Rating: 
Summary: good, but thin general interest overview
Review: "India : A History" by John Keay is a good summary overview of the whole span of recorded Indian history from the Harappan culture circa 1600BCE to modern times. As such I do not think it has a better example for the general reader. It suffers however, from some of the more glaring omissions and is very thin in the topics of cultural history, anthropology, Indian foreign relations (especially with SE Asia and China); especially poor rendition in my opinion is of the period of Raj and British dominance, and of period from Buddha's lifetime on to proliferation of Islam.
Rating: 
Summary: Continuation of previously submitted review
Review: Another reviewer points out the scant attention given to the evolution of Hinduism and its role in the historical make up of India. I agree that some insights into this aspect of Hinduism would add an important dimension to this book. Most notably, it it is amazing that a volume on Indian history going to upward of 500 pages would pay such a scant attention to Adi Sankara who almost single handedly reversed the inroads being made by Buddhism and Jainism and brought millions of Indians back to the Hindu fold. Also, it would have been interesting to analyze how the Hindu religion withstood centuries of conquest and imperialism to survive in the hearts of multitudes of India to end up being the longest unbroken tradition of the world today.
Rating: 
Summary: Better Books on this subject out there
Review: Any serious student of Indian history will tell you that the book lacks a lot on presenting any factual data/information to support its claims and is more a repetition of a lot of disproved myths about Indian History. Especially, the mention of the obsolete Aryan Invasion Theory of India shows that there was no major effort to research the facts before publishing.
Rating:
Summary: Encompassing, systematically laid out and an absorbing read
Review: Anyone with a passing interest in Indian History would acknowledge the colossal expanse of the subject matter. As the birthplace of an indigenous civilization dating back to the 3rd Millennium B.C, the land that nourished three major religions and the seat of power of many dominant rulers in these intervening years, Indian History is also intricately linked to the history of many other South Asian countries, not to mention the two nations which sprang directly from this land. Any historian attempting to capture the general history of India in a single volume faces the daunting task of capturing the multi ethnic flavour of this land which for the most part of the period in consideration comprised of more than one kingdom or state, each pursuing their own territorial and cultural interests. This partly explains the relative paucity of an all encompassing work on this subject, even while literature abounds with treatments on specific sub-topics of this genre. John Keay attempts just that in his "India: A History" and comes up with a top quality work, one which manages to effectively capture and present the matter to the reader like a rich palimpsest in it's varied and vivid hues.
Starting from the shores of the Indus River and the Indus Valley civilization in the year 3000 B.C, John Keay tracks down the significant phases in the story of the making of India as it is now, in the process covering such important sub-topics such as the Aryan Invasion, the writing of the Vedas, Greek invasion, the Maurya and Gupta empires, the South Indian Dynasties, Kushanas, the Muslim Conquests, the Delhi Sultanates, the Moguls, the Marathas, the colonial incursions, the establishment of the British Raj culminating with the Freedom struggle and establishment of the Indian Republic. No topic is given an overbearing preponderance, the attention accorded mostly being based on the percentage of populace impacted by the specific event and presently what we have is a book that has no undue leanings to any period or aspect of Indian History.
Understandably, the book leaves a minor section of the "Mile Deep Research" Historians looking for more details on subjects close to their heart such as the Vedas, Archeology, Religious movements etc. However, the gargantuan scope of this book precludes any such in-depth treatment on some of these esoteric matters and besides, inclusion of lengthy sections on these might have rendered the work unwieldy and I daresay boring to a great cross-section of the readers. The book lays out every facet of this mammoth subject in an easy to follow, logical structure, deftly moving from one frame to the other while striving to maintain such continuity as is possible of an essentially incoherent story.
