In her masterly work of deceit, Ayesha Jalal would have a century of research hung by the way side.

A generally well-accepted principle called Occam's Razor says that a problem should be stated in its basic and simplest terms. The simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected. When applied to the events in the Indian subcontinent, the picture appears like a moderate and secular congress fighting to keep India united; pitted against a brilliant political-Muslim Jinnah hell bent on breaking it. A chronic problem of Muslims with peaceful co-habitation manifesting itself into Pakistan.

But Ayesha would have us believe otherwise..... Congress a Hindu party. Jinnah and his cronies paramount examples of "secular ideals" (look at the poisonous fruit of their efforts .... The nuclear rogue Pakistan...) Gandhi .. the father of Indian partition. Even Bart Simpson won't say "I didn't do it" this innocently.........

You say Moderate and secular Congress :

I say : "Mahatma" Gandhi and "Pandit" Nehru? Is this secularism?

You say Poisonous fruit of their efforts "A Nuclear Rogue pakistan"

I ask you which country detonated the nuclear device first? Gandhi's so called secular India or the Nuclear Rogue Pakistan?

Kindly tell me where you acquires such biases... have you even tried to read the book? Have you read about Mr Jinnah? Why is it that people like yourself wish to propagate the same false myths again and again, and not salute people like Ayesha Jalaal who have done an extremely good job in bringing out the facts..

Ayesha Jalaal mentions a very important fact... the Muslim Extremists and fanatics like the Ahrar were actually in alliance with your Mr Gandhi and the "secular Moderate Congress Party". Indeed Gandhi brought all fundamentalists and religious fanatics together regardless of religion caste or creed. Truly secular!

Indeed, the premise of the book is correct, Mr Jinnah was a SECULARIST! However, by 1946, did he still want a unified India? I dont think so.

By the way, the guy who wrote the first review.. I am afraid, Bias aint gonna get you anywhere.

Anyway, I would like to tell you something else. I just received my papers. I hope you remember my and your comments about Hancock's "Romaivi." I will use Latin letters here for the sake of legibility. To refresh your memory, according to Hancock, the Byzantines called themselves "Romaivi" - which is absurd. The ancient Greek "Romaioi" (pronounced [ro'ma'yo'i], today [ro'me'i]) is the plural of Romaios ([ro'ma'yos], today [ro'me'os]) which means "a male Roman person" and comes from the Greek (or Hellenic, if you prefer) word for Rome - "Roma." The Byzantines called themselves Romans - that is, "Romaioi" and not "Romaivi." To distinguish between Romans and Byzantines, in Modern Greek the word "latinikos" (Latin) is broadly used to define "Roman" as an adjective. I am all too well aware of everything you commented about the origin of the word "Rumelia" and do not need to consult Dr. Erdinc or anyone about the matter. It indeed comes from those "Romaios" and "Roma" - not from "Romaivi" or any such nonsense of a word. The invented word "Romaivi" cited by Hancock, like the many other mistakes he makes in an attempt to show knowledge in everything, ruins his otherwise very informative and interesting book, thus (maybe undeservedly) casting a shadow of doubt on the other more "central" points that he makes. Therefore, I would suggest to you in good faith not to use this edition of his book or use it only with extreme caution. That is the point I wanted to make.

An absolutely indispensable book if you are interested in Romani culture. It gives a great explanation of how gaujos (Non-Romani) should present questions, and gives answers to those questions without ever conflicting with Romanipen.

This is a must-read book for anyone who is interested in not only the Romani people but also in the roles they have played in history. So much of their story is not known or not understood and this book deals with it in such an honest and straight forward way. It discusses and tackles the issues faced by the Romani people but does it in a way that doesn't point fingers or make excuses. Of the few books that actually deal with this topic, most of them are slanted to one side or the other. Hancock's book gives out the informattion for anyone who wants to read it. His personal insight is so helpful, as most of the other authors writing on this topic are non-Romani. This is such an important book, especially for someone interested in specific genres of history like the Holocaust or Middle Ages that it should definitely be on recommended reading lists. Of course you don't need to be a historian just to find this book insightful and interesting. I think everyone should read this book.

