Advance praise for the book
‘Deepens our sense of the wonder that was India’
PANKAJ MISHRA
A brilliant, original and deeply engaging social and cultural history of India
The book takes the reader through nearly 5000 years of India’s history, revealing the worldviews of early Indians at various times—and what of it lives on and what has disappeared among modern Indians.
About the Book
What do we really know about the Aryan migration theory and why is that debate so hot?
Why did the people of Khajuraho carve erotic scenes on their temple walls?
What did the monks at Nalanda eat for dinner?
Did our ideals of beauty ever prefer dark skin?
Indian civilization is an idea, a reality, an enigma. In this riveting book, Namit Arora takes us on an unforgettable journey through 5000 years of history, reimagining in rich detail the social and cultural moorings of Indians through the ages. Drawing on credible sources, he discovers what inspired and shaped them: their political upheavals and rivalries, customs and vocations, and a variety of unusual festivals. Arora makes a stop at six iconic places—the Harappan city of Dholavira, the Ikshvaku capital at Nagarjunakonda, the Buddhist centre of learning at Nalanda, enigmatic Khajuraho, Vijayanagar at Hampi, and historic Varanasi—enlivening the narrative with vivid descriptions, local stories and evocative photographs. Punctuating this are chronicles of famous travellers who visited India—including Megasthenes, Xuanzang, Alberuni and Marco Polo—whose dramatic and idiosyncratic tales conceal surprising insights about our land.
In lucid, elegant prose, Arora explores the exciting churn of ideas, beliefs and values of our ancestors through millennia—some continue to shape modern India, while others have been lost forever. An original, deeply engaging and extensively researched work, Indians illuminates a range of histories coursing through our veins.
About the Author
Namit Arora chose a life of reading and writing after cutting short his career in the Internet industry. Raised in the Hindi belt of India, he lived in Louisiana, Northern California and Western Europe, and travelled in scores of countries before returning to India over two decades later in 2013. He is the author of The Lottery of Birth, a collection of essays, and the novel Love and Loathing in Silicon Valley. For more about him, visit shunya.net.
More Praise for the Book-
‘Illuminating, absorbing and a joy to read. I defy anyone to peruse it and not feel richly rewarded by its insights’
– JOHN KEAY
‘Arora dissolves the time between the past and the present, revealing how complex and diverse India has always been . . . Indians is both timely and necessary’ – SAMANTH SUBRAMANIAN
‘A gem of a book that is a joy to read . . . You can almost touch and feel the centuries and millennia as they pass by’
– TONY JOSEPH
‘Possessed by wanderlust, Arora takes the reader on an intricate and perceptive journey through India . . . A brilliant and original achievement’– ASSADORON
‘A gripping read with scholarly rigour’– DEVANGANA DESAI
