But "India," as a nation, was a political construct of the Indian Independence Movement during the British Raj (even the All-India Muslim League was on board with it for a while until breaking up the country came onto the table- but that was very near to actual independence being declared). Greco-Hellenic peoples ALWAYS had a shared ethnic view amongst each other, even despite sharp political differences. In fact, the word "barbarian," is a derivative of the Ancient Greek word, "barbar," meaning any person or culture anywhere in the world who is not culturally Greek or Hellenized. Peoples of India for the vast majority of it's history had no such unifying concept of themselves.
The viewpoint that 'India' as a unified concept never existed before the British Raj largely emanates from colonial era scholarship and has been increasingly disfavoured by more recent analysis and research. As you succinctly point out with the example of the Greeks that political unity is not necessary to view a culture as a unified entity, especially for the purpose of the game titled 'Civilization'. The game is largely about Civilizations,not nation-states, kingdoms or dynasties. Irrespective of a varied amount of ruling dynasties, kingdoms and polities over the vast span in geography and time, the plurality of 'Indian' people of differing ethnic, linguistic and religious identities have always, to quote the professor who taught me history at a leading Indian university "exhibited a feeling of belonging to an entity with which they are organically linked to, beyond just belonging to the post colonial state".
You have cited the 'not us' concept of 'barbarians' among the Greeks to indicate the concept of some sort of a shared identity of an 'us' between them. An analogous concept of
mlecchas used to denote many invading tribes beyond the Himalayas as opposed to the ones belonging to the
'Aryavarta' (note that the term
Arya is not used in Sanskrit texts in an ethnic sense, unlike the term Aryan used in the West) is found right from the times of the late
Vedic texts
. The difference here being that unlike the Greeks who maintained a cultural isolation from the 'barbarians', in India these
mlecchas ranging from the
Pahlavas (Parthians),
Shakas (Scythians),
Yavanas (Indo-Greeks),
Hunas (the 'White Huns' or Hephthalites),
Turushkas (Turkic tribes) right up to the Arab and Turco-Persian Muslims were in some form or other integrated within the social fabric to the extent that they gradually found a place in the four fold class system. The only exception to this probably have been the British who ruled but never really fully integrated within the cultural melting pot that India has always been.
Which is also why I think the 'Dharma' unique ability of India is an appropriate in Civ6. While it deals with coexistence of multiple religious beliefs within your cities I feel like it is a good enough abstraction of this not so particularly unique to but a very profound feature of the larger overarching Indian civilisation to integrate within itself all sorts of diverse cultural influences arising from within and without.
hopefully in Civ 7 we stop seeing ‘India’ and instead see Mughals and Chola at the least, maybe with Maurya as another option
I’d hope that we wouldn’t be given both Maurya and Mughals with no Chola :/
And the Sikh Confederacy, as well, hopefully.
Inb4 the group of fans who complain when there are more than 5 non-European civs whine about there being ‘too much India’
break India into the many civs it should have ingame.
Irrespective of the separation in geography, time, ruling dynasties and polities in India, there has been a continuum of culture and civilisation all across India. Also there are always going to be limited spots for playable civs in any Civilization game. Consequently, as an Indian and contrary to the prevailing sentiments repeatedly expressed on this forum, I believe the best way to depict India is as Civ6 has done it. A 'blob' civ with multiple leaders representing different time periods and different regions within Indian history. If Greece and France can have three leaders each (counting Alexander and the new persona of Catherine respectively), then India can easily have a third leader from any of the aforementioned empires ( I would also add the Marathas and Vijayangara to this list.) Some 'blobs' are desirable 'blobs', India and China are such.
