This volume, focused on Odisha, situates the region in the wider context of its trans-regional background for as the archaeological and epigraphic evidence available shows that it was an integral part of a wider zone from the early historical period. Juxtaposing the patterns obtaining in the region with developments in other parts of the subcontinent, The Making of Regions in Indian History: Society, State and Identity in Premodern Odisha delineates the cultural transactions within and beyond that went into the making of Odisha.

An acclaimed book and widely acknowledged classic, The Middle Ground steps outside the simple stories of Indian-white relations - stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as other, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called pays d'en haut. Here the older worlds of the Algonquians and of various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the re-creation of the Indians as alien and exotic. First published in 1991, the 20th anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of this study.

DID THE GREAT FLOOD OF INDIAN LEGEND ACTUALLY HAPPEN? WHY DID THE BUDDHA WALK TO SARNATH TO GIVE HIS FIRST SERMON? HOW DID THE EUROPEANS MAP INDIA? The history of any country begins with its geography. With sparkling wit and intelligence, Sanjeev Sanyal sets off to explore India and look at how the country’s history was shaped by, among other things, its rivers, mountains and cities. Traversing remote mountain passes, visiting ancient archaeological sites, crossing rivers in shaky boats and immersing himself in old records and manuscripts, he considers questions about Indian history that we rarely ask: Why do Indians call their country Bharat? How did the British build the railways across the subcontinent? Why was the world’s highest mountain named after George Everest? Moving from the geological beginnings of the subcontinent to present-day Gurgaon, Land of the Seven Rivers is riveting, wry and full of surprises. It is the most entertaining history of India you will ever read.

Explores the ways linguistic nationalism has enabled and deepened the reach of All-India nationalism. This title is also available as Open Access.

Within this volume are 350 user-friendly recipes from all over India, a country whose diverse cultures and religions are reflected in its cuisine. The recipes include background information and are designed to educate cooks in order to make them more comfortable with Indian food.

The volume analyses the complex historical and political context for the processes of state formation in independent India. It provides both a conceptual and empirical framework for an understanding of Indian democracy through the perspective of reorganisation of states. Following the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in 1956, the territorial boundaries of the states were redrawn. However, within a decade, the geo-linguistic and cultural-ideological criteria could not be considered satisfactory for the future division of states. With the formation of three new states (Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand) and the demand for Telangana statehood not accepted as yet, new dimensions and perspectives about state formation as a critical political practice have surfaced yet again in contemporary India. The book addresses a number of significant themes related to states reorganisation and its effects — questions of underdevelopment, size, political participation, governance, cultural identities — and also analyses the demand for smaller states. It focuses on different states, their historical and contemporary trajectory leading to the demand for territorial remapping and thus recognising specific political and cultural resources, and identities in the regions and sub-regions of states in India. The book will be useful for those studying politics, history, sociology, comparative politics and South Asian Studies.

Most people view cultural heritage sites as static places, frozen in time. In Cultural Landscapes in India, Amita Sinha subverts the idea of heritage as static and examines the ways that landscapes influence culture and that culture influences landscapes. The book centers around imagining, enacting, and reclaiming landscapes as subjects and settings of living cultural heritage. Drawing on case studies from different regions of India, Sinha offers new interpretations of links between land and culture using different ways of seeing—transcendental, romantic, and utilitarian. The idea of cultural landscape can be seen in ancient practices such as circumambulation and immersion in bodies of water that sustain engagement with natural elements. Pilgrim towns, medieval forts, religious sites, and contemporary memorial parks are sites of memory where myth and history converge. Engaging with these spaces allows us to reconstruct collective memory and reclaim not only historic landscapes, but ways of seeing, making, and remembering. Cultural Landscapes in India makes the case for reclaiming iconic landscapes and rethinking conventional approaches to conservation that take into consideration performative landscape as heritage.

The era from 1400 to 1800 saw intense biological, commercial, and cultural exchanges, and the creation of global connections on an unprecedented scale. Divided into two books, Volume 6 of the Cambridge World History series considers these critical transformations. The first book examines the material and political foundations of the era, including global considerations of the environment, disease, technology, and cities, along with regional studies of empires in the eastern and western hemispheres, crossroads areas such as the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, and the Caribbean, and sites of competition and conflict, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The second book focuses on patterns of change, examining the expansion of Christianity and Islam, migrations, warfare, and other topics on a global scale, and offering insightful detailed analyses of the Columbian exchange, slavery, silver, trade, entrepreneurs, Asian religions, legal encounters, plantation economies, early industrialism, and the writing of history.

India is generally regarded as a civilization with a set of intrinsic attributes that emerged in the age of the Vedas or, better still, in the Harappan times. In recent decades, historical studies have moved away from rigid perspectives of singularity in origin and expansion; the emphasis now is on pluralities and long-term processes spanning centuries and millennia. There is also an influential school of thought which rejects antiquity claims such as these and holds that India is a construct of the colonial and nationalist imagination. In his radical reinterpretation of India's past, Manu V. Devadevan moves away from these reifying assessments to examine the evolution of institutions, ideas and identities that are characterized, typically, as Indian. In lieu of endorsing their Indianness, he traces their emergence to specific conditions that developed in India between 600 and 1200 CE, a period which historians now call the 'early medieval'.