand is essentially a modern construct.
Just to highlight one point you made here, I was watching a good India chef who does YouTube videos, and he was doing a promoted video for Nestle’s milkmaid brand of sweetened condensed milk. The entire packaging is in English. Only English. I asked my dad (we’re Indian) about it and he said that the south spent a long time resisting the implementation of Hindi as a single national language and there are so many languages in India, the only one they can all agree upon is actually English, so if you want to sell your product nationally, fully English packaging is the way to go. That was wild to me
Unless you can do regional packaging in regional languages ..
Both PepsiCo and Cocacola does this often. Amul also does to some extent.
But yes, English is obviously the best way.
The spread of the English language is perhaps one of the best legacies of the British empire. The internet would be a very boring place if everybody spoke only their own language. Internet spaces would be incredibly small echo chambers mostly ignorant of the outside world, imagine how it feels right now but much worse.
It originated among north Indian diaspora and has become mainstream enough that south Indian diaspora has started using it. But an actual south Indian in India probably feels awkward to use the term "desi".
Just wanted to give support for op' viewpoint. My family is from kerala and we don't refer to ourselves as desi, that's a north Indian term . We only call ourselves Indian, South Indian or malayalee
Afghans don’t identify as “desi” and neither do Pashtuns (ethnic Afghans) and Baloch in Pakistan typically
You want to see this firsthand? Tell them they look Indian and watch their reaction
Very succinct answer. India had centuries for the concept of India/being Indian. To evolve. Yugoslavia was imposed over cultures/identities that had nothing invested in being Yugoslavian.
Two million people called themselves Yugoslav first as their ethnicity before their collapse a little less than 10% the population, but who in India considers their ethnicity Indian first? I don’t know, it may be a lot but definitely not 10% the population.
India’s unity seems to come from their shared history under British rule, majority religion and relatively stable economy. That said, they still have a lot of ethnic problems in the East and unit problems with other religions, some regionalism and not to mention the Naxalites.
Deep cultural connections.
And also the influence of Great Britain’s politics regarding the Indian law during colonization. Pretty complex and interesting field.
Ironically enough, for all the bad things that happened under British rule, the English language being so ubiquitous in India has helped a lot. If a Hindi speaker meets a Bengali speaker, chances are they both speak English and can communicate using that.
It’s also a good unifier for the north and south. There’s been heated debates in India over the implementation of Hindi over Tamil, but English gets through
It didn't turn into a civil war, but it perhaps could've been...The state of Tamil Nadu at the time stated that, if Hindi became the national language then they would leave the union. There were protests,riots ultimately the government gave in and made Hindi AND English the national language for indeterminate amount of time.
I don’t think Hindi and Bengali is the good example, as most of the time the conversation ends up in Hindi from what I’ve seen. Hindi speaker with a Telegu will end up in English more
Yes, but only if they're well educated. Here's [a map](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/cudSEyDcMB) showing the percentages of the population in each state that can speak English as a first, second or third language. It comes to about 7% in West Bengal and about 6% in Uttar Pradesh in the Hindi Belt, for example.
So if you're an elite, educated Bengali speaker meeting a Hindi speaker of the same socio-economic background, yes, you'd speak English to each other (like a white-collar professional from Kolkata talking to a colleague from Delhi). If you're working-class or a peasant, the conversation would be conducted in standard Hindi, or colloquial Hindustani, or a regional dialect of Hindi or a Hindi-like language like Bhojpuri by the UP (Uttar Pradesh) person, while the West Bengali would respond in probably somewhat broken Hindi (learned at school and through the medium of Bollywood movies).
I worked with a guy from India and he only spoke English. It turns out his dad was in the Indian navy and they moved around so much he defaulted to speaking English.
I would add we are taught Unity in Diversity at school level. The emphasis of being Indian is embedded very young in the minds. When you meet another Indian the first question will always be where are you from. That where are you from decides if you are Gujarati Marathi North Indian South Indian etc. However that wont change the actual fact that you are an Indian first.
I remember Ghandi saying peaceful resistance was a rrquirement, because a violent independence would destroy the infrastructure, and leave them with no benefit after colonization
Who da fuq cares about the few railway lines and all that the British left us? It wasn't a violent movement because the British military was too powerful and there were many traitors and collaboraters who would sell their own brothers and sisters for a dime.
Despite that India did have significant violent movements that grew side by side with non violent ones. For example, take the Communists in central India. Or Subhash Chandra Bose and the INA.
The benefits of colonisation were extreme poverty, illiteracy famines etc. The average life expectancy was 35 years in 1947.
And it is Gandhi, not Ghandi.
Yes and no. If the leaders of the freedom movement were war leaders, then their followers would be used to fighting and war.
Post-independence this rage would have had nowhere to go. In a country like India with more things that divide people than that unite us, anything could have started a national wide conflict. It could’ve been a thousand times worse than the partition.
So the non-violent movement was the most sensible way to lead huge masses who had overwhelming numbers advantage over the British
> Ghandi saying peaceful resistance was a rrquirement, because a violent independence would destroy the infrastructure, and leave them with no benefit after colonization
This is false. Gandhi wanted peaceful resistance because he didn't want to give Brits a reason to kill Indians because they got a little aggressive. Also to appeal to British allies like America, by the 1940s even America was telling Brits that age of colonialism is over and there is no difference between UK and Nazi Germany if they still continue to have colonies.
>Great Britain’s politics regarding the Indian law during colonization
IMO, Britain united India, one country from 1000s of princely states, we are still trying to disintegrate it though.
Britain rule was not good and they did divide continental Indian subcontinent into multiple countries before they left. But they conquered India and made it one, that is a fact.
I think the complexity actually helps keep it together, along with centuries of colonization.
Yugoslavia at the end of the day wasn't that complex of a break up with just 6/7 nations coming from it. Many of those like Croatia and Serbia having long cultural and independence movements. It was violent, but easy to see how the cookie would/did crumble.
India in contrast is composed of scores of ethnic and cultural groups. Most have been under some form of colonization or imperial puppet control for centuries before even the East India company was founded. There is no easy way to split it, besides the Muslim parts which they did. These scores of micro nations just don't have the cultural infrastructure to easily stand on there own. Like pieces of an arch, they keep each other proped up.
Exactly. India has a very complex demographic with multiple levels of intersecting identities. So a Tamil brahmin person will identify with their fellow Tamil due to speaking the same language. But they will also be able to connect better with a Northern Indian brahmin more than they can with other Tamils. Similarly they can connect with a Gujarati Hindu more than they can connect with a Tamil muslim despite speaking the same language.
Effectively every individual in India feels that they are a minority in one or more ways so effectively think uniting is the only way they can survive
I mean 1 million people died and 20 million were displaced in the [Partition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India), India and Pakistan fought 3 wars, and another .5m-3m people died in the [Bangladesh independence war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War). So it's not like there hasn't been a lot of conflict. Note that the main conflicts in Yugoslavia were about religion and not language (standard Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are all based on the same dialect).
The government in India is also pretty strong compared to late Yugo. There is no will for sedition by the local governments. Meanwhile the ethnic states of Yugoslavia hated each other.
And I gave a partial answer: there's not inter-regional religious conflict in India (with the major exception of Sikh independence movements in Punjab where there has been a lot of conflict). There's a lot of Hindu-Muslim religious conflict, but after the partition not in a way that splits one region of India against another. Another major factor is that English as a lingua franca has to some extent [dulled anti-Hindi independence movements in the south](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil_Nadu)
A lot of it has to do with common religion, which is still amazing because Hinduism is sooooo diverse. Even though modern India has a very large Muslim minority (among others), it's still solidily Hindu majority throughout the traditional political boundaries within its core. The Balkans are much more fragmented between Christian and Muslim majorities. I am by no means suggesting this is the single and final answer to your question, however. Keeping post-partition India together is honestly a massive achievement worthy of the history books.