John Keay's method of story telling seems uniquely suited to the purpose of this book. He chooses mostly to operate from the macro level and then to peel the onion systematically through long sweeping shots of specific sections, returning to the original flow to move on to the next frame. The language is elegant and occasionally revealing of the author's dry sense of humor, keeping the reader involved throughout the book. For the most part, the author also remains dispassionate in his narrative and focuses on documented facts and figures, not given to excessive conjecturing. However, while on Britain's Colonial enterprises in the sub-continent, no native English author could be expected to maintain a strictly neutral point of view, and the author gives in to the average European's patronizing attitude to the British Raj, sharing their conviction about the intrinsic benevolence of British governance of India. I do not personally hold this against John Keay though, and I look at it purely as a matter of perspective. I believe that a student of history needs to take an eclectic approach while on the subject, that being the sole differentiator between him and the ones given to pedagogical dogmatism.
Notwithstanding this (slightly and only) discordant note in this lengthy account, I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, virtuosos and novices alike and irrespective of their historic viewpoints. You are guaranteed an absorbing read ahead.
Rating: 
Summary: Thorough but dry and overly detailed
Review: Before I commence with my review I feel I should state that my knowledge of the history of the Indian sub-continent was limited, at best, prior the reading this book. However, I am well versed in history in general, and I believe that my readings on other topics have provided me with a valuable frame of reference for my review of Keay's "India: A History". Without a doubt, Keay set himself a daunting task; "India" the nation-state is the end result of colonial policy and modern politics and does not in and of itself represent the extent of Indian culture or the breadth of its geography. In effect, Keay undertook a task equivalent to writing a history of pre-European North America in one volume. One item that will stay with me from this work is just how fractured and variegated the Indian Sub-Continent's people are. Unfortunately, even after acknowledging the difficulty of the task he set for himself, I am afraid that the author fell short. It certainly wasn't for lack of effort or detailed historical research. Quite the contrary, in fact; the reader is pummeled page after page with a barrage of dynasties and kingdoms, that to the non-expert seem to blur into one. While politics are undeniably critical to any history, Keay all to often ignored cultural and religious developments while examining political ones in excruciating detail. Of particular note was the scant attention he paid to the evolution of Hinduism. I realize that this is supposed to be a broad overview, but considering the role Hinduism has played in India's development, I feel an examination of it would have been worth a chapter, at least. The one area where I felt Keay got things right was the Indian drive for independence from the British. From about 1850 on, he seems to develop a real passion for the material and injects some vibrancy into what had been a very dry narrative to that point. While some reviewers have complained of a pro-British bias, I found the writing to be very well balanced, and if anything, nominally pro-Indian. Unfortunately, even in the modern era, the writing continues to be uneven. For example, he examines the rise of the Congress Party in great depth, but offers almost no detail on the Indo-Pak wars. Furthermore, after going to great lengths to discuss India the Sub-Continent (as opposed to the country) Keay has almost nothing to say about Pakistan in the post-partition era. In the end, this isn't a terrible history, but it is terribly uneven, and incredibly dry. I definitely took away a greater knowledge of India and a better understanding of its history, but I was left wanting more. Perhaps that's the nature of any one-volume history, but I think it owes more to Keay's dry delivery and under appreciation of the sub-continent's cultures and religions. If you're new to Indian history, this probably isn't a bad place to start, but it is by no means a definitive work.
