Description: Designed for undergraduate and graduate courses on Indian history and politics, this text provides a sweeping look at India from pre-history to the twenty-first century. The author shows how the complex legacies of religious identity and traditional culture, the experience of imperialism, and the country's distinctive path to independence and modernity have shaped, and continue to shape, India today. He richly documents India's kaleidoscopic social and cultural landscape, its remarkable emergence from colonial rule and embrace of democracy, the rise of a cohort of Indian entrepreneurs building a modern economy, and the burgeoning diversity of Indian political life today, both in New Delhi and in the states. Adding a special dimension of understanding, the book opens and closes with insightful comparisons, first, between the traditional civilizations of India and China, and finally, between modern India and China as rapidly emerging economic and regional powers, one a vibrant democracy and the other a single-party dictatorship.

1. Traditional India: An Overview and Comparison
2. Indian Civilization: From Pre-History to the Eighteenth Century
3. India's Adjustment to British Aggression: 1756-1857

4. The British Record: An Overview
5. The Making of a Communal Polity: 1858-1908
6. Constitutionalism and the Politics of Communalism: 1908-1947

7. Jawaharlal Nehru, 1947-1964: The Shaping of a New Order
8. Indira Gandhi, 1966-1984: Authoritarianism and the New Communalism
9. The Decline of the Congress, 1985-1996: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism and Caste Politics
10. The Rise of the BJP as a National Party,1996-2004: Toward a New Polity
11. The Resurrection of the Congress: The General Elections of 2004 and 2009
12. Epilogue. Modern India and Modern China: An Overview and Comparison