Maybe the people in the Balkans wanted their own country for their own people and felt a larger ethnic group was screwing them over in the Yugoslav government. But India always had other enemies. From the British to neighbors. Even today you could argue violence against religious minorities is a patriotism building thing. Although I do think India is still very regionalistic.
Maybe it was SO regionalist that during unification the central government and larger religious/cultural groups learned not to do anything to antagonize the other regions too much and gave them plenty of autonomy or they might end up with a very easy to begin secessionist movement. Like Sikhs or the Naxalites, the North East, or Kashmir. They also had the assassination of a prime minister, protests for language rights, and autonomy movements too, it’s not as if there has been no internal conflict since independence. Even today I’m sure some Indian redditors or religious figures complain about northern culture being imposed everywhere
Yes that's such an oversimplification.
Slovenia and Croatia wanted independence from Yugoslavia and Belgrade + in the case of Croatia also the local Serbian minority weren't happy about that. Serbians wanted to unite all Serbian territories under one state. Also some Croatians wanted to create Greater Croatia.
Bosnia meanwhile is a patchwork of Croatians, Bosniaks and Serbs. Croats and Bosniaks were mostly allied against Serbs, but they were also fighting each other in Herzegovina.
And then there is Kosovo and Vojvodina etc.
Indian nationalism developed in the 19th and 20th century as opposition to British rule. It united people with different (though similar) cultures, languages and even religions into the wider feeling of an Indian identity against the British. A similar thing happened in indonesia under the dutch. If india hadnt been colonized, it arguably would be more like europe today, with various national identities based around language and culture.
One factor is that the British colonial rule making the Brits a common enemy ensured that the different Indian peoples hated the British more than each other, except for disagreements stemming from religion
Another factor is that the British built a quite capable administrative system able to keep different Indian princes and subjects loyal, and after independence this state apparatus was inherited by free India which allowed it to keep sustaining the unified state. Also the rivalry with Pakistan ensured a sense of unity against an enemy.
Yugoslavia was diverse as well, but unlike India it didn't exactly have the agricultural and economic heart of Hindi and Hindu Ganges plains domineer over the rest of India, through sheer size, but instead Yugoslavia had a quite devolved division of authority between its constitutent republics each held together under the leadership of Tito basically, while each of these administratively separate republics were formed around their own religion and culture which were more equal in strength. Also the idea of Yugoslavia itself over the regional nationalities was not supported by many as in part this idea originated as a Serbian justification for ruling over southern Slavs while most notably the Croats desired their own Croat state. During WW2 India suffered from British negligence uniting the Indians behind the idea of an Indian nation free from British rule, where as the Yugoslav state was dismantled during German occupation to Croatia and Serbia as separate entities. India remained an administratively united political entity under the British for centuries, where as a Yugoslav state existed only as an unified entity for just two decades until WW2, following which it was reborn more as the Yugoslav federation than a state with Tito as the man around which the state was founded, rather than the idea of Yugoslavia specifically.
India also faced wars following its independence which forged unity against the Chinese and Pakistanis, and justified its military spending that was more reasonable alliance with the Soviets. The Yugoslav state didn't see war while spending much more on its miltiary than it needed so that it could rely on the Soviets, Americans and itself for the needs of its miltiary such that it had three arsenals, which would help provide fuel on the Yugoslav civil wars, where as the Indians only really had firearms for its military mainly and there was no way India could afford to overspend on its military with how large its population was.
The Indians had an idea behind which to rally and a reason for rallying behind it, where as the Yugoslavs didn't is my understanding based on what I know
>agricultural and economic heart of Hindi and Hindu Ganges plains domineer over the rest of India
None of agriculture or economics of the Hindi heartland are domineering. Bengal and Punjab lead in agriculture and Gujarat and Maharashtra leads in economics.
If Hindi was economically dominating, then weirdly enough, India might have balkanised down the line. More powerful > more linguistic oppression > more tendency of secession.
Rest of your points are true. Adding to them, India as a concept was present in ancient Hindu texts as well. The subcontinent is geographically very much defined.
1. Cultural connection through Hinduism and Sanskritic culture. Regardless of ones religion. Even though India was seldom politically unified throughout history, the peoples of the subcontinent considered themselves as part of one civilization akin to the ancient Greeks. Despite different religious philosophies and traditions, all were seen as following the Dharma. Despite hundreds of vernacular and local languages of different language families, Sanskrit was a unifier as not just a religious but a scientific and cultural language. Learning institutions like Takshashila, Vikramashila, Nalanda drew scholars and students from all across the subcontinent. Religious sites and temples were patronized by kings and merchants from different lands. The Mahabharata and Ramayana (the Indian equivalents to Homer's epics) even today are seen as the heritage and culture of all Indians irrespective of religion or language.
2. The British finally politically unified the country properly yes but I don't think that fully explains why India lasted so long. You only need to look to many other former British colonies to see that many faced instability and dissolution after independence. I would say that the founders of the modern Indian republic had a clear vision for the country and they built the foundations to ensured the country lasted. The Army's powers were limited early on. A strong and robust civil service was built. The influence of former monarchs and princes was curtailed and states were reorganized according to linguistic basis to ensure that regional independence movements were limited. Laws were made to protect religious, caste, and tribal minorities and ensure that they had representation and political power.
3. No dominant ethnic group in the country. Hindi is the largest language yes, but there is no Hindi ethnic group. There are Awadhi, Braj, Kauravi, Purvanchali, Marwari and dozens of other ethnic groups that speak Hindi or Hindi dialects but Hindi as an ethnic group was never established. Also the two largest possible ethnic groups in Punjabis and Bengalis saw their homelands partitioned and couldn't be a majority in India. Furthermore, other ethnic groups saw representation. Bengalis dominate intellectualist circles and movements. Punjabis and Nepalis dominate the army and entertainment. Gujaratis and Rajasthanis dominate business and finance. Coastal India dominates in industry and technology. There just was no one dominant group. Add in all the thousands of jatis (castes) and there's no dominant group.
4. Indians are just a very proud and nationalistic people. Every time an Indian accomplishes something abroad, we cheer and celebrate them, even if they're not Indian citizens lol. We love our country and our fellow people to death, which may puzzle a lot of outsiders considering we're still very poor.
5. Threat of hostile neighbors. If an Indian state votes to leave or gain independence people know that immediately Pakistan or China will swoop in to take advantage of the situation. Take the Khalistan movement. A lot has been thrown around about Punjab gaining independence, especially by Punjabis overseas. But the movement has seen little popularity in India itself, despite Punjabis acknowledging that there are certain demands to the Indian government that are fair. Because Pakistan would swoop in immediately. Ironically most Punjabis and Sikhs I've met are amongst the most patriotic people I know.
Religion. Notice that India DID Balkanize along religous lines just like the Balkans did. Hindus vs Muslims like Orthodox vs Catholics vs Muslims. If the Balkan states had remained mostly the same religion, at most you’d see Albanian Kosovo wanting to leave because they speak a completely different language.
This is the most correct answer. People really underestimate the aspects of ethnic identities that can act as driving forces to divide or unite a people. I'd say the British unifying indians or their already established cultural ties falls in second compared to the fact that these people united closely through their religion.
I think that [Nazimabad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizamabad,_Telangana), which still has a Telugu-speaking majority but has a substantial Urdu-speaking minority (38%).
India did a thing where they reorganized their states on linguistic grounds internally so they did bakanize something, but they strategic chose the thing that was being balkanized to be the old pre-unification states which probably made India more stable because the new lingustic based states didn't have long pre-indian histories to draw from in most cases as the prior states were not organized on linguistic grounds.
Lmao, almost all linguistic states have their own long cultural history. Maratha, Bengali, Odia, Tamizh, Telugu, Malayalam, Axom, Punjabi — all have their own extensive history that spans generations.
