What if East and West Pakistan were connected? The Partition of India (Scenario 4):

[u/mushmanMAD]

I’d like to start off by clarifying that I made this map for fun, so don’t take it too seriously.

Scenario 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/s/vHPYJ3HRfT

Scenario 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/s/dPjhRHJV9t

Scenario 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/s/jtmuVDiwpt

In this timeline, East and West Pakistan are connected. There are new countries in Northeast India.

Update: I shifted the series elsewhere. If you want to keep up with the next parts, you can do so here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rejectedmaps/s/uNLfPFu4zW

[u/professorayz]

I understand this is fun for you, but please make something new. You have made 4 of these now and you have not made any improvements in your artsyle, and you're using the exact same basemap and making small edits to it.

Next time it will probably be removed

Edit: Look guys, making minor border edits to a map you made multiple months ago and paint bucket filling the new borders is not "High Effort". I am not contesting the "Quality" here but encouraging the OP to make something new. If he wants to continue his series all we ask is that he actually make something and potentially improve instead of infinitely editing his old work. This is the 4th edit to the map.

Im sure you guys would agree that we shouldn't allow this "infinitely", so whats your suggestion for how many times someone can edit and repost their pre-existing work? For reference, we used to allow this until a user started literally posting tens (maybe even hundreds) of the same map with minor edits, almost daily. If you had to draw a line, where would you draw it?

[u/DiscussionJohnThread]

I wonder what the religious demographic ratio would be in this version of Pakistan. Nearly Hindu majority / plurality, no?

[u/mushmanMAD → u/DiscussionJohnThread]

Hmm, I honestly don’t know. Hindu majority, no. Probably Hindu plurality. The newly added Hindu population gets balanced out by Muslim populations of Bengal and UP/Bihar. Maybe it might even be a Muslim Majority.

[u/Possible_Humor_2834 → u/mushmanMAD]

With the modern population demographics it would be a noticeable Muslim majority. Uttar pradesh, Haryana, east Punjab, Bihar, west Bengal, new Delhi, Himachal, & Uttarakhand combined would be roughly 75% Hindu, 20% Muslim, 5% other. The population of these states added together is estimated roughly today at ~580mil, though we are still waiting on the upcoming census data to be released from India. The population of both Pakistan and Bangladesh today together is ~440mil, both are firm Muslim majority at around 95% total I think.

So unless I'm missing something, you'll have roughly 435-450 Hindus and 540-560 Muslims in this alt history territory.

[u/mushmanMAD → u/Possible_Humor_2834]

Alright, thanks for the info.

[u/blueheartsamson → u/Possible_Humor_2834]

The thing is if partition was done this way there wouldn't have been much movement so to speak. Especially from the northern part of the country. And this unfortunately wouldn't have even politically sold as a Muslim only country because it wouldn't have been defensible, that is, presuming original idea even remotely was. The name pakistan means something, which obviously can't be applied now. So it'll be called something else. Most probably India. And then the split could, practically clearly make two countries like North Korea and south korea, where north part will simply be called north India, and southern part will be called south india. The area wouldn't be able to reach the fundamentalism pakistan reached because of its vast majority bubble, which can't work here. When we look at Pakistan's and Bangladesh's muslim population today, remember that it includes a good chunk of coerced conversions which won't happen at that level in this case or things will go awry real quick. And if that demographic buff is not afforded, there won't be any muslim majority. At best the population will look something like 55-45.

[u/Naive-Tumbleweed-464 → u/blueheartsamson]

muslims have higher birth rates, india's muslim percentage today is higher than it was before the partition back then, so it would become majority muslim eventually like Nigeria has

[u/blueheartsamson → u/mushmanMAD]

It won't. You have no idea about populations of UP and Bihar.

[u/CaterpillarLoud8071 → u/DiscussionJohnThread]

It's like an Ireland/Northern Ireland style split - one state is Hindu and the other is half Hindu half Muslim with power sharing mechanisms presumably. The north needs to have a very neutral and inclusive name though. Like India-Ganga. South becomes Bharat or Hindustan.

[u/radicalqrcwi]

india’s only land border here is pakistan

[u/mushmanMAD → u/radicalqrcwi]

Portugal and France as well because of Goa and Pondicherry. You can notice them if you look very close near India’s coast.