Rating:
Summary: A good first read
Review: Coming to this page, you probably know already that it's difficult to find a comprehensive introduction to the history of India, especially one that doesn't give short thrift to the fascinating ancient period. John Keay's book is well balanced in the attention he gives to each time period and is satisfying complete in its sweep. He also presents fairly up-to-date accounts of problematic areas in Indian history, such as the Arya migration. At the same time, Keay is not a scholar and he leaves many open questions. Despite his billing on the back cover as a "historian' and "South Asia expert," Keay is not affiliated with a university (to the best of my knowledge) and, as the lack of acknowledgements implied to me, was not writing from within a scholarly community. His history lacks the copious notes that give a reader access to primary sources and point to important contemporary scholars. (This is not to say that Keay doesn't mind his attributions; they are quite appropriate, just not as thorough as I would have liked.) Keay's choices, narratively speaking, are conservative ones, focusing on political history. This is not a criticism, though - I found his editorial hand appropriate to the scope of his project. He does include pertinent social and cultural information, though not in abundance. For a more social history of early India, I recommend Romila Thapar's "Beyond History" (a bit difficult to track down), though I understand her general history of India (volume one is readily available as a Penguin paperback) is a bit outdated.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction for westerners
Review: First of all, let me open with the slack-jawed observation that India's a big country and has been around for millennia. Imagine, those of you who might specialize in US history, a country almost as big in area, but with more than 3 times the population, including a number of cities the size of, or larger, than New York City, and one with at least four thousand years of history. Oh, and did I mention that several hundred languages are spoken in this area, which came to modern statehood via a British colonialization process, at times benign, at times malign, which stretched from the 18th century Great Age of Exploration through to the end of World War II. At first I almost despaired. Names of people, gods, maybe people who were a bit of both - no one was really sure - peoples coming from places which kept changing their names - all flowed by me in a colourful but overwhelming tapestry (like on the very handsome green and gold dust jacket, incidentally). Gradually, as we came into more familiar territory, the Moghul Empire, the British Raj and the princely states, and the struggle for independence as centrifugal forces spun the nation state apart into three nations even as this independence occurred, I came to find myself not only on familiar ground, but learning. Learning, and learning, and I couldn't put the book down. Incidentally, it's very current, bringing the reader right up to Vajpayee and Musharraf. And ends with - what else - a warning about Kashmir. But you really have to want to know about the history of South Asia to finish this book. Fortunately, as this was my first time dipping deeply into this particular well, the author was gentle, patient and led one to conclusions rather than giving you a tour of his own museum of pre-formed plastic conclusions. P.S. One nice little thing, besides the handsome dust jacket, that I appreciated, was that it used international English spelling -- ironic given that it was published by Atlantic Monthly Press, but apparently it was originally published in India. I wish our Canadian publishers had the guts to avoid the US cultural steamroller in this way.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for starting a study on Indian history
Review: Having read all the editorials and customer reviews of this obviously popular book, I realise that there is a great danger of letting one's personal view of history get in the way of an objective analysis of the contents of a books such as this. So let me say up front that I have no firm views on the provenance of Inidan civilisation, other than to say that I am attracted to the theory that the Indus civilisation is the forerunner of the later Indian civilisations. But holding that view doesn't necessarily make it so! My interest in history goes back to my college days, and I now have the time to read as much as history I can take. I have usually tended to concentrate on the Ancient Near East and Europe and those dark eras (such as Western Europe in 5th - 6th centuries AD, Ancient Near East in Late Bronze Age times, and the early civilisations prior to that) where documentary evidence is either sparse, contradictory, confusing, or downright incorrect. But I have never been totally satisfied with the explanations of how the early civilisations developed, and the impact of India on these early civilisations was an unkown to me One of the problems I have in understanding these complex civilisations is how many of the theories are based on so few facts. I have read many books where the author has built hypothesis upon hypothesis to come up with conclusions which I, along with many others, find very hard to accept. These books are often very selective in their use of the facts and tend ro focus only on those which support their theories. This calls into question their objectivity, and so I usually suspend my judgement on their findings until I have searched out more hard data. Even so, they have usually served a useful function in forcing me to widen my search "for the truth"