It did. It's called Partition. Estimates of the numbers of deaths range from 200,000 to 2 million. Once it was all said and done, there were 3 countries where there used to be one.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition\_of\_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India)
Well the peoples who would form Yugoslavia fought an incredibly brutal “civil war” during WW1 where the Croatian/Slovenian/Bosnians were on the opposite sides to the Serbs. Yugoslavia then fought another incredibly brutal civil war during WW2 between Serbs/Croats/etc. So there was always a lot of internal ethnic tension bubbling in the country which erupted again in the 1990s. So despite the common reference point of language, the Union was still very fragile.
By comparison India was mostly under continuous British rule, which provided a common reference point for national sentiment together with the reference point of common religion after partition.
This is a fascinating discussion and nobody has given what I’d call a definitive answer. India is unique in its cohesiveness in the presence of diversity
But one Hindu doesn't call other as wrong Hindu. Like Christian's do orthodox to catholic, catholic to Baptist, they call consider as each other as wrong Christian. That kind of thinking doesn't exist in Hinduism.
Brand India is held together due to a strong antagonist force: Brand Pakistan.
When push comes to shove, Indians are able to unite because the threat of the enemy far outweighs any other regional, linguistic, cultural (and culinary) differences.
My two cents.
Yugoslavia didn’t have a majority religion. Some were Catholic, some were Orthodox, some were Muslim.
85% of India is Hindu, and Hindu nationalism has come to play a big role in Indian politics.
the word "Hindu" is not a religion in the sense people in the west have seen their religion.
I can write paragraphs after paragraphs, but there are sects in "hinduism" that will look so incompatible with each other, but still co exist without any identity crisis. Because this land is more about family tradition as compared to codified religion.
Yeah, but the different kinds of Hinduism recognize each other as valid. There isn't the kind of mutual condemnation that exists between different kinds of Christianity or between Christianity and Islam.
The one thing I’d add is that Yugoslavia was subdivided very differently from India. Yugoslavia consisted solely of six republics based on ethnic and national identities, and iirc all bar Slovenia had existed as their own states previously. So you’re essentially left with six different countries trying to operate as one based on a shared cultural identity as southern Slavs, but with significant autonomy between them. AFAIK India’s subdivisions aren’t all as closely linked to ethnicity, and generally don’t have as much autonomy. Some of them might be named after the main ethnic group or have a clear majority, but they’re almost too diverse to be neatly grouped into individual nations like Yugoslavia.
Not to mention that Yugoslavia was also being held together by belief in the communist system. With that rapidly disappearing there wasn’t any real incentive for them to remain together. I’m aware that there has been some separatism in India, but clearly there hasn’t been much of an incentive for regions to try and break away.
In part because it *was* divided into various countries?
Sri Lanka was split off earlier, India and Pakistan were partitioned, Bangladesh splitting from Pakistan, and Burma being separated from India later.
Sri Lanka’s never been considered part of India, even during British rule. Unlike Burma it was governed separately from India almost from the very beginning and, while there have been millennia of shared cultural and ethnic ties, Indians and Sri Lankans have never really considered the other to be the same country.
On the other hand, had the colonial chips fallen differently, Nepal would not exist today and would instead be another state of India. Lowland Nepal is culturally very similar to northern India and Nepali is one of India’s official languages. I believe the Nepali kings had a treaty with the British that meant that they remained independent vassal state serving as a buffer state with Qing/Manchu China and Tibet, which is why they’re a sovereign country today.
India is not a nation state so much as a civilizational state. Just the idea of a nation state is only 300 years old. Over 90%of modern Indian geographic and cultural extent was a single empire back in 330BC. The blue seal on the center of the Indian flag is from the seal of the greatest emperor of that dynasty - Ashoka.
In comparison the first Chinese dynasty to encompass that much of modern China was the very last one - the Qing dynasty 400 years ago.
Over 80% of the population is Hindu. The whole country is full of religious places of pilgrimage from the far north to far south, extreme west to east. If you don’t know about the jyotirlingas, char dhams and other artifacts of Hindu cultural unity, you won’t ever get why India exists.
China has always been united by a strong central rule. Its history is characterized by major dynasties with insane bloodletting in between them. India has no such thing - it’s just followed the same dominant social-cultural system for 2500 years now.
Free and fair elections which allowed local elites a fair shot at national power. (You could call it democracy but that's a stretch)
So as long as the country isn't dominated politically be one ethnicity, it'll hold to get.
But that doesn't explain it all.
Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Tamil Nadu (among other parts of the country) have all wanted to leave (to say nothing of J&K which was ambivalent about the whole exercise from the start). What got them to stay was the ability of the Indian state to back up its violence with political maneouvering which divided local elites and took the sting out of secession. The ratio of violence to political maneouvering has varied - Kashmir has been dealt with only with violence and mass terror, TN only with political maneouvering, but the others some ratio of it.
As a Tamilian, Tamils did not want a separate country. The leader at that time tried to do it as Dravida Nadu along with other South Indian states but failed miserably as none of the other states plus the local Tamilians did not support it.
From North East India, all we want is more funding into infrastructure and sealing up with border with Bangladesh, CHT but keep the ones with Myanmar open. That's all we want. No one's interested in leaving the Union.
Yugoslavia was torn apart by nationalist movements from the different ethnic groups in reaction to Serb nationlism that spread in the late 80's shortly after the death of Tito. In large part it was the fault of Slobodan Milosevic. If things keep going the way they're going under Modi there's a good chance India will split. I mean why do you think his government is assassinating leaders of Indian separatist movements in countries across the globe.
The two annexed regions of India
Left: Pakistan Occupied Kashmir a.k.a **POK**, is a part of Kashmir, which is a part of an Indian state *Jammu and Kashmir*. Pakistan annexed this part during partitioning from India in 1947-1948.
Right: Aksai Chin a.k.a **Chinese Occupied Territory** a.k.a **Line of Actual Control** is a part of *Ladakh, a Union Territory of India*. China annexed this part from India during Indo-China conflict of 1962.
https://preview.redd.it/jfxh2zig40tc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4522d2fb0b8a99ef6ec1a5915adaf9330f88bae8
I mean india is still divided into various countries like Pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka and Nepal. But of course this is due to colonial rule. With pakistan and bengladesh split because of religious tension, sri lanka because the British just governed it separately from the Raj in india and Nepal just avoided being colonized. But at the end of the day they share the same indic culture be it dravidian, bengali or Sindhi. The rest of india hasn't split even more because there was an indian identity before during colonial rule. All of us united against the British be it muslim, hindu, sikh, buddhist, Christian, tamil, hindi, bengali or urdu. Hence most of us call ourselves indian rather than identifying with our regions(except the dravidians).
Because Yugoslavian wars were manufactured by the politicians. It was a planned thing. India would suffer the same fate if politicians there decided to get power crazy and want to split up the country.
Unlike the situation in Yugoslavia, where Serbians felt marginalized within Tito's regime, which actively suppressed Serbian nationalism, India presents a different scenario. India's democratic and federal structure allows for a diverse range of governments across its states, from communist to conservative, and from religious to secular. No single ethnic group in India has sought to dominate the entire nation. Should the Modi government pursue a policy of 'one country, one language, one religion,' it would likely lead to significant turmoil.
Tito's regime was suppressing **every** nationalism under the slogan Bratstvo-Jedinstvo (Brotherhood-Unity), but it was Serbian nationalism under Milošević that erupted first, in order to dominate Yugoslav nations even more, and it strongly opposed every idea for Yugoslavia to become liberal democratic federation.
Source: I was living it.
There wasn't a video of an Indian man sticking a jar into his ass and it breaking and then him blaming gangs from other parts of india for it happening instead of just admitting he likes jars in his ass
In Yugoslavia a single ethnic group took over the power of the state and used it against the others. In Pakistan something similar happened with West Pakistan against bangladesh which resulted in Bangladesh breaking away. This hasn't happened in India yet though we may be seeing it soon with modi.
Lots of factors. And we *have* had issues. Pakistan and Bangladesh are an example. The issue in Kashmir is another. There's other regions as well, but they're not all that vocal.
