A lot of Indian history is debated in arguements of "what-ifs". "What-ifs" that are fundamentally unsound by the fact that they seem to depend on the very outcomes of what actually happened.
"What if "we" had beaten back the invasions of Mohammad bin Tughlaq, "What if "we" had been more united against the East India company, and so on...
I have had a long standing doubt has been who is "we" in this context. Probably "we" refers to the foreparents of the "present" Indian generation, in those times and who are counted guilty of dis-unity. But take a minute, did those foreparents live in the geo-politically unified identity that India is today. To me, having seen India, that unified entity was the result of the very conquests and invasions that we tend to speak regretfully about.
In our school text, we were taught that Hindustan(India) was invaded time and again because the feudal rulers of the local provinces were not united for the cause of Hindustan, and so fell pray to the repeated invasions. There is a notion of a collective "Hindustan" presented in that era, but as I see it, the definition of India at that time was more the correlation of culturally similar regions and people, than in physically consolidated frontiers. Also I believe that the reference of Hindustan and invasions in the early 20th century in the western historical text was in context of a sub-continent, than a single political entity.
India's existence in its present geo-political unified form was shaped to a large extent by the Mughal, British and the present generation of the last 5 decades . Pre 1300 AD - The subcontinent was made up of princely states of a range of cultures (pardon me for any misreferences here) - ranging between Persian-Aryan-Dravidian from North to South and Persion-Aryan-Sino from West to East. In the geo-political definition of a "country" in the current context that would have actually been about 5-15 different countries in existence or whereabouts at the time.
I think I am reasonably sure that me, my spouse and all my friends from North, South, East and Western parts of the current India, would quite likely trace their origins back to those different "countries" of the pre-1500 times if we could find a genealogy available. If the Maharajas and the feudal lords of the pre-1300 ADs, did not decide to fight together against a common invader, that was their problem and for reasons that history knows best. Their circumstances and choices made by them are nothing that the current generation needs to lament in any way.
And I think would might as well be mudling ourselves up if we do. I doubt if anyone can say which one of us descends from an invader, settler or native, and neednt care really. What matters and I feel we are extremely fortunate about is having inherited an India with an an incredible diversity - cultural and geographical, and that, this diversity is something our generation and future ones, need to appreciate, understand and protect. I'd be happy if we can work around our history text to educate in a way that emphasizes on this good fortune, than make us fret about the power exchanges that happened centuries ago.