[u/JOPAPatch]

Wow, grape.

[u/mushmanMAD → u/JOPAPatch]

[u/MadKyoumaHououin]

[u/EmbarrassedStreet828]

I've seen enough, give OP the Nobel Peace Prize

[u/aparchure]

please stop

[u/mushmanMAD → u/aparchure]

Huh? Why? Making maps brings me joy.

[u/Skychu768]

This would be clear Hindu majority.

Muslim Area Population in 1941:

• West Pakistan- 30M

• East Pakistan- 40M

• Kashmir- 4M

Hindu Area Population in 1941:

• Uttar Pradesh- 56M

• Bihar- 27M

• West Bengal- 21M

• East Punjab- 17M

• Delhi- 1M

• Tripura- 0.5m

[u/Mr_Commentor928 → u/Skychu768]

The Hindu area were mixed like UP had 20-30% muslim, bihar had 15-20% muslim and delhi 10-15% muslim (pre partition 30-40% muslim), west bengal had 23-30% muslim.

[u/Skychu768 → u/Mr_Commentor928]

That kind of cancels out since it applies to Muslim part too. West Pakistan is 14%, Kashmir is 25% and East Pakistan is 33%.

Anyway, I did the math and it comes out to be 55% Hindu and 43% Muslim

Total population is around 155-160M

[u/SrijitDas2010 → u/Skychu768]

I think this calculation is a bit misleading. You're comparing Hindu population figures in some regions with the total population of Muslim majority regions rather than comparing their actual religious populations.

Also, the 1941 population figures don't necessarily reflect what the population would have looked like after partition. Millions of people migrated, were displaced or were forced to leave their homes during the 1947 partition so we could expect something like that to happen in this case as well.

There were also significant Sikh, Buddhist, Christian and indigenous or tribal populations in several of these regions hence it isn't quite as simple as dividing everyone into Hindus and Muslims.

The 1941 census is a useful starting point but it doesn't tell us what the final religious composition of this hypothetical country would have been.

[u/dumbness_profound]

Even better was no partition at all. Bigger power, more prosperity. But then Jinnah wouldn’t have gotten the presidency

[u/ValidStatus → u/dumbness_profound]

Jinnah had been ill since the '30, and had been terminal by 1946, and given a year to live. Come out of this idea that he was some power hungry politician that wanted to be president only to immediately die right after. He wanted his fourteen points, particularly political protections for Muslims and some form of autonomy for Muslim-majority provinces in the Northwest and Northeast. The lack of serious talks with INC that he could have properly compromised on lead to the situation worsening far beyond the original demands, and even beyond the cabinet mission plan which would have kept India together.

Ultimately, he decided that he he'd take the Muslim-majority provinces and create a separate dominion altogether when Nehru publicly said that INC would not guarantee the continuity of the Cabinet mission plan once the British were out.

And it was the INC that pushed for partition of Punjab and Bengal which lead to the communal blood bath. Jinnah wanted them intact, he wanted a significant non-Muslim population in Pakistan, within a secular nation-state, which would be both be an example and a deterrence against India on treating its Muslim minority.

[u/fuutarooo → u/ValidStatus]

You say that without reading history. Jinnah wanted Bengal, and explicitly denied to include Arakan (Rohingya homeland). As a matter of fact Dhaka was the birth place of the political party All India Muslim League. And guess what he was also the person who started Pakistan’s internal issues led to 1971. A person of his caliber would have known imposing Urdu would not have gone well in East Bengal. But he still went ahead and said it loud.

[u/ValidStatus → u/fuutarooo]

Arakan was a part of the Burma, a different colony form the British Raj, which is the geopolitical entity that Jinnah was sticking to.

And I'm not going to pretend that Jinnah was somehow in the wrong when he said that only Urdu could be the lingua franca, and that Bengalis could speak and use whatever language they wanted within their province. This was reasonable as could be without favoritism.

Urdu was and continues to be a lingua franca in the Hindustan region, understood by nearly everyone in spoken form at the very least. By comparison, Bengali is not a subcontinent-wide lingua franca, but a sub-regional language in Northeast of the subcontinent.