Looking at "Ananya," one is reminded of Ved Mehta's classic travel book about India, "A Portrait of India." Mehta travelled in India in the sixties, a taperecorder slung from his shoulder, talking to anybody he found representative of the subcontinent which even today is busy finding ways to see itself as a country rather than a sprawling subcontinent peopled by various cultures, religions, and languages. "Ananya," however, is a product of the current commitment in academic Indology to create an India wherein a surface identity is resolutely cultivated to hide the psychic techtonic shifts underneath. This is a book which in some ways attempts to be a counterweight to many portraits of India that have appeared in print at least since the eighteenth century. More recently, how the west sees India has pretty much been dictated by books like E. M. Forster's "Passage to India," Katherine Mayo's "Mother India," the mother of all anti-India travel books, Naipaul's many disquisitions, and, lastly, perhaps by the movie "Gandhi," a shameless work of hagiology financed by the Indian government. "Ananya" is just as hagiological in its revisionism. It begins with the rather naive claim that India is unlike any other country in the world. Regardless of its homogeneity, what country is? A number of essays in the book set out to show the reader in what ways India's is different. The religion of difference is embedded in singing the praise of India's accomplishments in its three thousand years of discontinous history up to the time of Mohandas Gandhi. In the introduction to the volume, the editors wax eloquent over Vedic India's achievements in science, philosophy, and the arts. The articles carry coal to the Newcastle of Indian revisionism. The absence of discussion of discursive practices that helped India remain the concept it is today is the most disturbing aspect of the book. The editors say that Indian medicine envisioned many of today's surgical modalities, just as they happily proclaim that ancient Indians were dreaming up ways of air travel and space exploration. But they include no article that discusses "The Laws of Manu," the life-denying treatise that has served as the bedrock of India's worst evil, casteism. The book has little to do with present day India, where all ancient discursive practices are burning in the crucible of social justice. The country is unmoored from its anachronistic mainstays of religion and philosophy. Desirable social change in India is now seen as something that can take place independent of the the country's religious practices and Vedic past. To begin with, India's belated rejection of Nehru's Fabian socialism has deprived the patrician industrial families of their hold on labor and government. India's role as a major player in globalization has meant the rejection of the pious polity envisioned for the country by its founder Gandhi. The emergence of an educated class of people, directly or indirectly consuming tenets of Marxism, socialism, and Post-Modernism, belonging to the lower castes of Indian hierarchy has created an upheaval in national life, an upheaval that has affected all aspects of life in India. New Delhi, which for five decades espoused the political unity of the country at all costs, is now revisiting the toll of such policies, as is evident in its willingness to consider decentralization of administration and endorsement of multiculturalism. If India is unlike any other country, its uniqueness is yet to be seen. That uniqueness will emerge from its ability to transform itself, to reject the past that "Ananya" hypothesizes and glorifies.

I got this book from my uncle and do not plan to return it :-) it has excellent articles in the timeline of Indian History

This is an inspirational and very well put together collection of various articles and essays regarding South Asian (Indian) culture, religion, history, and art.

Nirad Chaudhuri was often unfairly dismissed in his lifetime as a 20th-century equivalent to the notorious mimic men evoked in Macaulay's infamous "Minute on Indian Education": he adopts the attitudes of the British ruling class during the Raj so thoroughly he might at a casual glance be dismissed as such. But Chaudhuri's fierce and iconoclastic intelligence makes him far much more: a singular and independent thinker, and in truth a true original. This book, his masterpiece, is a brilliant semi-autobiographical study of the political situation of the first half of the Indian twentieth century. It works best in the lovely and lyrical opening hundred pages, which give a very evocative sense of his Bengali childhood. Unfortunately later, when Chaudhuri surrenders reminiscence for political analysis, he becomes more tedious than illuminating (you get the suspicion that, were you to visit him as Ian Jack , who provided the book's fine introduction, you would have been compelled despite yourself to check your watch discreetly during one of Chaudhuri's lengthy and self-satisfied tirades).

