India question

[Trin Tragula]

I'm also playing Vijayanana now and I'm well underway to unite all Hindus under my rule. I'm thinking about changing the name of my nation at a certain point to reflect the change of local power to ruling empire of India. Something like Hindustan?

As a hindu nation Hindusthan wouldn't be a very likely name. It's persian for India and is what the Mughals called themselves emperors of. Therefore it's just as wrong as "India" if you're playing an Indian, dravidian country, like Vijayanagar. Bharātavarṣa is a much more indigenous phrase (and it's also much older) for a mythical greater India and a variant of this _was_ chosen for the real life unification of India (the Republic of Bharat is the official name of India).

As other's have said a pan-indian unification in this era might not be that plausible. Also you already have a very cool name as you play Vijayanagar which means something like the empire of the "The city of Victory".
Unification of the "dravidians" under Vijayanagar was almost achieved in real life and might be somewhat more probable as they did encourage the growth of Telugu culture, literature, etc and Telugu was spread over much of southern India as the language of administration. Then again I'm not sure how different that is from just having it as a primary culture. The language's domain did roll back pretty quickly once Vijayanagar fractured.
I'd use the "culture_group_union" command rather than a tag change if I where you so as to not tie it to a certain in game tag if you go the way of a dravidian union.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Obviously unifications are fun My biggest point was actually about the name (Hindusthan only makes sense as a name for a muslim unification).
If you want to create an all Indian union you will have to make do with just two of the three culture groups though, as that's dictated by the game engine. You can't be the union culture tag of more than one culture group (and it must be the one that your primary culture belongs to) but you can add one more using the "culture_group_union" event command according to the devs

 

[Trin Tragula]

It is? I was under the impression that it wasn't.
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It is not a union tag but the event command "culture_group_union" is used to give it the same benefits for the germanic group as the germany tag has.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Your comparison to a Punjabi to a Tamil makes every bit as much sense as a the Milanese being compared to the Sicilians. Russians, Siberians, Ukrainian? I don't see anything less than your comparison being a complete parallel to this.

More like Norwegian versus Sicilians. Tamils and punjabis doesn't even speak a language from the same language family so linguistically they'd be a lot more different from eachother than even that (linguistically your sicilian has more in common with a punjabi person than a tamil would obviously there's a lot more than language to culture though). Sure they are both hindus (many of the punjabis would convert to islam or sikhism during the games timeframe though) but even that's not that clear cut as there is significant differences inside the hindu religion as well.

You seem to assume that the Hindu people just could've cared less about a unified nation in the gigantic sea of empires being built up around them.

Just because they got beaten up on significantly by the Islamic conquests doesn't mean the result couldn't have been prevented.

It should be noted that at the time there was no big religious conflict visible to the common people of India. Both muslim and hindu empires had muslims as well as hindus at all positions in society for the entire era (Aurangzeb did try to limit this, but partly due to this his empire crumbled quickly after his death). The muslim sultanates could never have existed had they tried to limit their administration to just foreigners. Trying to force convert a population that's many millions more than your own co-religionists would probably also not be a very good idea
Why would an afghan or turkoman be any more different to a tamil farmer than a bengalese person?

The fact that religious nationalists today try to make Vijayanagar or the Maratha empire out to be bulwarks against the muslim states doesn't make it so. Both were founded by former generals of muslim armies and both conquered and demanded tribute from their neighbors regardless of their state religion Both also allied with muslims and hindus alike if it fitted their plans.

Still I don't see how any of this would stop the existance of a pan-indian tag (as noted the game won't let you unify more than 2 culture groups though, but if one wants to one could change the cultural setup to match this). The mughal empire did come close even though it was muslim . The biggest obstacle for such a big state would imho actually be more about administrative penetration than cultural or religious differences. The empire would have the biggest population on earth. That's an awefully big nation to rule in this era

One thing that does speak for the existance of a pan-indian country is the actual geography. India is a subcontinent sealed of by mountain ranges. Those make very nice natural borders.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Had I said it in the 1960s it would've been a political view but by now I don't think you can find much literature that says anything else (if you do please recommend it though as I've literally not been able to find an opposing view apart from among the anonymous editors of wikipedia, who provide few sources for their arguments). I'm not saying everyone's life was all good and nice though though, Indian farmers were notoriously oppressed both by caste and taxation systems, just that it didn't matter much if your state head was hindu or muslim.
Enough on that though!

Also I'd like to note that I never said that a pan-indian hindu nation was impossible at all. In fact I gave specific advise on how to create such both technically and historical justifications for it. I just stated that hindu nationalism is something from another era
It would seem to me that if you want to build a nation around a hindu identity per se all hindu areas should be included not just the indian ones.

EDIT:
I also kind of object to being described as chosing my words carefully to voice a very specific political view. On what would you base that? Seems like an unwarranted personal attack to me (especially as I never chose my words very carefully ). I know virtually nothing about indian politics and as far as I know I haven't even discussed politics on these boards at all.
Feel free to point out that I'm wrong if you think I am. Don't try to discredit me without saying anything about the matter at hand though. If the discussion is for another thread (which it very well might be) then I don't suppose it's very warranted to throw around insults either?