A book for the adventurous but time-pressed traveller seeking to experience the real Calcutta in a way few others will. The narrative takes you far from any tourist trail and plunges you deep into the heart of Calcutta, seen through its teeming backstreets and byways; its people and endearing idiosyncrasies Set against a backdrop of the City's social and historical development, all life is here; colourful, vibrant, relentless and inescapable.

This wandering odyssey through the city's pullulating backstreets 0and serpentine byways reveals a Calcutta rarely glimpsed by western travellers. Arranged as a series of journeys on foot through the older quarters of the city seldom trod by outsiders, the narrative chronicles the topography, social and historical background and the vibrant street life and characters which give Calcutta its uniqueness. Complete with detailed directions and street maps for the areas explored, the book provides a storehouse of indispensable information for the intrepid traveller.

An account of the author's experiences in the Indian sub-continent, living through a period of partition and independence, with an introduction to political developments and a socio-economic scenario.

The Vedic-Puranic literature as well as archaeological, geological, historical, linguistic, and literary accounts have been reviewed to establish the various cultures that evolved in ancient India from about 3500 BCE to the Mahabharata War (1450 BCE). The book describes various misconceptions, e.g., the myth about an Aryan invasion. The following markers are used to establish the dates and geographical locations of various cultures: (i) The rise in sea levels due to melting of land-based snow after the last Ice Age. (ii) Migration of the Dravidian people from the lost continent of Kumari Kandam that submerged under the Indian Ocean. (iii) The dates for the start of farming, use of kiln-baked bricks, domestication of horses, and metal working in the Indian subcontinent. (iv) The dates when Sarasvati River dried up and the Mahabharata War occurred. The book notes that asva-containing or rath-containing names could not have existed before horses were domesticated or chariots were in use. The book also notes that Mathura Krsna is different from Dwarka Krsna; the two are separated by more then 1000 years. During Mathura Krsna’s time, conflicts were settled by hand-to-hand combat or with the use of a mace. In contrast, during Dwarka Krsna’s time, metal arms were used.

This book examines a regional culture as it was subjected to acute interpretative stress for much of the nineteenth century. This is done through a study of three key facets to contemporary Hindu thought - a possible interplay between the divinely ordained and human history, innovative extensions in the meaning of older terms like 'Dharma', and new moral and cultural theories around select mythical figures and traditionally revered texts.

India's history and culture is ancient and dynamic, spanning back to the beginning of human civilization. Beginning with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India, the history of India is punctuated by constant integration with migrating peoples and with the diverse cultures that surround the country. Placed in the center of Asia, history in India is a crossroads of cultures from China to Europe, as well as the most significant Asian connection with the cultures of Africa. The Historical Dictionary of Ancient India provides information ranging from the earliest Paleolithic cultures in the Indian subcontinent to 1000 CE. The ancient history of this country is related in this book through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on rulers, bureaucrats, ancient societies, religion, gods, and philosophical ideas.

This book is the first systematic study of the genealogy, discursive structures, and political implications of the concept of ‘Greater India’, implying a Hindu colonization of Southeast Asia, and used by extension to argue for a past Indian greatness as a colonial power, reproducible in the present and future. From the 1880s to the 1960s, protagonists of the Greater India theme attempted to make a case for the importance of an expansionist Indian civilisation in civilizing Southeast Asia. The argument was extended to include Central Asia, Africa, North and South America, and other regions where Indian migrants were to be found. The advocates of this Indocentric and Hindu revivalist approach, with Hindu and Indian often taken to be synonymous, were involved in a quintessentially parochial project, despite its apparently international dimensions: to justify an Indian expansionist imagination that viewed India’s past as a colonizer and civilizer of other lands as a model for the restoration of that past greatness in the future. Zabarskaite shows that the crucial ideologues and elements used for the formation of the construct of Greater India can be traced to the svadeśī movement of the turn of the century, and that Greater India moved easily between the domains of the scholarly and the popular as it sought to establish itself as a form of nationalist self-assertion.

Chiefly in the Indian context.