How does India manage to hold such an enormous, diverse country together without a totalitarian government?

Gandhi!!!!!! and the British legacy of a superb civil service and a truly voluminous bureaucracy.

They do it, to the extent that they do, by studiously ignoring most of it.

Seriously, have you been to India? Most of the country, by which I mean most of what would be called “flyover country” in the USA, is mired in abject poverty. People still live in mud and wattle huts, work huge agricultural fields with hand tools, collect water buffalo dung and dry it for fuel, and don’t speak to anyone outside of their villages for most of their lives.

What’s to “hold together”?

We sell steam-producing equipment to BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals, Ltd.) which is a quasi-government agency responsible for building electrical generating stations across India. The company is as corrupt and inept as one could imagine. But that’s balanced by the fact that there is no retail market for electricity in India. One of the iconic photos of India is a shot of a utility pole in even one of its major cities: New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, you name it – with a rats’ nest of electrical wires surrounding the pole from top to bottom. Each pair of those wires represents a theft of electricity.

Even on the power plants we provide parts for (and licenses for BHEL to manufacture their own parts to our design) they are built by workers who often have to make their own basic tools with scrap metal. You haven’t seen craft work until you’ve seen a worker with a homemade flame-cut wrench turning a 4” nut onto a bolt.

This is how India “runs”.

Aside from that, when the government functions at all, it is as near totalitarian as I want to see. Nearly everything is “managed” by government in India.

Two words. Caste system.

The Indian people must be pretty good at coexistence. I respect their plite. Most I have met in the US are hard working, thoughtful individuals, who usually speak many languages. The difficulty of learning all the languages alone is daunting to me. I speak English, and a bit of Spanish . Some I’ve met from other countries speak 5–10 languages! I blame America’s educational system. Although I suppose I could learn a language on my own. Would have been easier as a kid though.
They have it rough. But they seem like good people to me. From my limited understanding of their land, it seems they might benefit from a different government style. But with that many people, and so much to do, it’s organized chaos.
CWOTUS,thank you for your inside info. Sounds like you’re glad you weren’t born there. Me too. Indeed most of the 7 billion people who ‘grace’ this Earth seem to be living a substandard existence at best. As much as I ridicule my own government, I sometimes forget that I could have been in much worse circumstances. Luck of the draw ? It is a strange, and interesting universe….

The few good friends I have that are from india all say the same thing: don’t go there.

Incredible poverty and suffering for the poor, while the wealthy ignore them while sitting behind high walls with armed guards.
The poor are so poor they cannot think of anything beyond surviving until the next day.
It is hard to organize a revolution when you are dizzy from hunger and have no way of communicating with others beyond those directly in front of you.

India has immense potential if menace of corruption can be removed. If not completely but at least partially then it will matter a lot. It has no shortage of talent which has been proved time and again by projects like Mangal yan ( Mars mission) , indigenous satellite launches and what not. It has its own issues like poverty, caste system as mentioned by above posters but the most important thing it possesses is its rich heritage / culture which is the case with very few countries in the world. It is the land of greats like Buddha, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi. It can be a great country if it’s youth is charged up by strong leadership which was lacking for past so many years.

The same way Brazil exists without any real state or government services – abject neglect.

Pakistan used to be part of India, and Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma,?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India

Musing. Knowledge of India was sparse for me. I knew about the English version of life as it was. Bollywood. Clothing. Art. Fabrics. Novels including passing references. Also while studying Non-Western Religions. I found some of it unsettling, some infuriating, questions about the acceptance-perhaps resignation of the people. It wasn’t until the young woman and a friend were attacked while on a bus returning from seeing a movie, that most took notice of major and existing conditions in today’s country. I hate to think that this deadly situation had to happen for notice, knowledge and newly realized information to occur about India by the rest of the world. The country, it’s location and it’s people are in the middle of an evolving, developing and religiously volitile area of the world. I have no guesses as to what the outcome will be.
Sorry. Musings lasting overlong…

Did you guys not know of the partition of India? It was horrible but the only solution they could agree on. My mother in law moved there to work with a NGO health organisation just after. She met Nehru.

You’re absolutely right, @cazzie. Most Americans, sadly, look at the world they know today and think “T’was ever thus.” I doubt if 5 in 100 realize that the Partition, which occurred before most of us were born, was probably the most violent “civil” cataclysm in the world since the end of WW II. (And that includes the violence that more people know of in Bosnia-Herzigovina / Serbia, which pales in comparison.) The Hindu / Muslim violence during those forced migrations and “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims from India and Hindus from Pakistan was horrific.

That Partition created India and Pakistan: East Pakistan and West Pakistan, for those who don’t recall how Bengladesh was formed, from a further division of Pakistan.

In addition to all of that “which was”, because those three countries are more or less settled right now, there is and has been for decades a simmering border war between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir in the northern border areas between the two countries. (Jammu and Kashmir are generally shown as Indian territory and defended by the Indian Army, but that’s only as long as they can be defended and actually held back from Pakistan, who will claim those territories if possible.)

No, not much is “settled” in India, when it gets down to details.

Pretty much anyone I’ve met from India has told me never to go there and have sworn they’ll never go back. It’s also worth noting that if you see someone who has migrated from India to a western nation then chances are their family in India is fairly well off (by their country’s standard anyway) to begin with.

@cazzie – There are different theories behind partition of India. Some suggest that it was due to power struggle between Nehru and Jinnah who wanted to be PM of India. While others suggest that it was a well thought out plan of then British Rulers who supported Jinnah in one way or other. Whatever be the cause effect was horrific.