I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too. And whatever paroxysms of violence from internal migration might have been mitigated against if it was all being overseen by a single government and army instead of the three-way clusterfuck of the actual partition.
There would have needed to be some system for maintaining a rough level of parity/equality of representation of various minority groups at the high level. Scheduled castes and tribes would probably not have been as well protected under such a system, for example, but it's probably something than could have been worked out with effort.
> I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too.
In what way? Having even more autonomy than they have as states?
There would have needed to be some system for maintaining a rough level of parity/equality of representation of various minority groups at the high level. Scheduled castes and tribes would probably not have been as well protected under such a system, for example, but it's probably something than could have been worked out with effort.