I accept the fact that there are historians and that there are scholars and that they have a different focus. For me a successful and respected historian (like John Keay) is best if he concentrates on a survey of what is known, what the various competing theories are, and how the available data has been interpreted to support these theories. For scholars it is different, because they are trying to discover and interpret more facts, and for that they must have some view or theory as to what happened. This is why I, as an amateur, must be ever watchful for the use of selective arguments, and the danger of theories developed on the basis of hypotheses built on other hypotheses. For me, the completeness and the correct interpretation of available data is very important. Like most westerners, my knowledge of India is very limited. Oh yes, I had learned about the Raj from my school days, and realise how British Empire centric it was. In recent years, as I read more about the Ancient Near East, the more I kept on picking up peripheral references to contacts with early India. So a book such as "Search for the Cradle of Civilisation" by Feuerstein, Kak, Frawley would naturally catch my eye, and an interesting and well written book it is too. However, it left me with the problem that I really didn't know enough about the history of India to determine how selective the authors were being in the development of their position that the survivors of the Harrapan (Sarasvati) civilisation were the authors of the Vedas and the founders of the later great civilisations of the Ganges. I feel that they have put forward a convincing case, but my knowledge of that era is so limited that I need to know a lot more in order for me to accept their position as the only right one
So in doing a survey of general books on the history of India, and after reading the various editorials and customer reviews, John Keay's book stood out for me as the most up-to-date one to start with, being one which would help me understand the history of India a little better, knowing full well, of course, that there were many others which could probably have served that purpose just as well.. Did it meet my expectations? Yes it did, although because of my focus, I would have liked to have seen more on ancient history, and less on the modern era. But you take what you've got, and while it was a hard slog at times, I found it to be absorbing, interesting, and helpful. The charts and the maps were excellent and really helped me understand the confusing facts about the various dynasties of the last 2300 years, and in particular, the Moslem conquest, the British Raj, and the period of post independence. The extensive biography assuaged my disappointment in the coverage of the period prior to 320BCE, and I now feel positioned and well motivated to investigate many other promising books which focus on that particular era. I have at least 8 candidates for my next studies which include Shereen Ratnagar, Richard Meadow, Gyan Gupta, Gregory Possehl, Burton Stein, Jane McIntosh and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Romila Thapar - and that will keep me busy for a while!
Rating:
Summary: A very good taster
Review: How to compress so long a history into just over 500 pages? Well, something has to be left out, short-cuts have to be taken and the author has to choose which particular aspects of history to emphasise. I accepted all these considerations as inevitable before starting the book - indeed I needed such abbreviation because I wanted the book to open a door for me, not give me a detailed description of the room the door led to. General histories tend to succeed if they give the reader a broad contextual map and stimulate the reader onto more detailed reading. Keay succeeded in doing that for me. I accept the Indian reviewers' argument that Keay's account is Euro-centric, but I do not think that this is detrimental for two reasons: (a) I'm more familiar with British history than Eastern/Indian history, and as such comparisons and cross-references helped me locate Indian history in my mind - provided reference points if you like. This served to emphasise the antiquity of India. As a European reader, I needed this; and (b) Keay is Euro-centric, but not an apologist for the Europeans in general and the British in particular. No-one could read Keay's account of the Raj and come away with an intact image of a paternalistic yet benevolent and altruistic Empire. Imperialism was born out of and maintained by (primarily) economic and racial self-interest. Damage was done to India (and although Keay does not examine this, to Britain too). Of the Indian reviewers' criticisms of Keay's analysis of India's "pre-history" - for example the aryan invasion theory -my ignorance leaves me in no position to cast an opinion other than merely to observe that Keay admits to the dangers of drawing any certain conclusions due to the scarcity of information. This is not peculiar to Indian history - lack of documentation means that historians are frequently left with recourse to intelligent guesses or hypotheses. The demarcation lines between archaeology and history become very blurred and problematical. Definite answers are often elusive. On a general point, the book is rich in maps and geneological tables. I found both extremely useful. And the photos were good too!
Rating:
Summary: concise and entertaining
Review: I am not a serious history reader. I found this a very entertaining book. Given its 450 page limit, it is obviously not a very detailed book but I liked Keay's narrative and humor.Being an Indian, I found the facts in the book very close to what I have learnt either at school or through my parents. So if you have never read Indian history before, and would like a good,entertaining, brief, accurate introduction - this is it.
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