Thank you all for contributing to this thread. I didn't partake in the earlier conversations because I did not want to say anything incendiary that would take away from my core message.
I do however want to add one thing about Alexander the Great and his battle against our ancestor, Porus. I've noticed this copium by the indians to shift the conversation to an apparently even "bigger" empire with more elephants call Nanda Empire that made Alexander fearful and hence why he chose to withdraw from the contiguous lands of Pakistan.
Modern, Contemporary (born August 15th 1947) India nationalism naturally finds the Nanda > Maurya story attractive. Magadha was centered in what is now India; shortly afterward Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nandas and created an enormous empire. Saying
“Alexander turned around because he feared the massive Indian empire waiting for him” therefore fits neatly into a national story of an ancient unified India resisting foreign conquest.
The region was politically and genetically fragmented. Porus ruled a kingdom in the Punjab; Ambhi/Taxiles ruled Taxila and allied himself with Alexander; various other kingdoms and tribal polities existed across the northwest; and the Nandas ruled Magadha far to the east. There was no central “Indian” government commanding Porus, Taxila, and Magadha, nor a unified army defending a common Indian nation from Alexander.
Ancient South Asia was not a genetically homogeneous population corresponding to a modern “Indian people.” Ancient-DNA and population-genetics research indicates substantial regional structure produced by different proportions of ancestry related to ancient Iranian-associated agricultural populations, indigenous South Asian hunter-gatherer-related ancestry, Steppe pastoralists, and—in some regions—East/Southeast Asian-related ancestry. Those mixtures varied considerably by geography and community, and later endogamy further strengthened population differentiation.
That point is particularly relevant when projecting today's national identities backward. The Indus/Punjab/Gandhara northwest, Gangetic north, Deccan, northeast, and southern peninsula had different demographic histories. Political fragmentation and genetic population structure aren't the same phenomenon, but neither supports imagining 326 BCE as a homogeneous modern Indian nation simply awaiting Alexander.
https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2024/12/agathocleia-the-greek-queen-who-ruled-northern-india/