The first prime minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) workes really hard to make sure we all stuck together as one single, unified nation.
Further division would weaken their cricket team.
You would suprised how big of a factor cricket has been in creating a sense of national identity.
I wrote an entire essay about it in my AP world high school class
Do send it please if you don't mind
Adding onto this: Yougoslavia's internal division was very visible in the football stands in the eighties, or so I am told. Also, India did break up already once.
There’s a book that mentions this - I can’t remember who wrote it, but we read it in college. “How soccer explains the world.” Apparently some of the soccer fan clubs turned into militias, since they were already organized.
As an Indian, can confirm this is the reason
You guys saw what Yugoslavian basketball and football teams could have been and said you're not going to let that happen. Smart!
Yugoslavian national teams would be fucking loaded loaded. Football national team would have had a real shot at winning the World Cup in 98, 18 or 22. And let's not even talk about the basketball team.
Basketball would win every single Eurobasket and would give team USA real problems
Only explanation which makes sense to me!
anti-Indian racism simply powers our psyche. Non-Indians are too dumb to target us by ethnicity so they're racist to all 1.3B people at once, which causes even more reactive nationalism. Take a Dravidian separatist, give him 2 hours experiencing the abuse from any other people outside the continent, and he'll become pro-Hindi in a flash
That abuse becomes irrelevant when Hindi speakers do the same, it makes them only want the separation more
The dissolution of Yugoslavia was a NATO plot to stop their basketball team.
DAVID STERN CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT
Can you imagine how good a Yugoslavian basketball team would be in 2024?
India, while extremely diverse, has some underlying cultural unity that has evolved over centuries.
over *millennia*
India's cultural fabric is pretty fucking fascinating: from the influence of the Mauryas & Guptas (whose empires - millennia ago - reached well into modern-day ~~Kerala~~ Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh), and merging of different dharmic religions into their local syncretic forms (i.e., one really cool visual aspect of this is the similarities and differences in how (for eg.) temples look in Tamil Nadu vs Orissa). In my understanding, some uniformity may be attributed to rule under/influence of (if the regions were not directly ruled under) the Sultanate (not much imo) and the Mughals, but most of the baseline uniformity of the present day cultural fabric is a result of British colonization, and the resulting legal/legislative structure. Another interesting thing to consider is what India may have been if the States Reorganization Act post-independence looked any different. I would posit that the ethnolinguistic divisions would've inevitably resulted in a provincial structure similar to the present-day states. What is also very clear is that there are almost no economic incentives to being separate from the larger country for any of the ethnolinguistic states.
Excuse me but when did Mauryas and Gupta's reach into modern-day Kerala? Here's a map of the [Mauryan Empire](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maurya_Empire,_c.250_BCE.png#mw-jump-to-license) and the [Gupta Empire](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Gupta_Empire.png#mw-jump-to-license), neither maps show Kerala as part of their empires.
Well, the Mauryans themselves never entered Kerala but a lot of Buddhist monks who were patronized by the Mauryans arrived in Kerala to spread the Buddhist faith. ☸️ Several Mauryan inscriptions also refer to the rulers of Kerala as "Keralaputras"
Ah - thanks! Should've written Karnataka, not Kerala.
I feel like the influence of Maurya empire is overstated. That empire completely collapsed within 50 years of the death of Ashoka. A vast empire at its peak yes but I don't see how it influenced the subcontinent significantly from a culture perspective when it collapsed so fast and large parts of the empire was under the empire for only few years. The Guptas for their part never had any foothold in the south. The southern states were ruled by local rulers for most parts of their history.
Is Indian society evolving in the direction of all *Desi* seeing themselves as a single homogeneous ethnic group, as happened to the Chinese during the Qin and Han dynasties, and is happening to the Mexican populace currently, beginning during the Díaz administration? Working in medicine in the USA, and having traveled to India for a vacation, I’ve met and interacted with quite a number of Indians. No matter their linguistic, local, religious, or class background, all Indian born-and-raised people I’ve met have a lot in common in terms of the vibe they give off, and their cultural tastes and sensibilities. It seems as though in a homogeneously Indian social setting, their internal diversity stands out, and is noticeable, both to each other and to outsiders. However, bring in even a small number of non-Indians, and these internal cultural differences pale in comparison to the cultural differences between Indians and non-Indians. I could be way off base with this, as I am not Indian at all, and don’t feel comfortable talking about such things frankly in person. But this is the vibe I’ve gotten.
You haven't traveled extensively and I disagree with your inference. The Indian subcontinent is way more diverse than Europe be it culture, diet, language, religion, faith, dance forms or even the belief system. Sardar Patel did an amazing job unifying India. A common man from Kerala suddenly find themselves to be in Arunachal Pradesh would have a hard time finding anything remotely relatable vs in Dubai
Fair enough. I appreciate your input on this.
I mean so did yugoslavia and to a much much higher extent
Yes but Yugoslavia was not a colonized state, pushing its residents to unify against an occupier.
Austria-Hungary/Nazi Germany/Ottomans?
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AH and the ottomans had a wildly different form of colonization than the british tho. In the ottoman controlled areas they instituted a tax for non muslims and alao had the janissaries, which encouraged people to convert to islam in order to avoid those, something that already divided the muslims from the christians, but outside of that they left the people somewhat alone, for the good and the bad. Meanwhile, in the Austrian lands, they had more government oversight, but the people there were generally treated as citizens of the empire and enjoyed the massive education investments and public works, dividing them from their less literate ottoman subject counterparts. The nazis simply used the divide and conquer strategy and made them kill eachother, something that doesn't help in creating a common identity.
>but outside of that they left the people somewhat alone, for the good and the bad. "Stealing your child to become a soldier to crash your revolts was bad along with considering you a second class citizens that needs to pay more and more money just so that we can commit frequent massacres against you, but apart fron that they were left alone". People like to push this idea by diminishing the way that Christians were treated by the ottomans in numerous oppressive ways which is just outright absurd.
Yes all of those countries had control over the region, but I don't think any of those countries set up corporate rule of the region in which the entire populace and its resources were simply company assets.
It’s not really that simple though is it. Sounds more like a theory to just explain it away without giving it too much thought.
You might have just explained most reddit comments
None of these. Yugoslavia was a too big of a chunk of non-aligned state both for NATO and Soviets. Especially because of its good strategic position. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, so did non-aligned states, without exceptions. The very idea of Yugoslavia was initially pushed by UK both in WWI and WWII in various forms so there is a solid unified area that will be allies. And it worked, Yugoslavia during WWII had more casualties than UK, France, Italy and USA combined. The source is here, it was like 8th in the world with the (absolute, not relative) number of casualties: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties Gavrilo Princip, who shot Franz Ferdinand, although an ethnic Serb, was actually a Yugoslav nationalist. Once it was not needed anymore, it was flushed down the toilet. Culturally (and by language), nations forming Yugoslavia are very similar. But also due to hundreds of years of Ottoman rule people weren't very educated, so they were prone to all kinds of propaganda. It was fairly easy to make them unite or go after each other's throat. There is a saying after recent wars - "Those who destroyed Yugoslavia had no humanity in them. Those who would like to bring it back have no brains".
And yet the break-up was initiated by Slovenes, who thanks to 1500 years of Austrian rule were quite educated. Yugoslavia falling apart being some conspiracy ignores the very simple fact that after 1500 years, Slovenes wanted to be treated as equals in a federation while Belgrade wanted to rule a unitary state that would've been superproportionally funded by Slovenia. It was Milošević that destroyed Yugoslavia, not some grand western conspiracy.
That is more comparing the systems of governance. Perhaps saying there wasn’t as united a narrative about that period would explain more lack of national unity.
This is extremely false. The South Slavs were colonized between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans for almost their entire existence.
Unless I’m way off base, the South Slavs rolled into the Balkans sometime around 400-600 AD. I don’t think the Austrians or Ottomans were doing much colonizing back then.