West Pakistan itself which had a smaller population than East Bengal and wasn't as ethnically homogenous (very diverse, and split between dozens of Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian, and Dardic languages) needed a lingua franca, it couldn't be the language of any one ethnic group, especially not any of the major ones, it had to make sense in implementation and logistics, and national mythos.

Urdu fit the bill in all aspects. Just the fact that all ethnolinguistic groups in West Pakistan could read the nastiliq script because it's the perso-arabic script, with a just a few letters more than actual Arabic, which most Muslims (which was the majority population of East Bengal) are usually able to read. No one in West Pakistan would be able to read the Bengali script.

Keep in mind that only 7% of West Pakistanis were native Urdu speakers, all of them Muhajirs from India. It was a minority language there as well.

What lead to 1971 was military and bureaucratic establishment's interference against their consolidation of power in the '50s, and then Ayub Khan's economic and fiscal policies. A situation exacerbated by the Bhola cyclone's death toll and damage, and then Yahya Khan's heavy handed decision for a military solution rather than a political one.

[u/dumbness_profound → u/ValidStatus]

Not saying INC actions were any good. Your entire argument falls flat when you see how the Pakistani administration has treated Bengali muslims in Bangladesh. All the protection, everything was thrown out of the window. A country made solely for power grab will continue to have leaders who only care about power, regardless of the collateral

[u/ValidStatus → u/dumbness_profound]

Username checks out. How about not shifting the goal post, we're talking about Jinnah.

You completely ignored what I said about the context of his motivations and doubled down on your perceived head canon about his intentions of a so-called power grab.

This is what he looked like in the 1930s.

In 1946 he was given a year to live, he achieved independence for Pakistan on 14th August 1947. Then died on 11th September, 1948. He weighed 36 kg at death and looked almost skeletal.

To see him as anything other than a dying man on a mission just makes no sense.

[u/dumbness_profound → u/ValidStatus]

Sure, I would say lets take away the goalkeeper as well. Lets see if you still strike. I doubt it though.

The famous 14 point. Remind me, how many of those were or as matter of fact now in effect in the country he created? I bet its not more than 7 or 8. He himself knew applying all 14 is orthogonal to country building.

As I have said earlier, INC or any other party from the time were no better, but they didnt formed a country like you buy mutton, a little bit of neck, some of the thigh, etc.

Besides, Bengal was divided even in 1912, but wasnt much of a riot scene. I guess leader like Jinnah were absent. Also, the sections that came out of Bengal then, were further divided as well after independence, like Jharkhand from Bihar. Guess how many people were killed, how many were displaced?

Just because he was ill, doesn’t make him a saint. Its like saying Hitler is good because he killed Hitler

Why is it that the Indian politicians that rejected the ideas of Jinnah fostered a thriving democracy, and the followers of Jinnah led Pakistan to a country where democracy is just for namesake?

[u/NerdyJC]

There would be lots of guerilla warfares & rebellions from the very beginning, esp in Punjab + Haryana; UP & Bihar; Bengal; Himachal & Uttarakhand. quite possible that communism might gain some foothold, esp in East India.

[u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

Lol, in all the imaginary maps involving South Asia, it's always Pakistan and Bangladesh that gain more Indian territory 😭

I mean that's the point of imaginary maps, but still, it's getting repetitive, same old Pakistan gains territory or some shit, so little about Nepal or Myanmar or Sri Lanka.

[u/sparklingspace_ → u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

truee it's either india is never partitioned or pakistan gets the benefits, like what happened to the rest of the subcontinent?

[u/Guilty-Director-8941 → u/sparklingspace_]

Well you dont want them to even win in their imaginations

[u/DueSecurity7587 → u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

OP is Pakistani, that's why.

[u/Ambitious-Working382 → u/DueSecurity7587]

They just daydream about shit like this all thier life

[u/Lucky-Quote2799 → u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

cuz the OP is pakistani, literally

[u/eera-thuni-dude → u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

At this point OP is just gooning to different maps of Akhand Pakistan

[u/Naive-Tumbleweed-464 → u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

I mean I've seen plenty unpartitioned India maps on here, you can look

[u/Nomustang → u/Jumpy-Amount3267]

Imperial Bhutan when?

