Indian History

Ravi in this post about institutions referred to Indian History and concluded that the reason British were able to colonize India was due to rule based institutions, This is correct in my view.

However the answer is still not complete, before British ruled, invaders from central Asia and Persia were attacking and successfully capturing Indian territory and one of the major cause for this was the disunity among Indian rulers, i.e. if the India was united . This can not be explained by lack of rule based institutions as Persians and Central Asians were not any more organized than Indians. Ravi himself had referred to this disunity in his earlier post. So what is the answer, I think that answer to this is that there is no question.

In more detail when we think about unity in past, we project present standard to history.

Present standard refers to idea of nation- state , problem with this idea is that it fairly recent one in civilization and one which is contested even now by various ideologies (Marxism , libertarianism and other internationalist theories), but at the time it happened there was hardly a concept of nation - state (here I differentiate nation-state from republics in north and in south),

Greeks had city states, so had Romans. Persia and Babylon were Kingdoms, even India when united was a kingdom.This means analyzing Indian conquests from point of view of nation-state is fallacious.

What is more attacks on India were not some extra - ordinary event , India was an attractive destination for parthians, bacterian Greeks,Huns and other tribes (again explained in Ravi's post), and while it was hardly appreciated (all those derogatory references to Yavans and Malecchas), Hinduism never faced any existential crisis (or to be more accurate what is today called Hinduism).

And this was not unique to India world over kingdoms fought and captured territory, but civilizations remained intact to a large extent. Civilizations declined ofcourse , but were supplanted by similar civilizations and withstood loss of territory.
Greeks were famous for it's disunity and the only time they were together were against Persia, which happened because Persians were so arrogant.

Islamic invasions were different matter however, while a major factor was the old looting and pillaging (or if you like the secular component), the factor that played multiplier effect was virulence of Islam , this set of invaders was determined not only to take back the loot, but also to make mountains of infidels scalp and convert by sword. A cursory study of Islamic invasion establishes this fact.

The Islamic literature of the time confirms that and has been well documented by many historians. It is altogether a different matter that secular wallahs instead of analyzing the evidence indulge in mud slinging or disingenuously ignoring the effect of Islam and analyzing only through secular prism.

Kings at that time never realized this, they made pacts with invaders to settle petty scores with their neighbour never realizing that what they were facing was a new force. The result was ofcourse that invaders when successful did their utmost to destroy Hinduism. That it did not go the way of Persians or Egyptians is a testimony to some positive force within Hinduism or the vast extent of India.

About the same time India was being invaded , Europe was facing the onslaught too, Italians states indulged in deals with turkey or marmeluks for trade or to settle scores with rivals, however Islam could never enter the heartland and the most it could advance was up to Vienna and Iberian peninsula , what explains this ? Breaking up of Caliphate ? Internecine battles between Muslim dynasties, in my view it does not as India was still overrun by the aforesaid invasion. I think that answer to this might be crusade, I have read some explanation about crusade which seek to explain the crusades entirely in secular terms (i.e. pope launched crusades to tap European warriors battling each other), I will disagree with this , I think in addition to protecting Byzantine empire and trade, it was indeed about defending the holy land and the Christian faith.

This acted as the force multiplier and Europeans Kings were united. While they were not able to rescue holy land, they stopped any further incursion. What is more it sealed identity of Europe as a Christian continent