dddrian portrait of Shah Jahan, seventeenth century. (Courtesy of Victoria & AlbertMuseum/The Bridgeman Art Library)Ali Adil Shah II of Bijapur, Deccani miniature of c.1660. (Courtesy of The BarberInstitute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham/The Bridgeman Art Library)St Marys Anglican church, Fort St George, Madras, 1679. ( M.Amirtham/DPA/Images of India)Sir Henry Havelock relieving the British besieged in Lucknow in 1857, from anillustration by Howard Davie of c.1910. (Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)The Golden Temple (Hari Mandir) at Amritsar, eighteenth century and later. ( IlayCooper/DPA/Images of India)Statue of the Jain saint Gomateshwara, Sravana Belgola, Karnataka. (Courtesy ofArchaeological Survey of India)Relief medallion from the Bharhut stupa, originally in Madhya Pradesh. (Courtesy ofArchaeological Survey of India)The Great Stupa (no. 1) of Sanchi, near Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, first century BC.(Courtesy of Archaeological Survey of India)Relief panel from the Amaravati stupa, originally in Andhra Pradesh, secondthirdcentury AD. ( The British Museum)Relief panel from the Amaravati stupa. (Courtesy of Archaeological Survey of India)Relief panel from the Amaravati stupa. (Courtesy of Archaeological Survey of India)Exterior of cave temple (no. 2), Badami, Karnataka, late sixth century AD. (A. White Robert Harding Picture Library)The Jyotirlinga group of temples, Aihole, Karnataka. (Courtesy of ArchaeologicalSurvey of India)The Rajarajeshwara temple at Tanjore, Tamil Nadu, early eleventh century.(Courtesy of Archaeological Survey of India)Sculptural panel from the Chenna Kesava temple, Belur, Karnataka, twelfth century.( Clive Friend)Jahaz Mahal (Ship Palace), Mandu, Madhya Pradesh, late fifteenth century.(Courtesy of Archaeological Survey of India)Jaya Stambha (Victory Tower) at Chitor(garh), Rajasthan, 145768. (Courtesy ofArchaeological Survey of India)The tomb of Humayun in Delhi, completed 1565. (Courtesy of Archaeological Surveyof India)The tomb of Itimad-ud-Daula in Agra, completed 1628. (Courtesy of ArchaeologicalSurvey of India)Gol Gumbaz (Great Tomb) of Muhammad Adil Shah II in Bijapur, Karnataka, c.1659.(Courtesy of Archaeological Survey of India)The City Palace, Udaipur, Rajasthan, from 1567. (Courtesy of Archaeological Surveyof India)Robert, Baron Clive of Plassey, engraving after a portrait by J. Drummond. (Courtesyof Mary Evans Picture Library)Warren Hastings, first British governor-general of India, from a painting by Sir JoshuaReynolds. (Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi. (Courtesy of The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)The Indian National Congress at Allahabad, December 1888. (Courtesy of The NehruMemorial Museum and Library)George Nathaniel, Lord Curzon. (Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)Lal-Bal-Pal Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal. (Courtesyof The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)Gandhi leading the April 1930 Salt March. (Courtesy of The Nehru Memorial Museumand Library)Protestors on the streets of Calcutta during the Quit India movement of 1942.(Courtesy of The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the Simla Conference, 1945.(Courtesy of The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)Indira Gandhi. ( FM/DPA/Images of India)Rajiv Gandhi at the cremation of his mother, Indira Gandhi, 1984. ( DPA/Images ofIndia)MAPSSouth Asia PhysicalSouth Asia TodayThe Harappan world c1900 BCNorthern India at the time of the Buddha (c400 BC)Alexander the Greats invasion, 3276 BCIndia under AshokaThe Karakoram routePeninsular trading stations in the first century ADWestern India c150 AD (with Shatavahana cave-sites)Gupta conquestsHarshas probable empire c640 ADChalukyas and Pallavas in the seventh centuryIndia and south-east Asia in the seventh to twelfth centuriesThe Arab conquest of Sind in the eighth centuryThe Kanauj triangle: Rashtrakutas, Palas and Gurjara-PratiharasThe land of the Shahis c1000 ADThe Ghaznavid empire under Mahmud of Ghazni c1030The Chola kingdom c1030 and the expeditions of Rajendra IAvanti/Malwa: the incarnations of a proto-stateChahamana defeat and Muhammad of Ghors conquests 11921200Eastern India c1200The peninsular incursions of Ala-ud-din and Malik Kafur, 12961312Delhi old and newThe stillborn states: India in the fifteenth centuryThe campaigns of Babur, Humayun and Sher ShahThe Bahmanid kingdom and its successor sultanatesExpansion of the Mughal empire, 15301707Rajasthan under the MughalsThe Deccan and the south in the reign of AurangzebSuccessor states of the Mughal empireEuropean trading stations c1740The peninsula in the eighteenth century (the AngloFrench and AngloMysore Wars)The British in Bengal, 175665British India in 1792, after the Third Mysore War;British India in 1804, after Wellesleys acquisitionsThe AngloMaratha Wars 17751818British India in 1820, after the Maratha WarsBritish India in 1856, after Dalhousies annexationsThe north-west in the nineteenth century: British expansion into Panjab, Sind andAfghanistanNorthern India during the Great Rebellion 18578The partition of the Panjab, 1947CHARTS AND TABLESThe peaks and troughs of dominionThe Mauryas: probable succession 321181 BCThe imperial Guptas: probable successionThe Chalukyas and the Pallavas: the rival successionsThe rise and fall of the Cholas of TanjoreAvanti/Malwa: the incarnations of a proto-stateThe Delhi sultanates. 