This book will give you a perspective that was quite common amongst the "educated Indians" during the waning days of the Raj. The writing is somewhat turgid though quite colorful in parts. I read this book in small doses just to savor and reflect upon an era long gone. The descriptions of family life and personalities are delightful and vivid.

This however, is not a easy read. If you expect a fast-paced juicy narrative then you will be disappointed. If you enjoy a meaty jaunt through late 19th and early 20th century India then by all means get it. A word of caution. When reading the author's opinions please realize the times from whence they spring.

This is a must book for all those who've seen Rural Bengal/Bangladesh in its true form with its summers, rainy season and winters with the human face. Description is vivid and also the dreams about Foreign Land (Bilet). NCC with one of his best novels however, with his usual opinionated and often judgemental perception which is so typically Nirad-babu. The maestro puts his experience of yesteryears with the accuracy of present day. Insights and the minute details is what makes him one of the greatest prolific writers of all time. One needs to look at the world of Nirad-babu to fully appreciate his work without marring your thoughts without your prejudices. If anyone, wants to get lost in the laid-back life of Bengal, this is where your quest should end. I wish he could have more writings in English so that more people could appreciate the master.

This is a book in praise of India and as such celebrates many of the good things that a Westerner visiting the country will enjoy - not just sights but people and attitudes. It's a pleasant read, but having been to India I wish the author had not tried so hard to exclude the other side of the country - the India that is proverbial with poverty, inept government and inefficiency - because as a vistor you are exposed to this side in spades, and I would have liked more commentary on them from an author who clearly likes the country. I felt Keay was deliberately avoiding anything that would strike the visitor as a huge problem. Take this along for "positive" side of your trip, by all means, but it won't help you much with the unpleasant, unfortunate side of the subcontinent. V.S. Naipaul's nonfiction on India was much more helpful here. There are three of them: An Area of Darkness; India - A Wounded Civilization; and India - A Million Mutinies Now. I highly recommend those as companions or correctives to Keay's book.

For the Western reader, there is precious little that clearly explains the history, art, culture and society of India. John Keay is one of the few qualified writers filling the void about India's history and people including a piece for the Atlantic Monthly. Although one of the reviews criticizes Into India for not covering the pervasive corruption in India, I recommend that you click on the index page view of this work to get a glimpse of just how comprehensive this book is. I do like the reviewer's suggestion to read Naipaul. I would add, from the galaxy of talented writers coming out of India, Manil Suri, Arundahati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Raj Kahal, Akhil Sharma, Amit Chaudhuri, Mira Kamdar, and one of my favorites from British Vancouver, Anita Rau Badami, for those who want to understand the frustrations and fulfilments of living in India. Keay's Into India is certainly an excellent place to start and worth the space on any library shelf.

If you are looking for an introduction to India that goes deep below the surface and yet does not fill up pages - this is the book. This book is a classic and no review will do full justice to it.
The book is organized geographically and for each of those regions Keay gives us a view of the people, culture and tourist places in that order of importance.
People seem to be of most importance to Keay and perhaps rightly so. All important "types" of social groups are described along with "how" and "why" they are unique. The "types" are according to region, caste, religion or sect or a combination of these. Culture is also described vividly and contrasted well and somewhere in this history is put in to give a perspective on things.
It is a highly recommended reading among books on India in English language and tourists and students would benefit alike from it.

The book is not properly conceived. It pits the 19th century linguistics orthodoxy about the chronology of the Vedic people against a diverse set of scholars. On the one hand, you have the archaeologists who are completely against the racist basis of the linguists' framework; on the other, you have most Sanskritists and historians of astronomy who claim that the internal evidence within the Vedic books goes against the linguists' chronology. Bryant conflates all these diverse scholars with "Hindu nationalists", suggesting a political agenda behind the views!

