Review of INDIA-A History

Anyone who does not have an inclination for history, would at the first hindsight reject this book, as just another book which stuff pages after pages about history of India starting from the age old human civilization, moving towards various dynasties, freedom struggle and then to present India. However one needs to also know the background of the author, who is a prolific writer and historian who is known for his fascination for South Asia and more particularly India. He has authored close to 20 novels and most of them are based on South Asia.
History of India has always been an area of interest for onlookers. While it is established that India is a nation in existence for time immemorial, there always hinges a doubt due to non availability of sufficient historic evidences. Hindus have always maintained a lot of secrecy about their texts and generations after generations have passed on the secrets of traditions in the most basic form which focused on oral communication rather than universally accepted written format. India being a spiritual country posed another problem in this regard. Hindu religion teaches that "Deeds are more important than the Doer". This was very evident when large scale engineering marvels did not carry the inscriptions of the details of the Kings of that time. They did however give a generic representation of the economy of the day in art form and mythological figures were given more representations. Another bottleneck was the diverse existence of mutli-cultural, mutli-location, multi-language people who hardly interacted except for few classes such as saints, nomads and businessmen. Of these while the saints never bothered about worldly happenings, the other 2 classes were not adept in expressing themselves always. This lead to a distorted and biased version of the history, which was influenced by the vibes of the rulers and kings of the day. India would always remain an unresolved story, due to lack of evidence, more and more literature is bound to come out to provide a link to events from day 1 to what it is today.

The author notes that during the last 2 centuries, Archaeology played an important role of a time machine which gave us glimpses of our old civilisation.It also played its part in India. The author narrates how the finding of old civilization like Harrapan brought acceptance for India until which time, the depicted picture was that it was land of maharaja bogged down by worst of social evil and place of Hindus whose sacred books do not make any sense. The findings of the Stupas-inscribings by King Asoka whereby he explained in detail the days of his rule was a major solace to India''s claim of ancientness.
The author employs an interrogative approach to incidents and at times outrightly rejects anything which does not make sense. While praising Indian’s engineering excellence he has also condemned the lack of unity. However his efforts to collect corroborative and authoritative evidence from likes of Archaeological Society of India, British Museum and likes are appreciated. The author has also employed the Max Muller theory of Aryan-Dravidian, which remains a controversial theory. However one could not have done better due to lack of a better theory. The author has done something which earlier books did not do so well. He has tried to create a bridge linking Mythological stories, substantiated wherever possible by Archeological findings, resultant being sequential events of India from the days of Manu to days to Gandhi.

This book is a must reading for historians and suggested reading for every Indian, tourists and anybody who wants to know more about India.