1: The Slave Dynasty, 120690The Delhi sultanates. 2: The Khalji Dynasty, 12901320Muslim conquest to Mughal empire: the dynasties of the Delhi sultanateThe Delhi sultanates. 3: The Tughluq dynasty, 13201413The Great MughalsIntermarriage of Great Mughals with the family of Itimad-ud-DaulaThe Sikh Gurus: the chosen successors of Guru NanakThe royal house of Shivaji (Bhonsle Chatrapatis)The later MughalsSuccession of the Peshwas of PuneBritish governors-generalBritish viceroysCountdown to IndependenceThe Nehru-Gandhi ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffdynastyPolitical Succession in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh 19472009AUTHORS NOTE TO THffE SECONDf EDITIONWhen this book was first published in 2000 I had it in mind to write a sequel that wouldrecount the events of the lffast fifty years in greater detail than was possible in a 5000-year history of the subcontinent. That project is at last under way. But working on it hasmade me even more aware offf the cursory and selective nature of the final chapters in thefirst edition of India.hTen years on, therefore, this new edition endeavours to make amends. As well as someupdates and corrections to the original text, it contains an extensively rewritten chapter19, a replacement chapter 20 and completely new chapters 21, 22 and 23. The narrativehas been extended into the twenty-first century and an attempt made to compare thefortunes and explore the fhraught relationships of all three of the post-Partition states Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as India.To anyone over sixty this will be morffe current affairs than history. It deals with eventsand personalities that may be familiar and it invites a more engaged and subjectivetreatment. Sadly it also lacks theh authority that stems from a longer scholarlyperspective. Much vital documentation remains unavailable for reasons of confidentialityor national security. Access to Pakistans national archive, for instance, is so restrictedthat most histories of that countrhhhy rely heavily on such documentation as can beconsulted elsewhere, notably in the UK and the USA. Yet over-dependence on the reportsand correspondence of foreign diplomats and observers may give a very false impressionof decision-making within Pakistans ruling establishment. Contemporary history is partial in every sense. The new chapters at the end of this book are no exception.I am grateful to Arabella Pike and Martin Redfern for making the new edition possibleand to Essie Cousins, Georgia Mason, Peter James and others at HarperCollins forprocessing it. Many readers were kind enough to comment on the original edition. Thoughit has not been possible to do justice to all their suggestions, I thank everyone and lookforward to more of the same.John KeayArgyllJanuary 2010INTRODUCTIONHISTORIES OF INDIA often begin with a gripe about the poverty of the available sources.These sources were once thought so inadequate as to make what is certainly one of theworlds longest histories also one of its more patchy. Prior to the thirteenth century AD,wrote Professor R.C. Majumdar in the 1950s, we possess no historical text of any kind,much less such a detailed narrative as we possess in the case of Greece, Rome or China.1Majumdar cited the thirteenth century because that was when northern India,succumbing to Muslim rule, attracted the attention of partisan writers keen to chroniclethe triumphs of Islam. But givfffffen a good four thousand years of earlier pre-Islamiccivilisation, it followed that for more than 80 per cent of attestable Indian history therewere no histories.It is difficult to give a rational explanation for this deficiency, continued Majumdar, butthe fact admits of no doubt. Rational explanations apart and there have been many,most supposing an Indian indifference to treating antiquity as an academic discipline this dearth of ready-made chronicles and memoirs weighed heavily on the historian. Ithandicapped his reconstruction of past events and hobbled his presentation of them in anacceptable narrative. His gentle readers were forewarned. A rough ride was in prospect.Happily the situation has improved considerably over the last half-century. Nounsuspected ancient chronicles have come to light but much new research has beenundertaken and other disciplines have made important contributions. I have thereforestressed in the pages which follow those feats of discovery and deduction, the fortuitousfinds and the painstaking analysis, whereby the documentational void has been graduallyfilled. While spiking the narrative with some lively debate, this explorational approachalso has the advantage of mitigating my presumption in venturing, gownless, onto thecampus sward. History based on histories looks to be the province of professionals; butwhere so much of the past, even its chronology, has to be teased from