Indian Nationhood

Indian Subcontinent was never a single state in the entire history. Some big empires were there but still they did not cover entire India.
British empire was spread across the subcontinent, but 1/3rd of the area of princely states was not ruled by British. So there was not a single state rule over subcontinent. When India became free, again it was with the partition based on two-nation theory. But majority chunk of subcontinent is ruled by Indian State.
The question is whether it is a nation-state?
What is nation-state at the first place?
For that we need to understand the difference between nation and state. Nation and states are two separate entities. Nation formation takes place when various people and societies realize commonality amongst themselves on the basis of eternal and perennial bonding they have. So it is just a feeling of coexisting together based on certain bonding. This bonding can be provided by language or culture.
When such nation demands a state, no-one can decline such demand. Indian freedom struggle was nothing but a formation of nation. But unfortunately in its last phase, the scope of this nationhood was restricted on the basis of religion. The two nation theory was proposed which stated that hindus and muslims are two different nations.
The so called scholars like Jinnah, Savarkar, Ambedkar accepted this concept of two nations.
Savarkar and Ambedkar, though accepted two nations, wanted a single state to administer it, while Jinnah wanted two states for two nations.
Congress never accepted the two-nation theory. Due to communal violence Gandhi agreed upon the two states. So India was partitioned. But the India remained as not a hindu nation. Its nationhood was described by Nehru as 'Unity in Diversity'. It is essentially a cultural nationalism on which Indian nation stands today.
RSS names it as 'Hindutva' (this is very different from Savarkar's hindutva which was based upon religio-geographical hindu identity).
The issue of Kashmir is therefore more important to India. Kashmir is proof that Indian nationalism is not just a hindu nationalism. The presence of so many Muslims in India also proves the same. The two-nation theory was proved wrong when Bangladesh was formed.
India today is a nation-state and all Indians are proud of that.