INDIA, April 24, 2019 (Quora by Vittal Setty): Even before the Brits set foot in India a group of them founded The East India Company in 1600 It was called East India Company, not East Jodhpur Company, East Travancore Company, Mysore Company, East Maratha Company or Junagadh Company or Punjab Company, CoochBehar Company or any of the 400 princely states that were present. If you go back further into the Mughal empire, still we find reference to the term Hindustan in Ain-i-Akbari. And then if you go further back to the time of Chandragupta Maurya, we have Megasthenes (from 3rd Century BC) the Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator. Megasthenes widely traveled all over this land and came up with his magnum opus which was called–guess what–Indica!
Kingdoms might come and go. States might unify or split. But the idea of a nation is not just the political structure, but the culture and the philosophy of the land — that is a greater unifier than the lines drawn by kings and politicians. So India has existed long before the British stepped unto it. India has existed as an entity for thousands of years because of the people following the common culture of the land. So the idea of the British unifying India is simply out of the picture.
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