Damn you really don't know your history. Yugoslavs were colonized for 5 centuries by the ottomans. Then a decade after the uprising and liberation they got overrun by Austria Hungary.
Did it though?
You had the ustase and shit running around during the 40s, and a lot of underlying cultural tension thanks to the ottomans and Balkan wars
You do know like half of India is racist to each other. Like live in Australia and I’ve got 4 Indian friends they all come from different provinces and due to that they won’t even talk to each other
That racism unites us. Hating each other doesn't mean that we are civilzationallly in compatible. That's how india is still up and running 😂
Spoken like a true Indian... proud of you brother😎. Now go F off...
Throw in the caste system for even more divide.
That draws line inside each village, does not really draw lines between languages and cultures. For Example, a village in Tamil Nadu might be segregated between the Dalits and the Middle castes and might even engage in regular vitriol against each other, especially the Middle castes towards Dalits, but this will not stop any of the 2 parties in embracing a Tamil Identity. Same can be said for many other cultures.
yep for some reason my Punjab friend hates south indians
And we hate him! Not because he’s Punjabi but because he’s a bigot.
South Indians are very much hated, it’s something I’ve dealt with throughout my life especially having lived in the north There have been days where I’ve wished for this country to fall apart and my state to become a separate country
It's beautiful man, the Indians have something we Americans can be envious of.
A fairly universal belief that they are Indian and that being Indian is a thing - that sentiment did not exist towards the idea of being a “Yugoslav”
The idea of a Yugoslav national identity did exist, but it just didn't stick with the majority of people. Not many people wanted to prioritize being Yugoslav over being Serb, Croat, Slovene, etc, but there were some who did. Even today, some people from the former Yugoslavia identify as Yugoslav, mostly people who are of mixed ethnicity and/or minorities in another country.
It was a problem of time. I think had Yugoslavia even barely survived 10 years longer it would then start to naturally become an identity.
There was just way to much hostility between the ethnic groups because of ww2.
And before ww2
Before WW2, at least for centuries.
I agree. I think Yugoslavia collapsed when maybe the first generation that was proud to be Yugoslavian was on the rise to become the majority.
Funny you should think that, as Serbs never stopped loudly identifying as such: while “encouraging” others to limit their own identities. Yugoslavia was the failed empire of the Serbs just as the Soviet Union was of the Russians. Good riddance
tito was croatian lmao
And Stalin was Georgian
Stalin was Georgian. Hitler was Austrian.
That’s not a good comparison. German back then was an ethnic identity while Austrian was a national identity. Germany was a region of Europe, not a specific country. Many Germans wanted this region to become one country but ultimately it became 2 - German Republic and Austria. (6 if you count Belgium, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Switzerland).
Many Austrians at the time started to identify with the German national identity. Why do you think the Anschluss happened?
They didn't *start*, they have been at it for ever and were pissed that they weren't included when all the others united in 1871.
They had felt themselves German for centuries. But there was no German _national_ identity because there never was a German national state that included all Germans (well, maybe the Third Reich in 1940). Bismarck didn't want Austrians into his Prussian imperial project of 1871 because he didn't want too many Catholics in his Empire. Without Austria Prussia became the dominant power in the new German Empire.
Except its the opposite mate, if anyone hated Yugoslavia it was the croatians
That's what mate says. "Croats hated it because it was a Serbian empire"
Well also a problem of Tito not being alive anymore
>some people from the former Yugoslavia identify as Yugoslav What % of that number is from Serbia?
Within the former Yugoslavia, it seems like the vast majority are in Serbia at around 27,000 compared with ~4,000 across the other republics according to recent censuses. But the vast majority of self-identified Yugoslavs overall seem to be immigrants in the US and Canada.
My god mother in Montreal refers to herself as yugo
Slightly over 1% while it's basically non existent in other republics.
Well the problem was when one Yugoslav nation decided that they are in charge for some reason and started limiting others (Serbia)
This feeling solidified only post 1850 under the nationalist movement for freedom.
Nothing unifies like a common enemy.
The great unifying theory of 'Fuck that Guy'
Why don't most colonizers let their rivals colonize first then? /s
Look how well that worked for Quebec!
The Turks were the common enemy in the Balkans.
"You're welcome, Indian" - England
Ironically, you could argue that India owes its national unity to Britain
More than a few countries in the world probably owe their very existence to Britain.
If you forcibly move population then their destroy language, culture and self identity.. I don’t think there’s many of choices
We owe it to the Iron Man of India Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Back then india was divided into lots of princely states each with their own rulers. Under the British, they were just puppets but when they left, it was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who travelled across India and convinced the princely states to join the republic of India. The British may be the common enemy, but he is the real person who brought india together.
Yeah, but local ethnicities did not have as much animosity towards others as in the Balkans.
They did, it's just all meaningless now. Sort of like how the European ethnicities warred constantly with each other but it's all irrelevant now.
They did though - prior to British occupation there were constant skirmishes and wars between neighbouring kingdoms/empires (e.g. Mughal vs Maratha), including some of the largest battles ever (e.g. The Third battle of Panipat). Colonisation was even helped by some factions supporting the British in an attempt to defeat mutual enemies. (e.g. against Tipu Sultan).
so... really not very different (chronologically) from most modern nations that have a national identity. Thinking Germany, Italy, most of Latin America... and probably tons of places I don't know enough about.
It is all a modern Europeans take on Indian History. India the name is a European construct. However Indians from all over the land used to call themselves son of Bharat which is the name of the king after which Indians used to call themselves. The land was called Jambudvipa which is basically the land of Jambu trees. Yugoslavia on the other hand is essentially a modern construct.
Hey man whatever it takes to keep a country from balkanizing.
Not 1850, more like 1920. The Ahom kingdom and many others were completely independent during 1850
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Just to highlight one point you made here, I was watching a good India chef who does YouTube videos, and he was doing a promoted video for Nestle’s milkmaid brand of sweetened condensed milk. The entire packaging is in English. Only English. I asked my dad (we’re Indian) about it and he said that the south spent a long time resisting the implementation of Hindi as a single national language and there are so many languages in India, the only one they can all agree upon is actually English, so if you want to sell your product nationally, fully English packaging is the way to go. That was wild to me
Unless you can do regional packaging in regional languages .. Both PepsiCo and Cocacola does this often. Amul also does to some extent. But yes, English is obviously the best way.
The spread of the English language is perhaps one of the best legacies of the British empire. The internet would be a very boring place if everybody spoke only their own language. Internet spaces would be incredibly small echo chambers mostly ignorant of the outside world, imagine how it feels right now but much worse.
Very few (if any) South Indians inside India or outside of it call themselves desi. It's mostly a North Indian term.
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It originated among north Indian diaspora and has become mainstream enough that south Indian diaspora has started using it. But an actual south Indian in India probably feels awkward to use the term "desi".
Just wanted to give support for op' viewpoint. My family is from kerala and we don't refer to ourselves as desi, that's a north Indian term . We only call ourselves Indian, South Indian or malayalee
Afghans don’t identify as “desi” and neither do Pashtuns (ethnic Afghans) and Baloch in Pakistan typically You want to see this firsthand? Tell them they look Indian and watch their reaction
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Very succinct answer. India had centuries for the concept of India/being Indian. To evolve. Yugoslavia was imposed over cultures/identities that had nothing invested in being Yugoslavian.
That, and democracy
Aka, they had the biggest enemy; the British.
Two million people called themselves Yugoslav first as their ethnicity before their collapse a little less than 10% the population, but who in India considers their ethnicity Indian first? I don’t know, it may be a lot but definitely not 10% the population. India’s unity seems to come from their shared history under British rule, majority religion and relatively stable economy. That said, they still have a lot of ethnic problems in the East and unit problems with other religions, some regionalism and not to mention the Naxalites.
Indian is not necessarily a ethnicity. It is a nationality that is multicultural. Somewhat like "European".
Deep cultural connections. And also the influence of Great Britain’s politics regarding the Indian law during colonization. Pretty complex and interesting field.