He has created a false dichotomy of AIT and OIT. In fact, most of the scholars who reject AIT reject its chronology of invasions or immigration around 2000 BC, preferring to stay silent on the situation before 4000 BC or so.

The intellectural framework for the book is weak. Its one redeeming feature is that it brings together many different views. Bryant is to be commended for not taking sides too brazenly.

Edwin Bryant brings clear-eyed vision and thorough scholarship to a topic that has lately seen more heat than light. Theories about the prehistory of the Indian subcontinent have tended toward the speculative and ideological, and even scholars who have approached the subject dispassionately and carefully have been picked up by others who want to use their conclusions for political ends. Bryant looks at a couple of centuries of theorizing about the origins of the Indo-European languages, and particularly of Sanskrit. Both entertaining and educational.

The reviewer here that disses Bryant's book clearly didn't read it. He accuses Bryant of conclusions he never came to and beliefs he explicitly disavowed.

I found this book to be a remarkably even-handed and clearly written overview of a subject that has, bizarrely enough, produced much empassioned debate in the past several hundred years -- the problem of the origins of the Indo-European language family. What is primarly a linguistic problem has been commandeered by missionaries, nationalists of varying stripes, racists, and even Nazis to produce a peculiar body of thought about a so-called "Aryan race" both in Europe and India. Even highly-trained scholars have indulged in circular reasoning, the conflation of disparate bits of evidence, and outright fantasy in their attempts to postulate and prove their answers to the questions posed by the undoubted similarities of the various languages in this far-flung group.
One of the tenets of the conventional, European view is that a group of Indo-European-speaking nomads entered India around 1200 BC and then proceeded to spread their language and culture throughout the northern half of this subcontinent. Beyond the existence of Sanskrit and the Prakrits themselves, the evidence for this movement of people has always been sparse; the reasoning displayed by those determined to prove that this influx existed has generally been flawed -- rough guesses have been turned into proven facts, and these so-called facts then used as the basis for more guesses. This entire controversy might seem of no interest to anyone outside of a handful of academics, but unfortunately, the early and false conflation of language and race has been partly responsible for the deaths of a great many innocent people. Ideas can be fatal in the wrong minds.
Bryant attempts to strip away the muddled thinking that surrounds the "Aryan influx" theory. First, he analyzes the theory itself and discusses its history -- which is primarly a history of colonial exploitation by the British and indigenous exploitation as well, by the upper castes. Bit by bit he examines the evidence that has been brought forward in support of the theory and displays just how inadequate it is. Most of the "sure things" invoked by scholars through the centuries, right up into the last decade, are not sure at all. Many could easily be used to prove the opposite theory, that the language and culture of northern India developed in place, as it were, from some vague Paleolithic or Mesolithic beginning.
I decided to write this review partly because I was startled by the other reviewer here, who seems not have finished Bryant's last chapter. Rather than dismissing the Indigenous Aryan theory or linking it solely with Hindutva, the current Hindi nationalist movement, Bryant takes pains to show that many serious scholars and prehistorians also uphold the theory or at least, have found huge holes in the fabric of the opposing, Aryan Migration, theory. Over and over he repeats that he does not mean to dismiss the solid thinkers and their theories. In fact, when I first read the book the constant repetitions of his support for serious holders of the Indigenous Aryan theory annoyed me; they seemed like overkill. I understand why he repeated himself now. While he himself thinks that the evidence for a migration is stronger than that for indigenous development, he makes it amply clear just how weak the evidence for both theories is. He does, however, have a little fun with the most far-fetched fringe writers on the subject, some of whsom have floated ideas that deserve mockery.
I did have a few minor problems with the book, but those must be laid at the door of Oxford University Press. The book contains so many typos that I can only suppose it wasn't proofread by a professional. The paper is so thin that the printer was forced to use dark gray ink instead of black to avoid show-through, a real nuisance for those of us whose eyes aren't what they used to be. For a book of this price, this kind of penny-pinching is inexcusable.

