Outlines the history of India, discussing the rise and fall of kingdoms, including early Indus Valley civilization and the Mughal empire while highlighting the people, culture, and economics that have formed today's India.
Provides a detailed overview of the great civilization of India, from the time of Alexander the Great, through the Mughal Empire and Colonial rule describing the extremes of its caste system and the richness of its Hindu gods and Buddhist philosophy.
India has always been a land of great contradictions. To Alexander the Great, the country was a place of clever naked philosophers and massive armies mounted on elephants which eventually forced his army to retreat. To ancient Rome, it was a source of luxuries, mainly spices and textiles, paid for in goldhence the enormous numbers of Roman gold coins excavated in India. At the height of the Mughal empire in 1700, India boasted 24 percent of the world economya share virtually equal to Europes 25 percent. But then its economy declined. Colonial India was known for its extremes of wealth and poverty, epitomized by the Taj Mahal and famines, maharajas and untouchables, and also for its spirituality: many-armed Hindu gods and Buddhist philosophy, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.India: A Short History places as much emphasis on individuals, ideas and cultures as on the rise and fall of kingdoms, political parties and economies. Anyone curious about a great civilization, and its future, will find this an ideal introduction, at times controversial, written by an author who has been strongly engaged with India for more than three decades.
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