Given India also took a shit, albeit in the 70's that would be something that explains it. Sometime in 1971 I think the post-colonial government of India decided to up and explode one day plunging the country into a state similar to Russia. Regionalization ensued with each having their own psuedo war-lord government and local military on hand. Any one could have potentially overwhelmed French and Portugese India before Persian and Chinese interests moved in on the nation.

And then both got bored and sort of decided to make something of the former nation, rebuilding it as the Indian Federation and left.

Timor could have been swallowed up by the Japanese war machine in the thirties-fifties.

For everything else, I'm not sure. Somehow in the period between 'then' and now something had to have happened. But for the tiny islands, I haven't touched the map in a long time and that's been relegated to the guy who brought the new one in (Mihndar) and Chapatrap.