Anything to avoid that? I believe that a polity as large as British Raj can avoid so much bloodshed by embracing civic nationalism instead of whatever the heck is that kind of right-wing nationalism its successor states embraces right now.
Maybe have someone playing like Ernest Douwes Dekker of Dutch Indies and founding a purely leftist Indian nationalist movement which would tie the disparate ethnic and religious groups under a shared anti-colonialist/anti-Empire and pro-homeland identity? Even better if the movement managed to found a Soekarno (a Bumiputera who retooled his mentor's ideology with amazing charisma) and managed to entice the masses to rally behind a United Homeland idea and disregard their previously religious/ethnocentric ideals. Have the new nation called Bharat and reappropriate the term as a pan-British Raj civic nationalist identity?
Or in parallel, have someone being the Van Mook, someone 'foreign' who was born in the colony who advocating for a home-rule too but within the context of remaining in the Commonwealth in general and defer to the Empire regarding foreign policy, while also have the government respecting the socio-cultural differences between all the nations under the Colony and reworking it into a proper federal and united multinational country.th
Right wing? Nehru was about as leftist as one could get - short of an outright communist.
Even Pakistan's initial leaders of Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan were fairly left - leaning left, at the very least.
This also avoids the crux of the issue at the heart of the Partition - whatever form the government in Delhi took, Muslim leaders would not accept it, short of Muslims having an outsized influence or say in it, relative to their population (and can you imagine the resentment that would foster among Hindus? Accepting this proposal would create a Lebanon style civil war, and given the sizes involved here it would be such a war x100. Thankfully, India's leaders at the time, though prone to appeasement, were wise enough to reject this proposal), because they had an irrational fear of being outnumbered, something they thought would make India favour Hindus more, and after centuries of Muslim and British rule, could not countenance a Hindu ruling over them.
And any form of being under Imperial auspices, with the King of England being head of state, was not acceptable to India's leaders, and understandably so - they had a vehement hatred of colonialism, or any vestige of colonialism left.
Also, its funny that you propose a left wing government, and then suggest a very right wing name for the nation
.
Doing so was a recent political controversy here - and it's main proponents are the current right wing BJP government, who want to change the 'India, that is Bharat..' in the constitution to 'Bharat, that is India...'
It was a nothing burger anyway, in the end, it turned out to simply be rumour.