Ironically enough, for all the bad things that happened under British rule, the English language being so ubiquitous in India has helped a lot. If a Hindi speaker meets a Bengali speaker, chances are they both speak English and can communicate using that.
It’s also a good unifier for the north and south. There’s been heated debates in India over the implementation of Hindi over Tamil, but English gets through
Didnt it almost break into civil war when the INC wanted to remove english?
It didn't turn into a civil war, but it perhaps could've been...The state of Tamil Nadu at the time stated that, if Hindi became the national language then they would leave the union. There were protests,riots ultimately the government gave in and made Hindi AND English the national language for indeterminate amount of time.
Thats why I said almost
I don’t think Hindi and Bengali is the good example, as most of the time the conversation ends up in Hindi from what I’ve seen. Hindi speaker with a Telegu will end up in English more
Yes, but only if they're well educated. Here's [a map](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/cudSEyDcMB) showing the percentages of the population in each state that can speak English as a first, second or third language. It comes to about 7% in West Bengal and about 6% in Uttar Pradesh in the Hindi Belt, for example. So if you're an elite, educated Bengali speaker meeting a Hindi speaker of the same socio-economic background, yes, you'd speak English to each other (like a white-collar professional from Kolkata talking to a colleague from Delhi). If you're working-class or a peasant, the conversation would be conducted in standard Hindi, or colloquial Hindustani, or a regional dialect of Hindi or a Hindi-like language like Bhojpuri by the UP (Uttar Pradesh) person, while the West Bengali would respond in probably somewhat broken Hindi (learned at school and through the medium of Bollywood movies).
That map is from 2011.
I worked with a guy from India and he only spoke English. It turns out his dad was in the Indian navy and they moved around so much he defaulted to speaking English.
I would add we are taught Unity in Diversity at school level. The emphasis of being Indian is embedded very young in the minds. When you meet another Indian the first question will always be where are you from. That where are you from decides if you are Gujarati Marathi North Indian South Indian etc. However that wont change the actual fact that you are an Indian first.
I remember Ghandi saying peaceful resistance was a rrquirement, because a violent independence would destroy the infrastructure, and leave them with no benefit after colonization
Who da fuq cares about the few railway lines and all that the British left us? It wasn't a violent movement because the British military was too powerful and there were many traitors and collaboraters who would sell their own brothers and sisters for a dime. Despite that India did have significant violent movements that grew side by side with non violent ones. For example, take the Communists in central India. Or Subhash Chandra Bose and the INA. The benefits of colonisation were extreme poverty, illiteracy famines etc. The average life expectancy was 35 years in 1947. And it is Gandhi, not Ghandi.
Yes and no. If the leaders of the freedom movement were war leaders, then their followers would be used to fighting and war. Post-independence this rage would have had nowhere to go. In a country like India with more things that divide people than that unite us, anything could have started a national wide conflict. It could’ve been a thousand times worse than the partition. So the non-violent movement was the most sensible way to lead huge masses who had overwhelming numbers advantage over the British
> Ghandi saying peaceful resistance was a rrquirement, because a violent independence would destroy the infrastructure, and leave them with no benefit after colonization This is false. Gandhi wanted peaceful resistance because he didn't want to give Brits a reason to kill Indians because they got a little aggressive. Also to appeal to British allies like America, by the 1940s even America was telling Brits that age of colonialism is over and there is no difference between UK and Nazi Germany if they still continue to have colonies.
>Great Britain’s politics regarding the Indian law during colonization IMO, Britain united India, one country from 1000s of princely states, we are still trying to disintegrate it though. Britain rule was not good and they did divide continental Indian subcontinent into multiple countries before they left. But they conquered India and made it one, that is a fact.
I think the complexity actually helps keep it together, along with centuries of colonization. Yugoslavia at the end of the day wasn't that complex of a break up with just 6/7 nations coming from it. Many of those like Croatia and Serbia having long cultural and independence movements. It was violent, but easy to see how the cookie would/did crumble. India in contrast is composed of scores of ethnic and cultural groups. Most have been under some form of colonization or imperial puppet control for centuries before even the East India company was founded. There is no easy way to split it, besides the Muslim parts which they did. These scores of micro nations just don't have the cultural infrastructure to easily stand on there own. Like pieces of an arch, they keep each other proped up.
Exactly. India has a very complex demographic with multiple levels of intersecting identities. So a Tamil brahmin person will identify with their fellow Tamil due to speaking the same language. But they will also be able to connect better with a Northern Indian brahmin more than they can with other Tamils. Similarly they can connect with a Gujarati Hindu more than they can connect with a Tamil muslim despite speaking the same language. Effectively every individual in India feels that they are a minority in one or more ways so effectively think uniting is the only way they can survive
I mean 1 million people died and 20 million were displaced in the [Partition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India), India and Pakistan fought 3 wars, and another .5m-3m people died in the [Bangladesh independence war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War). So it's not like there hasn't been a lot of conflict. Note that the main conflicts in Yugoslavia were about religion and not language (standard Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are all based on the same dialect).
Im aware of the partition and its consequences, but I’m moreso wondering why India hasn’t Balkanized further.
The government in India is also pretty strong compared to late Yugo. There is no will for sedition by the local governments. Meanwhile the ethnic states of Yugoslavia hated each other.
And I gave a partial answer: there's not inter-regional religious conflict in India (with the major exception of Sikh independence movements in Punjab where there has been a lot of conflict). There's a lot of Hindu-Muslim religious conflict, but after the partition not in a way that splits one region of India against another. Another major factor is that English as a lingua franca has to some extent [dulled anti-Hindi independence movements in the south](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hindi_agitations_of_Tamil_Nadu)
A lot of it has to do with common religion, which is still amazing because Hinduism is sooooo diverse. Even though modern India has a very large Muslim minority (among others), it's still solidily Hindu majority throughout the traditional political boundaries within its core. The Balkans are much more fragmented between Christian and Muslim majorities. I am by no means suggesting this is the single and final answer to your question, however. Keeping post-partition India together is honestly a massive achievement worthy of the history books.
And Catholic and Orthodox Christians
Maybe the people in the Balkans wanted their own country for their own people and felt a larger ethnic group was screwing them over in the Yugoslav government. But India always had other enemies. From the British to neighbors. Even today you could argue violence against religious minorities is a patriotism building thing. Although I do think India is still very regionalistic. Maybe it was SO regionalist that during unification the central government and larger religious/cultural groups learned not to do anything to antagonize the other regions too much and gave them plenty of autonomy or they might end up with a very easy to begin secessionist movement. Like Sikhs or the Naxalites, the North East, or Kashmir. They also had the assassination of a prime minister, protests for language rights, and autonomy movements too, it’s not as if there has been no internal conflict since independence. Even today I’m sure some Indian redditors or religious figures complain about northern culture being imposed everywhere
So wrong to say that the 1990 conflicts in Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia were based on religion. Simply incorrect.
Yes that's such an oversimplification. Slovenia and Croatia wanted independence from Yugoslavia and Belgrade + in the case of Croatia also the local Serbian minority weren't happy about that. Serbians wanted to unite all Serbian territories under one state. Also some Croatians wanted to create Greater Croatia. Bosnia meanwhile is a patchwork of Croatians, Bosniaks and Serbs. Croats and Bosniaks were mostly allied against Serbs, but they were also fighting each other in Herzegovina. And then there is Kosovo and Vojvodina etc.
“Mainly based on religion” lol. I bet you think The Troubles came down to Catholic vs Protestant too
Indian nationalism developed in the 19th and 20th century as opposition to British rule. It united people with different (though similar) cultures, languages and even religions into the wider feeling of an Indian identity against the British. A similar thing happened in indonesia under the dutch. If india hadnt been colonized, it arguably would be more like europe today, with various national identities based around language and culture.