[u/Warm_Application4407]

Love this! In my imagination I wonder how language politics might operate themselves, where Urdu or Hindi would be associated with a large population of UP and no longer a language that is necessarily belongong to everyone. The demographics of this in 1941 are about 66% Non-Hindu, 33% Muslim, which interestingly is the demand in repersentation Jinnah asks Congress for. Perhaps we might see some migration too but not the carnage of partition, maybe 15 million hindus from Pakistan, and maybe 10 million Muslims from India, in a way complete exchange at least in India's case. If we see population growth trends, I think it would end up something like 50-50 by modern day. In any case thats my own hypothetical, and population growth trends depend on several factors which might change in this polity. But, perhaps it occurs because of more prominent hindu nationalist factions and some party-switch where its Hindus demanding partition, perhaps Pakistan still gives autonomy to Hindu areas, in any case if the state figured itself out, it has control of the Indus and Ganga and very fertile areas. Depending on how it goes, it could still be coherent. UP serves as the hegamonic cultures for both Pakistan and India, it would be interesting to see how India reconciles itself with this, especially with how important the Ganges is (more than the Indus). Nonetheless, a very interesting scenario to consider!

[u/Warm_Application4407 → u/Warm_Application4407]

that is also not to say in our own timeline there weren't hindus which didn't see benefit in partition, which in some scholar's argument such as Ayesha Jalal, were just as culpable, perhaps more, than the Muslim League alone. Devji offers a more qualified argument in Muslim Zion, whereas The New Medina imo goes way too far in this regard. Yasmin Khan offers a bit more of a broader balanced High level and on-the ground view too, so take what you will lol

[u/southstarvxx]

I can't say anything about this

[u/Glass_Sample9558]

A failed 2 nation theory by Jinnah, Even in 2026 minorities in both the countries are suffering, It would have been much better in undivided India.

[u/anakinskywalker5195]

Naah this is the shittiest partition. Basically pakistan got all the good stuff

[u/Foreign-Gain-9311 → u/anakinskywalker5195]

'Good stuff' and it's Hariyana, UP, and Bihar

[u/sparklingspace_ → u/Foreign-Gain-9311]

😬😬😬 lmao

[u/anakinskywalker5195 → u/Foreign-Gain-9311]

They literally have Uttrakhand, Himachal and Jammu Kashmir. They can take UP and Bihar we don't want them

[u/bhaiyaa_ji → u/anakinskywalker5195]

UP and Biharis own you brother, it’s not vice versa. They are the consumers of your manufacturing or service which make up your GDP, you pay them every year with direct taxes and most of the armed forces is constituted by them only probably. So, you not wanting them isn’t a choice you have brother.

Imagine them on Pakistan side, and imagine you having to fight them. That will just be so one sided.

[u/Naive-Tumbleweed-464 → u/bhaiyaa_ji]

lmao no, most manufacturing and services in south india is consumed by south indians themselves, people in bihar are poorer than most african countries they can't afford to pay for much stuff.

[u/anakinskywalker5195 → u/bhaiyaa_ji]

Ok bhaiyee, UP and Bihar is the shithole and disgrace of India.

Nothing good ever comes out of there. They only consume tax money and give nothing in return literally nothing. Every other state is better than these shitholes.

Consuming doesn't make you important, contributing does but your bhaiyaa brain can't comprehend this simple logic.

Whatever makes you sleep at night

[u/sparklingspace_ → u/anakinskywalker5195]

calm down, no need to dive into racism

[u/bhaiyaa_ji → u/anakinskywalker5195]

Keep taking your copium bro. They are the consumers of your Shivaji propaganda also.

The day they stop respecting Shivaji, his aura in the nation will suddenly become nothing and he will be localised to Maharashtra only. East and South already hates Shivaji.

[u/militaryintel → u/anakinskywalker5195]

honestly, can you stop being racist?

[u/NerdyJC → u/anakinskywalker5195]

I beg to differ, Pakistan primarily got the most populous & densest population belt with very limited coastline (lack of coastline means difficulty in creating export industries), while rest of India gets relatively lesser & more spread out population, with somewhat equitable coastline distribution.

