Thanks should be given

Much like the Americas, the Indian subcontinent has had its share of colonial powers come and go.

Alexander battled his way to India’s doorstep.

Muslim sultans from Central Asia regularly laid waste to western India’s many temple towns in search of wealth.

The Mughals conquered vast swathes of northern India including modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan and ruled for more than two centuries.

And of course, the British, French, and Portuguese ruled large and small parts of the subcontinent until present day India was born in 1947.

What I find interesting, curious, amazing, surprising - take your pick - is that despite these conquests, not one ruling power has been able to exterminate the Indian people like what was done to the native populations of North and South America and Australia.

Is it that India was too large and densely populated to wipe out the entire native population? India is big but we are talking about continents like the Americas and Australia. Also, the population of these continents was concentrated on the coasts so the density of the “target” population would have been comparable to India.

Is it that India was too old and well known a civilization for colonizing powers to eradicate an entire people without fear of censure? This supposition is hard to explain. If a well known civilization was indeed exterminated, we’d never know of it. Plus, no one records reasons why they aren’t destroying a people. Lastly, the fear of censure never stopped a certain German dictator from trying to eradicate a people so I don’t see why it would hold back a Ghenghis Khan type marauder from trying the same.

Do we have some inherent talent of absorbing invading armies and making them Indian? The Mughals, for instance, became more Indian than Mongol over the course of their rule. Alexander ended his world conquering walkabout after defeating Porus and went back home. This notion is seductive and feels good to consider.

Is it survivorship bias? Since it’s not possible for every native population to be wiped out - if it were, we’d all be British with terrible teeth - India just turned out to be one of lucky ones which didn’t get ended. By Occam’s Razor, this seems most plausible to me using.