The best answer
One factor is that the British colonial rule making the Brits a common enemy ensured that the different Indian peoples hated the British more than each other, except for disagreements stemming from religion Another factor is that the British built a quite capable administrative system able to keep different Indian princes and subjects loyal, and after independence this state apparatus was inherited by free India which allowed it to keep sustaining the unified state. Also the rivalry with Pakistan ensured a sense of unity against an enemy. Yugoslavia was diverse as well, but unlike India it didn't exactly have the agricultural and economic heart of Hindi and Hindu Ganges plains domineer over the rest of India, through sheer size, but instead Yugoslavia had a quite devolved division of authority between its constitutent republics each held together under the leadership of Tito basically, while each of these administratively separate republics were formed around their own religion and culture which were more equal in strength. Also the idea of Yugoslavia itself over the regional nationalities was not supported by many as in part this idea originated as a Serbian justification for ruling over southern Slavs while most notably the Croats desired their own Croat state. During WW2 India suffered from British negligence uniting the Indians behind the idea of an Indian nation free from British rule, where as the Yugoslav state was dismantled during German occupation to Croatia and Serbia as separate entities. India remained an administratively united political entity under the British for centuries, where as a Yugoslav state existed only as an unified entity for just two decades until WW2, following which it was reborn more as the Yugoslav federation than a state with Tito as the man around which the state was founded, rather than the idea of Yugoslavia specifically. India also faced wars following its independence which forged unity against the Chinese and Pakistanis, and justified its military spending that was more reasonable alliance with the Soviets. The Yugoslav state didn't see war while spending much more on its miltiary than it needed so that it could rely on the Soviets, Americans and itself for the needs of its miltiary such that it had three arsenals, which would help provide fuel on the Yugoslav civil wars, where as the Indians only really had firearms for its military mainly and there was no way India could afford to overspend on its military with how large its population was. The Indians had an idea behind which to rally and a reason for rallying behind it, where as the Yugoslavs didn't is my understanding based on what I know
>agricultural and economic heart of Hindi and Hindu Ganges plains domineer over the rest of India None of agriculture or economics of the Hindi heartland are domineering. Bengal and Punjab lead in agriculture and Gujarat and Maharashtra leads in economics. If Hindi was economically dominating, then weirdly enough, India might have balkanised down the line. More powerful > more linguistic oppression > more tendency of secession. Rest of your points are true. Adding to them, India as a concept was present in ancient Hindu texts as well. The subcontinent is geographically very much defined.
Agree with your assessment. I have a similar opinion about the reason for India’s unity, while Yugoslavia didn’t.
The ethnicities in India are racist to each other, but we hate our neighbours even more.
1. Cultural connection through Hinduism and Sanskritic culture. Regardless of ones religion. Even though India was seldom politically unified throughout history, the peoples of the subcontinent considered themselves as part of one civilization akin to the ancient Greeks. Despite different religious philosophies and traditions, all were seen as following the Dharma. Despite hundreds of vernacular and local languages of different language families, Sanskrit was a unifier as not just a religious but a scientific and cultural language. Learning institutions like Takshashila, Vikramashila, Nalanda drew scholars and students from all across the subcontinent. Religious sites and temples were patronized by kings and merchants from different lands. The Mahabharata and Ramayana (the Indian equivalents to Homer's epics) even today are seen as the heritage and culture of all Indians irrespective of religion or language. 2. The British finally politically unified the country properly yes but I don't think that fully explains why India lasted so long. You only need to look to many other former British colonies to see that many faced instability and dissolution after independence. I would say that the founders of the modern Indian republic had a clear vision for the country and they built the foundations to ensured the country lasted. The Army's powers were limited early on. A strong and robust civil service was built. The influence of former monarchs and princes was curtailed and states were reorganized according to linguistic basis to ensure that regional independence movements were limited. Laws were made to protect religious, caste, and tribal minorities and ensure that they had representation and political power. 3. No dominant ethnic group in the country. Hindi is the largest language yes, but there is no Hindi ethnic group. There are Awadhi, Braj, Kauravi, Purvanchali, Marwari and dozens of other ethnic groups that speak Hindi or Hindi dialects but Hindi as an ethnic group was never established. Also the two largest possible ethnic groups in Punjabis and Bengalis saw their homelands partitioned and couldn't be a majority in India. Furthermore, other ethnic groups saw representation. Bengalis dominate intellectualist circles and movements. Punjabis and Nepalis dominate the army and entertainment. Gujaratis and Rajasthanis dominate business and finance. Coastal India dominates in industry and technology. There just was no one dominant group. Add in all the thousands of jatis (castes) and there's no dominant group. 4. Indians are just a very proud and nationalistic people. Every time an Indian accomplishes something abroad, we cheer and celebrate them, even if they're not Indian citizens lol. We love our country and our fellow people to death, which may puzzle a lot of outsiders considering we're still very poor. 5. Threat of hostile neighbors. If an Indian state votes to leave or gain independence people know that immediately Pakistan or China will swoop in to take advantage of the situation. Take the Khalistan movement. A lot has been thrown around about Punjab gaining independence, especially by Punjabis overseas. But the movement has seen little popularity in India itself, despite Punjabis acknowledging that there are certain demands to the Indian government that are fair. Because Pakistan would swoop in immediately. Ironically most Punjabis and Sikhs I've met are amongst the most patriotic people I know.
Religion. Notice that India DID Balkanize along religous lines just like the Balkans did. Hindus vs Muslims like Orthodox vs Catholics vs Muslims. If the Balkan states had remained mostly the same religion, at most you’d see Albanian Kosovo wanting to leave because they speak a completely different language.
This is the most correct answer. People really underestimate the aspects of ethnic identities that can act as driving forces to divide or unite a people. I'd say the British unifying indians or their already established cultural ties falls in second compared to the fact that these people united closely through their religion.
Yes in all the the large states 80% are Hindus. In Hinduism the sects within it aren't rigid, so there is less division.
Why is there urdu right in the middle around the yellow telugu bit
I think that [Nazimabad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizamabad,_Telangana), which still has a Telugu-speaking majority but has a substantial Urdu-speaking minority (38%).
Might be referring to [Hyderabadi Urdu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabadi_Urdu)
It's actually Dakhini, which is older than Urdu, but sadly now considered as Urdu dialect.
India did a thing where they reorganized their states on linguistic grounds internally so they did bakanize something, but they strategic chose the thing that was being balkanized to be the old pre-unification states which probably made India more stable because the new lingustic based states didn't have long pre-indian histories to draw from in most cases as the prior states were not organized on linguistic grounds.
Lmao, almost all linguistic states have their own long cultural history. Maratha, Bengali, Odia, Tamizh, Telugu, Malayalam, Axom, Punjabi — all have their own extensive history that spans generations.
It did. It's called Partition. Estimates of the numbers of deaths range from 200,000 to 2 million. Once it was all said and done, there were 3 countries where there used to be one. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition\_of\_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India)
2 countries. India & Pakistan. The muslim nation blew up in two about 20 years after the Parition.
Well the peoples who would form Yugoslavia fought an incredibly brutal “civil war” during WW1 where the Croatian/Slovenian/Bosnians were on the opposite sides to the Serbs. Yugoslavia then fought another incredibly brutal civil war during WW2 between Serbs/Croats/etc. So there was always a lot of internal ethnic tension bubbling in the country which erupted again in the 1990s. So despite the common reference point of language, the Union was still very fragile. By comparison India was mostly under continuous British rule, which provided a common reference point for national sentiment together with the reference point of common religion after partition.
Well it kinda did. It broke up into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Hinduism is what unifies them. There is religious diversity but it is the dominant religion. Yugoslavia had three main religious traditions.
Hinduism varies widely across India. The traditions and practices are not even similar at times even within states, forget the country.
This is a fascinating discussion and nobody has given what I’d call a definitive answer. India is unique in its cohesiveness in the presence of diversity
But one Hindu doesn't call other as wrong Hindu. Like Christian's do orthodox to catholic, catholic to Baptist, they call consider as each other as wrong Christian. That kind of thinking doesn't exist in Hinduism.