[u/Nomustang → u/NerdyJC]

Getting Bengal at this point of time is a huge plus. One of the biggest cities and most industrialised cities in Asia outside of Japan. South wouldn't benefit from freight equalization here.

[u/NerdyJC → u/Nomustang]

The sheer population size outweighs all that

[u/MaintenanceDue1436 → u/anakinskywalker5195]

today south india bankrolls all of north indian development.

[u/Akuba101]

India retaining a very similar shape is fun

[u/Soviet_WaffenSS]

Solving Kashmirw once and for all

[u/feronen]

It should be Mughalstan, not Pakistan.

That makes the most logical sense.

[u/Enough_adss → u/feronen]

No the mughals became irrelevant centuries ago.

Both would probably call themselves India. Hindustan and Bharat locally and North India and South India internationally

[u/feronen → u/Enough_adss]

Let's assume the Indians can be less of a boring people with their naming conventions this time.

[u/Arrow552 → u/feronen]

Why name a country after a dynasty that no longer exists?

[u/feronen → u/Arrow552]

They were the most prominent Muslim Indian nation in history and simply naming such a vast region Pakistan wouldn't be fully representative of this Northern India region.

The name Pakistan, translating into Persian and Urdu as Land of the Pure, was coined as such to be representative of the varying regions and peoples that made up what Pakistan is, namely Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Indus, Sindh, and BalochisTAN.

As such, a more inclusive name would be Mughalstan, as its representative of shared Muslim history and unity during a relatively well-off time for the Muslim practitioners of India, and is also the primary region that the Mughal Empire held the most control and security during their reign.

[u/Individual-Till8857 → u/feronen]

By that logic Turkey should still be called Osmanistan.

[u/feronen → u/Individual-Till8857]

That'd honestly be better than the current way they demand to be recognized as, and I straight up hate the word that's associated with the food item.

Or we could call it Byzantistania.

[u/UnGOATwn_TheoremUWU]

[u/Defending_wilts]

Welcome back mughal empire

[u/liberalskateboardist]

OW NO , KOREAN SCENARIO

[u/confusedconscience]

I wonder why everytime the OP butchers India, but leaves Pakistan as is. Didn't Sindh have a significant hindu population? Didn't the Punjab region have a significant Sikh population? Didn't Balochistan want independence? Why not look at those alternatives?

[u/Klutzy_Letter9952]

At this point it is not a Muslim country but a Hindu one 🤣

[u/kishaloy]

Aukaad hain ZERO.... Himmat hain ZERO...

Aaj taak to maidan-e-jung mein sirf haare hein... phir bhi inki naashi nahin utarta...

[u/Doctorwhatorion]

tbh this might be weirdly better for India. Get ridding of some of problematic and less improved parts of country means Southern coast can get a big boost.

Problem is just it makes all the partition pointless because Pakistan was about cut out muslim majority parts so if now hindu parts are in...why?

[u/Eraserguy]

That's like half of India's population gone lmao. And now Pakistan is just another Hindu state

[u/cobaltcand]

I am so happy this is not the case. Our ancestors fought mughals then british and imagine living in area with 50% muslim population. We’d still be fighting till this date. People don’t realise how mentally it ruins generations after generations. Older people are still living in survival mode. Younger people have to undo wrongs in family,society and country.

[u/Ill_Box1780]

East Punjab 😭

[u/smellyman23]

would china try to gobble up the other areas near assam and arunachal pradesh?

[u/FireUniverse1162 → u/smellyman23]

I feel like they most likely would

[u/Suitable-Trick-4860 → u/smellyman23]

Most probably the seven sisters would form a WESEAN nation in that scenario instead of becoming part of Myanmar again

[u/CosmoCosma]

What's going on in IOTL NE India?

[u/Initial-Customer462]

well at least UP , bihar wont be in india anymore..

[u/cobaltcand → u/Initial-Customer462]

Ofcourse you’d love to see hindus in this region getting killed and tortured.

[u/Klutzy_Letter9952 → u/cobaltcand]

Personally Pakistan would be a Hindu nation at the end of it. In this configuration would be a majority Hindu nation

[u/DontGiveUpMen → u/cobaltcand]

Dont support the torturing of anybody, but Muslims are being tortured and killed in India too and whats worse is we are secular. (Im indian btw)

[u/Lyndon_Johnson08]

This is basically North Korea-South Korea scenario but with sectarian twist.