The book is interesting but a little biased due to the political affiliations of the writer.

Good read.

Jaswant Singh has been on the forefront of Indian politics recently due to the Pokharan tests. He and Strobe Talbott periodically engage in discussions to improve Indo-US ties, etc.

This book is extremely interesting because of his position and background.

While dated, this third issue is still unmatched in breadth and depth of scholarship on this rather obscure topic. The legacy of Alexander of Macedon in Central Asia will certainly grow as more digging occurs in the region, and this book will be a valuable reference. One quibble is the lack of a complete and thorough update of the references, including footnoting the latest archaeological finds. Regardless, this text is essential for anyone interested in the ancient history of India, Central Asia, and the Hellenstic world.

This is one of very few studies available on the Greek kingdoms in Bactria (Modern Afghanistan.), and western India (Modern Pakistan.). W. W. Tarn treats the history of these Indo-Greeks as part of the general history of Hellenism. The only other major study, V.K. Narin's "The Indo-Greeks", treats the subject from a more Indian perspective. None of this should be important to the person who loves to read history-- the subject matter of a nearly legendary lost kingdom on the edge of the world, is fascinating in and of itself. This is a scholarly book, but it reads much better than the title would lead you to think

What we didn't know until Sylvia Murrs detective-like analysis of manuscripts: the late Abbé (1766-1848) had a ghostwriter - he owned an older manuscript of the Ex-Jesuit Coeurdoux (+ 1691-1779), a brilliant scholar of Indian customs and lifelong observer of his exotic environment. Dubois added to his model many sociological and ethnical observations - a real teamwork ...
The book is of outstanding interest - both authors lived in all more than 90 years in a continent whom they tried to understand - not in vain.
This book represents in a certain sense the key to Indian manners and customs the Indians themselves sometimes seem to have lost ...
* In 2002 came out a German translation with commentary

This quirky, witty, wise and subtlety bigoted account of Indian ethos is an important record of how culture missionaries viewed Hindu society and customs. Useful, but needs to be read carefully.
In the course of more than 30 years as a missionary among the people of India, Abbe Dubois found ample opportunity to observe and record Hindu practices. His first manuscript on Hindu religion and sociology, written in French, was completed in 1806. This comprehensive, annotated translation of Dubois's 1815 thorough revision of his work was completed by Henry K. Beauchamp in 1897 and revised in 1905. It offers a rare glimpse of a little known culture, and is a unique historical document of anthropological interest.
The first of three parts begins with a finely delineated view of Indian society, including commentary on the origin, divisions, and "advantages" of the caste system; the mythical origin of the Brahmins; descriptions of gurus or Hindu priests; and an explanation of the ceremonies of the Brahmins and other castes. Part 11 describes the four states of Brahminical life. It features discussions of the rules of conduct and etiquette; external and internal defilements; marriages between Brahmins and other Hindus; fasting; religious tolerance; Hindu ornaments; Brahmin wives and rules of conduct for married women; conditions of widowhood and funeral ceremonies; and samples of Hindu fables, tales, and poetry.
The final part considers, among other topics, the Hindu religion, including its feasts, temples, principal gods, and worship of animals and inanimate objects; the administration of civil and criminal justice; and the Hindu military system. Six appendices with supplementary information on distinctions of caste, rules of conduct, and other topics conclude this monumental work, a certain source of fascination for students. scholars, and anyone intrigued by Indian life and culture.
Dover (2002) unabridged republication of the third English language edition, published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905. Prefaces. Prefatory Note by Max Muller. Editor's Introduction. Index. 6 Appendices. 1 blackand white illustration. xxxiv+741pp. 533k x 8'1/2. Paperbound.

While Wirsing does present a fairly good argument, he presents a biased account of the dispute. He relies on evidence that is debated. Also, the book is very dry. There are much better writers that can relay the same information.

This is the best book I have ever read on the Kashmir dispute. I saw him on PBS last year and he was great. I recommend this book to everyone. It is informative and well written analysis of the Kashmir dispute.