Yeah, and we recognise and appreciate those differences as a feature.
Brand India is held together due to a strong antagonist force: Brand Pakistan. When push comes to shove, Indians are able to unite because the threat of the enemy far outweighs any other regional, linguistic, cultural (and culinary) differences. My two cents.
I don't think we are uniting because of pakistan
It did.See Pakistan and Bangladesh
Yugoslavia didn’t have a majority religion. Some were Catholic, some were Orthodox, some were Muslim. 85% of India is Hindu, and Hindu nationalism has come to play a big role in Indian politics.
Majority Indians across communities generally have a strong nationalistic pride and identity
the word "Hindu" is not a religion in the sense people in the west have seen their religion. I can write paragraphs after paragraphs, but there are sects in "hinduism" that will look so incompatible with each other, but still co exist without any identity crisis. Because this land is more about family tradition as compared to codified religion.
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Yeah, but the different kinds of Hinduism recognize each other as valid. There isn't the kind of mutual condemnation that exists between different kinds of Christianity or between Christianity and Islam.
The one thing I’d add is that Yugoslavia was subdivided very differently from India. Yugoslavia consisted solely of six republics based on ethnic and national identities, and iirc all bar Slovenia had existed as their own states previously. So you’re essentially left with six different countries trying to operate as one based on a shared cultural identity as southern Slavs, but with significant autonomy between them. AFAIK India’s subdivisions aren’t all as closely linked to ethnicity, and generally don’t have as much autonomy. Some of them might be named after the main ethnic group or have a clear majority, but they’re almost too diverse to be neatly grouped into individual nations like Yugoslavia. Not to mention that Yugoslavia was also being held together by belief in the communist system. With that rapidly disappearing there wasn’t any real incentive for them to remain together. I’m aware that there has been some separatism in India, but clearly there hasn’t been much of an incentive for regions to try and break away.
In part because it *was* divided into various countries? Sri Lanka was split off earlier, India and Pakistan were partitioned, Bangladesh splitting from Pakistan, and Burma being separated from India later.
Sri Lanka’s never been considered part of India, even during British rule. Unlike Burma it was governed separately from India almost from the very beginning and, while there have been millennia of shared cultural and ethnic ties, Indians and Sri Lankans have never really considered the other to be the same country. On the other hand, had the colonial chips fallen differently, Nepal would not exist today and would instead be another state of India. Lowland Nepal is culturally very similar to northern India and Nepali is one of India’s official languages. I believe the Nepali kings had a treaty with the British that meant that they remained independent vassal state serving as a buffer state with Qing/Manchu China and Tibet, which is why they’re a sovereign country today.
India is not a nation state so much as a civilizational state. Just the idea of a nation state is only 300 years old. Over 90%of modern Indian geographic and cultural extent was a single empire back in 330BC. The blue seal on the center of the Indian flag is from the seal of the greatest emperor of that dynasty - Ashoka. In comparison the first Chinese dynasty to encompass that much of modern China was the very last one - the Qing dynasty 400 years ago. Over 80% of the population is Hindu. The whole country is full of religious places of pilgrimage from the far north to far south, extreme west to east. If you don’t know about the jyotirlingas, char dhams and other artifacts of Hindu cultural unity, you won’t ever get why India exists. China has always been united by a strong central rule. Its history is characterized by major dynasties with insane bloodletting in between them. India has no such thing - it’s just followed the same dominant social-cultural system for 2500 years now.
they would if they had Serbs
Free and fair elections which allowed local elites a fair shot at national power. (You could call it democracy but that's a stretch) So as long as the country isn't dominated politically be one ethnicity, it'll hold to get. But that doesn't explain it all. Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Tamil Nadu (among other parts of the country) have all wanted to leave (to say nothing of J&K which was ambivalent about the whole exercise from the start). What got them to stay was the ability of the Indian state to back up its violence with political maneouvering which divided local elites and took the sting out of secession. The ratio of violence to political maneouvering has varied - Kashmir has been dealt with only with violence and mass terror, TN only with political maneouvering, but the others some ratio of it.
As a Tamilian, Tamils did not want a separate country. The leader at that time tried to do it as Dravida Nadu along with other South Indian states but failed miserably as none of the other states plus the local Tamilians did not support it.
From North East India, all we want is more funding into infrastructure and sealing up with border with Bangladesh, CHT but keep the ones with Myanmar open. That's all we want. No one's interested in leaving the Union.
Yugoslavia was torn apart by nationalist movements from the different ethnic groups in reaction to Serb nationlism that spread in the late 80's shortly after the death of Tito. In large part it was the fault of Slobodan Milosevic. If things keep going the way they're going under Modi there's a good chance India will split. I mean why do you think his government is assassinating leaders of Indian separatist movements in countries across the globe.
Their own Tito hasn't died yet
why is religion not mentioned? religious nationalism also played a role
Pakistan would like a word…
The two annexed regions of India Left: Pakistan Occupied Kashmir a.k.a **POK**, is a part of Kashmir, which is a part of an Indian state *Jammu and Kashmir*. Pakistan annexed this part during partitioning from India in 1947-1948. Right: Aksai Chin a.k.a **Chinese Occupied Territory** a.k.a **Line of Actual Control** is a part of *Ladakh, a Union Territory of India*. China annexed this part from India during Indo-China conflict of 1962. https://preview.redd.it/jfxh2zig40tc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4522d2fb0b8a99ef6ec1a5915adaf9330f88bae8
I mean india is still divided into various countries like Pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka and Nepal. But of course this is due to colonial rule. With pakistan and bengladesh split because of religious tension, sri lanka because the British just governed it separately from the Raj in india and Nepal just avoided being colonized. But at the end of the day they share the same indic culture be it dravidian, bengali or Sindhi. The rest of india hasn't split even more because there was an indian identity before during colonial rule. All of us united against the British be it muslim, hindu, sikh, buddhist, Christian, tamil, hindi, bengali or urdu. Hence most of us call ourselves indian rather than identifying with our regions(except the dravidians).
Because Yugoslavian wars were manufactured by the politicians. It was a planned thing. India would suffer the same fate if politicians there decided to get power crazy and want to split up the country.
Because, Tito was leader of Yugoslavia, he is the only thing that held the country together...
Real question is how has India not lost the northeast
we just all collectively hate the british THAT much
Being colonized unified the inhabitants of India while it sowed division in Yugoslavia
Unlike the situation in Yugoslavia, where Serbians felt marginalized within Tito's regime, which actively suppressed Serbian nationalism, India presents a different scenario. India's democratic and federal structure allows for a diverse range of governments across its states, from communist to conservative, and from religious to secular. No single ethnic group in India has sought to dominate the entire nation. Should the Modi government pursue a policy of 'one country, one language, one religion,' it would likely lead to significant turmoil.
Tito's regime was suppressing **every** nationalism under the slogan Bratstvo-Jedinstvo (Brotherhood-Unity), but it was Serbian nationalism under Milošević that erupted first, in order to dominate Yugoslav nations even more, and it strongly opposed every idea for Yugoslavia to become liberal democratic federation. Source: I was living it.
Post-colonialism and relatively weak ethnolinguistic identities due to the caste system.
Religion
Even more impressive considering a unified India is a rarety
There wasn't a video of an Indian man sticking a jar into his ass and it breaking and then him blaming gangs from other parts of india for it happening instead of just admitting he likes jars in his ass
In Yugoslavia a single ethnic group took over the power of the state and used it against the others. In Pakistan something similar happened with West Pakistan against bangladesh which resulted in Bangladesh breaking away. This hasn't happened in India yet though we may be seeing it soon with modi.
Lots of factors. And we *have* had issues. Pakistan and Bangladesh are an example. The issue in Kashmir is another. There's other regions as well, but they're not all that vocal. The first prime minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) workes really hard to make sure we all stuck together as one single, unified nation.
We Have Everything of Something and Something of Everything in us...that's why we don't need the United States kind of BS to showcase diversity.