Also countering the overwhelmingly expressed opinion here, I do believe Mughals should be represented as a Mughal leader for India. Despite them being a Turko-Mongol dynasty of foreign origin with a 'non-native' religion, the Mughal rulers from Akbar onwards largely integrated well within the Indian society. They married into native Indian royal houses to such an extent that three of the four grandparents of Shah Jahan, the famed builder of the Taj Mahal were Hindu Rajputs. The iconic Mughal architecture is not exclusively Islamic, but a harmonious blend of Timurid, Persian and native Indian features. With the exception of the reign of Aurangzeb, majority of officials and generals of the Mughals were Indians. While Farsi was the language of the Mughal court, the Hindustani language evolving out of
Prakrit Hindi and
Farsi was the
lingua franca of the empire.And while there were always some religious tensions, by and large Mughal rulers coexisted peacefully with their non-muslim subjects and adopted many of their traditions and cultural influences.
But most importantly, the Indian subjects that they ruled over, for most part, saw the Mughals not as a foreign usurping dynasty but as a centralising source of stability and political unity. This was exemplified even after the death of Aurangzeb whose reign marked the start of the gradual decline of the Mughal power. Despite being the most dominant political force in the sub continent post Aurangzeb, the ascendant Marathas never sought to replace the Mughals as the paramount rulers of India and instead projected themselves as the protectors of the Mughal throne. And nothing illustrates the place of the Mughals within the Indian society like the revolt of the Indian soldiers of the British East India Company in 1857. In that pivotal moment in Indian history which almost ended the Company's misrule in India, the Indian soldiers installed the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as the
Shahanshah-e-Hind as opposed to any of their 'native' rulers.
It's actually interesting how in the very long history of India, the subcontinent was only fully unified by the British, and nearly unified twice, once by the Mughals and once by the Mauryas. The next closest contender would be Delhi Sultanate, if I'm not wrong.
Noted British historian A.L. Basham in his seminal and well regarded work 'The Wonder that was India' discusses this relative lack of empire building activity in India. He posits two important factors that might have led to this, one of which is the inability of Indian rulers to develop a strong bureaucracy capable functioning in such a vast geography unlike the one in China arising out of its examination system. But the second factor that he discusses is more remarkable. It lies in the very idea of empire in Post-Mauryan Indian martial tradition which was "very different from that to which the West is acustomed." Indian kings "evidently followed the ideal" of
Dharmavijaya or righteous conquest.
Arthashastra which is the most extensive Indian work on statecraft authored by Chanakya, the mentor of Chandragupta Maurya and incidentally also the name of Chandragupta's leader ability in Civ6 lists righteous conquest as the conquest in which the defeated king is forced to render homage and tribute, after which he or a member of his family is reinstated as a vassal. Annexation of enemy territory and political annihilation of the conquered kingdom and its incorporation in that of the victor, while not unheard of, were characterised as "greedy" and "demonaic" conquests and were generally frowned upon. This led to post-Mauryan Indian kings, even from the south of India usually refraining from such wars of expansion.
In line with this, it is interesting to note that two of the great epics of ancient India, the
Ramayana and the
Mahabharata despite having war as a major theme, have references to many such wars where the victorious side does not annex the defeated kingdoms but rather re-installs the defeated king or his family members as ruling vassals. There are also many stone inscriptions referring to such righteous conquests conducted by many kings all across India including one by Kharavela about such a 'righteous conquest' of the Tamil kings.
No one conquers the tamil kings
While this makes a good meme, as is the case with most memes this does not reflect the historical truth. There have been instances of the Tamil confederacy of the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas being defeated by other kingdoms, most notably by Kharavela, the Chedi king of Kalinga as mentioned above.
putting Indira Gandhi in would be like making Margaret Thatcher as the leader of England. I don’t know if I’d be happy with it
As a non-British person who is not particularly well-versed with the history of that region for that particular period, I do not know what having Margaret Thatcher as a leader of England would entail, but having Indira Gandhi as a leader of India will be only as controversial as any other leader from the late Twentieth century. In fact, if there must be a modern leader for India, I would say Indira Gandhi would be an interesting choice, not withstanding her imposition of the Emergency. Given that she is largely remembered for her role in the Bangladesh Liberation War she could have some interesting mechanics related to exploiting loyalty issues in the neighbouring civs and splitting them.
But as I have said, such recent leaders are not free from controversies and therefore are better avoided. Especially so for civs like India which have millennia worth of prior history to choose from.