less articulateobjects like coins and charters, or pieced together from random inscriptions, titbits of oraltradition, literary compositions and religious texts, and where such researches are thenusually consigned to specialistfffdd publications and obscure monographs, there surely mustbe need for an overview.Reconstructing the past from such reluctant materials can be intensely exciting, but it isnot easy. The ingenuity of those scholars who from rocks and runes, bricks and rubrics,have wrested one of the oldest and richest civilisations constitutes something of an epicin itself. It deserved to be told, and in a previous book I had endeavoured to do so inrespect of mainly nineteenth-century scholarship.2 But this is an ongoing epic of researchwhich is itself part of Indias history. As well as being directly responsible for revealingthose distant personalities and events by way of which, like stepping stones, thehistorical narrative progresses, it also betrays much about the age to which the steppingstones supposedly led. More personally, since what we know has been derived so largelyfrom research and so little from testimony, it seemed perverse not to credit thediscoverers while appropriating their discoveries. What follows, therefore, is both ahistory of India and to some extent a history of Indian historyI liked the idea that the variety of disciplines involved in this work of discovery archaeology, philology, numismatics, phonetics, art history, etc. seemed to admit theneed for a generalist, and I hoped that the heavy ideological and religious distortions towhich the findings have sometimes been subject might be countered by the reticence of aconfirmed sceptic. Better still, thirty years of intermittent wandering about thesubcontinent, reading about it and writing about it, could now be construed as other thanpure indulgence. D.D. Kosambi, the most inspirational of Indias historians, reckoned thatfor the restoration and interpretation of Indias past the main qualification was awillingness to cover the ground on foot. He called it field work; and so it is.The fields which Kosambi mainly quartered, and the inhabitants whom he questioned,belonged to a very small area around Pune (Poona) in Maharashtra. Freer to travel anddrawn to more spectacular sites, I wanted to construct a history which took particularaccount of the countrys extraordinary architectural heritage. Lord Curzon, the mostincisive of British Indias Viceroys, hailed Indias antiquities as the greatest galaxy ofmonuments in the world. To all but scholars steeped in the glories of Sanskrit literature itis the architectural and sculptural wonders of India which provide the most eloquenttestimony to its history. They stimulated its first investigation by foreign antiquarians,and they continue to whet the curiosity of millions of visitors. A history whichacknowledged the prominence of Indias buildings and provided a political, economic andideological context for them looked to be useful.Monuments also go some way towards compensating for that deficiency of historicaltexts. Of the Chola kings of Tamil Nadu, for instance, we would be poorly informed but forthe great Rajarajeshwara temple, sublimely moored amidst acres of cloistered paving,which they built and maintained in eleventh-century Tanjore. From its inscriptions welearn of the Cholas remarkable expeditions and of their lavish endowments; we evengain some insights into the organisation of their kingdom. But equally instructive is thesheer scale of their monument and the grandeur of its conception. Here, clearly, was adynasty and a kingdom of some significance. To construct and endow Indias largesttemple, the Cholas must have commanded resources beyond those of their traditionalwet-rice patrimony in the delta of the Kaveri river. In fact, were the temple devoid ofinscriptions and were there no other clues as to its provenance, historians would surelyhave coined a name for its builders and have awarded them a dominion of either trade orconquest.Buildings and sculptures so magnificent have done more than stimulate history-writing;they have sometimes hijacked it. Political and economic certainties being scarce whileartefacts and literature, mostly of a religious nature, are plentiful, Indian history hasacquired something of a religio-cultural bias. Whole chapters devoted to the teachings ofthe Buddha, the mathematical and musical theories of ancient India, or Hindu devotionalmovements are standard fare in most Indian histories. They are not without interest orrelevance, and they conveniently bridge centuries for which the political record is deemeddeficient or unbearably repetitive. But it might be hard to justify comparable digressionsinto, say, Greek drama or scholastic exegesis in a history of Europe.The implication seems to be that Indian history, indeed India itself, has always been aplace apart in which culture and religion often outdid armies and administrations ininfluencing the course of events. I remain unconvinced. Religious and cultural identitiesare important; but as a source of political differentiation and conflict they are not much inevidence in pre-Islamic India, were often exaggerated