that is probably the best explanation I have read yet. But it is fairly true - I really dont know why. I think religion (in its most abstract: festivities + food) has a lot to do with it. And Bollywood.<p>But a lot has to do with our freedom movement - the way Gandhi, Nehru and Patel unified the different kingdoms into a single freedom struggle is incredible. And that has never gone away. We actually unified India AFTER the formal independence from the British. Hyderabad&#x27;s Princely State (to which I notionally belong to... and Satya Nadella ) actually wanted to be independent and was annexed by the Indian Union by force.<p>And now, there is so much growth and money in India, that it is really hard to make a case for Balkanization - Kashmir is an edge case with a lot of international politics. But even in the far northeast (Mizoram, etc), the struggle is for a separate federal state... only a few splinter groups demand full independence.