I usually like your illuminating comments about India, but here I think emotion got the better of you. There is no such sinister ploy or conspiracy (English or otherwise) going on here and neither is it unfair to claim that India has existed as many smaller kingdoms in its historical trajectory.

>>There is no such sinister ploy or conspiracy (English or otherwise) going on here and neither is it unfair to claim that India has existed as many smaller kingdoms in its historical trajectory.

I am not claiming it either. But the British didn't come here to unite us and do the 'greater good' as often claimed. Was India made up of smaller states, yes it was.

But you need to study the geographical boundaries of Mainland India throughout history. They extend all the way till Iranian borders. To southern tips of Russia. Afghanistan was once a part of India(Kandhahar was basically Gandhara, Remember the Gandhari from Mahabharatha?).

In this mammoth period of time(lasting several millenniums). India has been ruled by people of varying ethnicity, language, color, culture, heritage etc. Therefore you have so many religions, languages, traditions etc. Sometimes the whole mainland India was united, sometimes it got split.

The difference between British and somebody like Mughals is the difference between. Mohammed Ghazni and Mughals. They are both foreign invaders. But Ghazni came here to loot and go back. Mughals came, captured, and stayed here and contributed a lot. So did many people who ever came to India. Including Aryans, they all came from outside stayed and contributed things back.

Apart from native Dravidians everybody else came to India and stayed here through some form of wars and conquering. But many of those stayed here.

Many looted and went back to their native lands. British just belong to Ghazni kind of invaders who went back.

> Mughals came, captured, and stayed here and contributed a lot

They came as Central Asians (Uzbek?), but stayed on and became Indians.

> British just belong to Ghazni kind of invaders who went back

Yes, but they did stick around for about 200 years. Quite a lot of the British who came to India stayed back and became Indians. With the British it was somewhere between Ghazni and the Mughals.

I would say calm down, no one here is disagreeing with you, or with the history or the geography of India, nor is anyone here claiming the opposite of any of those things that you are worked up about.

You probably read too much into cstross's comments, maybe you didn't, but your comment reads like you are very angry about what he said and are admonishing him/us for getting India's history wrong and giving us a history lesson.

Not realy there have been large States that covered a substatial part of what is niow India but never one that covered the entire subcontinent in the way that the Raj did.