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While India alone is not likely enough to provide an alternative to China for the reasons you and other posters have described, I think that collectively the ASEAN nations, India, and Bangladesh can. With a combined population of over 2.2 billion, this block of more or less pro-American nations (China may invest heavily in some of them, but it's not my impression that they have enough leverage to force Cambodia or Bangladesh to issue a wholesale trade embargo against the US and its allies, since ultimately those countries mostly just care about getting rich) would be sufficient even if we assumed their citizens had on average only half the human capital of China's. That assumption seems a bit harsh even for India, and is certainly not true for places like Vietnam and Malaysia.
It's true that coordinating trade relations with a dozen countries is a lot more complicated than managing a single relationship, but it also spreads out the risk, and the supranational organizations (i.e. ASEAN) that can facilitate this already exist. Looking at the tags on clothing and cheap manufactured goods in recent years, it seems to me that this shift is well underway for economic reasons irrespective of US foreign policy decisions, but there are a few moves that could perhaps help secure its future, such as negotiating a formal alliance with Vietnam.
With so many Muslims in India and the zeitgeist being against them - a block consisting of India and 90%+ majority Muslim countries is somewhat unstable.
It's my impression that even people who hate Muslims often tend to forget about or ignore Indonesians. I may be wrong, but Hindus and Muslims in South Asia just feel viscerally different to me in a way that Southeast Asians, whether they be Catholic Filipinos, Muslim Indonesians, Buddhist Cambodians, or Hindu Balinese, just don't. It seems like Islam is a less salient aspect of Indonesian political identity when compared to say Pakistan.
Certainly. Headscarf and shorts from which the ass will fall out is combo most often seen in Jakarta and KL.
But it looks to me that the country as a whole is moving to more radical version of islam in the last years - mostly due to gulf money and their influence. Not sure if they can nudge the foreign policy yet but it is not out of the question.
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Only if you include Pakistan in there.
Relationships between India and Bangladesh have had their ups and downs, but overall they remain quite warm. And I'd hope so too, given that we bailed them out of being genocided and the people who we saved are of the age group currently running the country!
The only minor sticking point is Bangladesh occasionally cozying up to China, but even then nobody expected them to join a war against them, or join them in a war against India.
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The percentage of Muslims in the ASEAN countries is about 40% not 90%+.
But they are not equally distributed. You have 90-ish percent in Indonesia and Bangladesh. And Malasia is a majority Muslim country. And Indonesia is a heavy hitter there.
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