Ambani is not going to claim Ladakh is his or want to build a house in entire Arunachal Pradesh. China on the other hand.... is already doing that. And we don't want that.(period) literally. Ambani can be dealt with. But not an aggressive neighbour who have control over devices and cameras with 50% of Indian youths.

If there was no India before the British, then

a) what was Christopher Columbus looking for?

b) what was Vasco da Gama looking for?

c) what were British/Dutch/French East India Companies looking for?

d) what did Alexander's ambassador Megasthenes write about in his book Indica?

e) where is Mahabharata set? Bharat is still one of India's official names.

India has had a shared cultural history for a very long time.

That it wasn't always called India is a moot point.

The point here is not the historical name of the subcontinent or any shared cultural history (which all neighbouring states have). It is the lack of a common Indian government, comparable to the present time, that made the mistake of allowing too much investment by the EIC as you seemed to suggest. What the British Empire called India included parts of Afghanistan and Myanmar; modern India certainly has no claim over them.

You're distracting from the point. It doesn't matter how strong the central government is or how divided the population is.

What we are discussing is foreign ownership and foreign power over India, and you just said that allowing EIC too much of these was a mistake

I have not said any such thing. I said GP had argued it. It is absurd because there was no such “we” at the time.

I think you misunderstood the parent poster's point. They are talking about India the nation, while you are talking of India the concept. India the concept existed. But India the concept is similar to America the concept or Europe or Africa the concept, not Germany or France. Also, before the British, the last empire to rule over almost all of modern day India was Ashoka, more than 2000 years ago.

Umm, the Mughal, the Guptas? Also the pratiharas, rashtrakutas and palas collectively ruled over india too. The Delhi sultanate was pretty huge too, and so was the maratha empire.

But being a single governance group isn't the point. Being culturally similar is what defines India. And it obviously is.

If we are being pedantic, Germany didn't exist until 1871.