India: A History

Accommodating Pakistan and Bangladesh and other embryonic nation states like the Sikh Punjab, Muslim Kashmir and Assam, this text examines the legacy of the 1947 partition, and looks at the colonial era from the overal context of Indian history. India's history begins with a highly advanced urban civilization in the Indus Valley, regressing to a tribal and pastoral nomadism, and then evolving into a uniquely stratified society. The pattern of inward invasion plus outward migration was established early: from Alexander the Great via the March of Islam and the great Moghuls to the coming of the East India Company and the establishment of the British Raj. Older, richer and more distinctive than almost any other, India's culture furnishes all that the historian could wish for in the way of continuity and diversity. The peoples of the Indian subcontinent, while sharing a common history and culture, are not now, and never have been, a single unitary state.