Internally distanc were vast and travel unsafe beacuse there were no road s,and

there was also the danger of being attacked by wild animals or bitten by poisonous
insects. The climate of one region , such as snow-bound chitral, differed sharply
from that tharparkar,a hot desert area .Just as the external boundaries gave a sense
of unity ,the internal topographical features pushed india towards diversity.The
sense of unity was reinforced by religion;the sense of diversity promoted a rich and
varied culture.
since both unity and diversity had their basis in geography,both impulses were
strong.sometimes one tendency was uppermost,sometime the other.We hae seen
since hindu period,how was identified with religion, and diversity with clture. these
tendencies,moving toward and away from unity,alternated.
Following the invasion of alexander(327bc)this rhythm manifested itself
politically.Small local kingdom and large paramount empires ailternated.small
kingdom gave away to the maurya empire.when the maurya empire disintgrated,
small kingdom took it place. this alternation we find continuing in the muslim
era.the muslim conquered small hindu kingdom and ultemately the delhi sultanate
was eastablished.when the delhi sultanate disintgrated,the bahmani
kingdom,jaunpur kingdomwre eastablished.
These small kingdomwere succeeded by the mughal empire which in turn gave
way to the kingdoms of awadh,bengal and deccan.
this tendncy was curbed under bitish rule. bing foreigners who retained links with
their country of the origion, they were not affected by these mulses as ruler with
ocal roots were.Anothr was that the british themselves maintained two
entities,British india and the princely states such as kashmir and hyderabad .Once
the british withdrew, the divisive forces that had been held in abeyance reasserted
themselves.
The partion of the south asia into india and pakistan created two centers.of the
development over a large region.since there were regional and provincial
tendencies in both india and pakistan ,a sinle strong center in each country wold be
able tocontrol both tendencies,over-centeralization and regionalism. these are
called respitively centripetal and centrifugal tendencies.we have already seen that
the outside borders,reinforced by rligion (firstly by hindism, then other
reliogions),promoted a tendency for unity within th mational frontiers.Since regional
geography varies from snow-bound area like chitral to desert like tharparkar,the
languagesand life styls which envolved in separate region gave a varied complexion
to culture favoured unity on that basis.This was witnissed in the creation of
pakistan.On the other hand,when the pull of the culture was stronger,then the unity
created by the relio