A New History of India: From Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century

De: Toby Sinclair, Shobita Punja, Rudrangsh Mukherjee

Narrado por: Elvis Mathias

A complete one-volume history of India. The book covers all the major landmarks of Indian history from prehistoric times up to the 21st century—starting with the country’s geological origins a few billion years in the past and the migration of Homo sapiens from Africa into the region several millennia ago. It traces the evolution of Indian civilization through a multitude of epochs, personalities and turning points, including the Harappan Culture, Vedic Society, the age of Mahavira and the Buddha, Ashoka and the Mauryas, the Gupta period, the Delhi Sultanate, major kingdoms in the east, west and south, the Mughal empire, European incursions into the subcontinent, the British Raj, the freedom struggle led by Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose, Tagore and others, Independence and Partition and key developments in the life of the modern republic. Deepening the overarching narrative are essays on archaeology, caste, religion, art, architecture, philosophy, language, culture, the economy and various aspects of the nation’s plural, diverse society. Written by award-winning historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee along with cultural historian Shobita Punja and photographer-archivist Toby Sinclair, A New History of India brings the story of one of the oldest, most complex countries on earth to vivid life with a text of depth, clarity and rigorous scholarship.

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©2023 Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Shobita Punja, and Toby Sinclair (P)2024 Audible, Inc.

Long, complex history of the land now home to 1.3 billion people

I decided to read this to learn about the country where many of my colleagues/friends have their origins, now a country wanting to grow and flex national power. I barely realized for most of the book that the India I was reading about was a much greater part of South Asia than the artifact of colonial meddling called India today. I also wanted to understand how India evolved to have a Hindu and Muslim identity. Going back 4.5 billion years to the present, the authors presented rich detail in an economical manner to answer my key questions and to give a thoughtful summary of how the area evolved through ages, empires and kingdoms, creating the cultural and political elements of today’s India. The detail of geography, leaders and cultural elements were a challenge to follow at times, but the info I hoped to find was there, and more.