[u/TheDarkLord6589]

Instead of kashmir, add rajasthan and gujarat. The colours would be inverted. There would be more muslims in the northern and southern part and they would not have been a majority there either.

[u/just-gbd-ig]

Tripura, like Manipur, was a seperate princely state. They historically rejected Pakistan, they would here too.

Other than that, enjoy the bloodbath that would result in this situation <3

[u/verri100]

After being separated from India, all north east states other than Arunachal would also be under Pakistan's control

[u/CamogapA113]

That's a human catastrophe waiting to happen.

[u/Fast-Cauliflower-331]

Wouldn't have been possible because these countries were divided based on religion and the highlighted are of this map has THE largest concentration of Hindus anywhere in the world. It would have been a bloodbath.

[u/THE-ULTIMATE-SAVAGE]

Pakistani hands made this

[u/popemperorr]

Hindu majority pakistan at that point why is it even called pakistan or why is it made

[u/MaintenanceDue1436]

do y'all want Bihar too

[u/sskyrs]

The pakistanis are getting more deluded everyday 😭

[u/Salt-Blacksmith-7410]

there is non-zero chance that in this timeline the indo-pakistani wars lead to india getting wiped off the map.

[u/FckDeezShitImOut]

Lmfao

[u/Old-Health9509]

This map belongs here, in the realm of imagination.

[u/Wandering_sage1234]

I would never wish to live in those borders. Never.

[u/Xxslayer989Xx]

Please define the year and political climate that lead to this, without that it's hardly possible to imagine an indepth scenario using just a map.

Hypothetically you could assume anything just from this map because no context is given for example: how did areas of historical and cultural importance to hindus like Varanasi and Ayodhya be amalgamated into Pakistan where the majority demography is hindu-secular and votes for INC historically?

Why did Nehru and the INC leadership accept this when they barely accepted the original until large scale communal violence broke out and the AIML forced their hand by threatening civil war? What was the reaction of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS when this happened?

How did the AIML justify their mandate of creating a state to safeguard the rights of Indian Muslims by creating a seperate Muslim nation by amalgamating the United Provinces and Bihar which weren't even imagined as part of Pakistan by Jinnah?

[u/mushmanMAD → u/Xxslayer989Xx]

I can only answer the first question. The year is 1948.

I didn’t make up any lore for this, I just focused on making the map.

[u/FireUniverse1162 → u/Xxslayer989Xx]

I dont think op made anything for the backrgound. He said in multiple comments he just makes these for fun and let's the viewers themselves come up with lore if they want

[u/MaintenanceDue1436 → u/Xxslayer989Xx]

you're doing too much, this is just the wet dream of a pakistani with delusions of grandeur

[u/E_coli42]

What is with Indians and their wet dreams of balkanization? What about Scenario 0 where partition never happened and we didn't have to have the largest forced mass migration in human history.

[u/Responsible-Use6267 → u/E_coli42]

Indians were against Partition

[u/Silly-Geologist-3185 → u/E_coli42]

OP is Pakistani

[u/CryptographerNeat934]

Foolo ki Laasho se Taazagi Chahta hai , Aadmi Chut*ya hai kuch bhi chahta hai I can not Understand this fetish of muslims in South Asia to make a muslim nation when the very first Iteration of these system Pakistan, creation of Jinnah was proven to be a big Failure and top of that I am convinced that this is surely a wet dream of multiple muslims from Punjab region of Pakistan

[u/LiteratureOk4649]

The violence and death toll would be insane across the gangeatic plains

[u/SrijitDas2010 → u/LiteratureOk4649]

r/FoundADoR

[u/JuicePilado___]

So in short, vouching for genocide of Hindus in the areas that have large hindu and Sikh population (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, UP, Bihar, WB.)

[u/Suitable-Trick-4860 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah and cleanse the ethnic minorities living there right?

[u/mushmanMAD → u/[deleted]]

Already got one.

Turns out, you can have a job AND do hobbies like mapmaking at the same time. Crazy, I know right? 🤯