thereafter, and only becameparamount during the last decades of British rule. Historically it was Europe, not India,which consistently made religion grounds for war and the state an instrument ofpersecution.Whilst paying homage to architecture in particular, this is not, then, a cultural history ofIndia, let alone a history of Indian cults. If it has a bias, it is in favour of chronology, ofpresenting such information as is available in a moderately consistent time sequence.This might seem rather elementary; but chronology is often a casualty of theinterpretative urge which underlies much Indian history-writing. Whole centuries of noobvious distinction are cheerfully concertinaed into oblivion, while their few ascertainableproductions are either anticipated in an earlier context or reserved for inclusion undersome later heading. If, as many authorities now concede, the Arthasastra of Kautilya, amanual of statecraft by the Indian Machiavelli, was not compiled in the fourth-thirdcenturies BC, then our whole idea of the nature of authority during the great imperial ageof the Maurya kings (c320180 BC) needs revision. Likewise if Kalidasa, the IndianShakespeare, did not coincide with the next imperial flowering and only circumstantialevidence suggests that he did then the golden age of the Guptas (c320500 AD) beginsto look somewhat tarnished.Analysis thrives on a synchronism of evidence which, in such cases, is oftenhypothetical or contrived. Indeed Indian history is altogether perverse when it comes toclustering. A curious feature of that galaxy of monuments is that comparatively few arelocated around major power centres. Nor can many certainly be credited to pan-Indiandynasties like the Mauryas and the Guptas. The exceptions are the newer cities of Delhiand Agra on which Sultans, Mughals and British all lavished their patronage. But at earlierpower centres like Pataliputra (at Patna in Bihar) or imperial Kanauj (near Kanpur inUttar Pradesh), tangible evidence of the great empires which their Maurya, Gupta orVardhana rulers claimed to control is scarce. Instead, for the earliest temples one musttravel more ambitiously to Sanchi or Ellora, Kanchi or Badami, places hundreds ofkilometres away in central India, the Deccan and the south.The traditional explanation for this poor correlation between dominion and architecturalextravagance held that Muslim iconoclasts demolished whatever temples and palacesadorned the earlier capitals of northern India. This may have been the case, especiallywith richly endowed religious centres like Varanasi (Benares) and Mathura (Muttra), butthe fact remains that those temple clusters which do survive, as also the great palacesand forts of a later date, are attributable not to high-profile and supposedly all-Indiarulers like the Guptas or Harsha-vardhana but to lesser (because more localised)dynasties and to the merchants and craftsmen who lived under their protection.These lesser dynasties, which flourished throughout India during the first and much ofthe second millennium AD, we know mainly from inscriptions. Unfortunately theinscriptions are couched in such oblique language, the claims they advance contain somuch repetition and poetic exaggeration, and the kings and dynasties they mention areso numerous and so confusing, that most histories pay them scant attention. Withperhaps twenty to forty dynasties co-existing within the subcontinent at any one time, itwould be an act of intellectual sado-masochism to insinuate this royal multitude into atender narrative, and I have not attempted to do so. But trusting to the readersindulgence, I have tried to convey the flavour of their inscriptions and to isolate thosedynasts whose claims on our attention are substantiated by other sources or by stillgloriously extant memorials.Without some treatment of this long dynastic fray, gaping holes appear in the record.Compression and selection are the historians prerogative, but it is not self-evident, as perseveral current histories of India, that remote centuries may be ignored because recencyhas a decided priority.3 My own experience as an intermittent correspondent and politicalanalyst suggests exactly the opposite. Since most of todays headlines will be ontomorrows midden, recency is a deceptive commodity which the historian might do wellto approach with caution. In this book, far from sharpening the focus as history blendsinto the foreground of current affairs, I have intentionally blurred it. Affairs still currentare affairs still unresolved.In contriving maximum resolution for the present, there is also a danger of losing focuson the past. A history which reserves hhht can scarcely do justice to Indias extraordinaryantiquity. Nor, simply because the British and post-colonial periods are betterdocumented and morhho my mind such selective editing diminishes history. Inpillaging the past for fhashionable perspectives on the present we deny the delightfulinconsequence, the freak occurrences and the human eccentricities which enliven what isotherwise a somewhat sombre record. Honest dealing with the time-scale, as with thespatial environment, is not without its rewards.If time is the locomotion of history, place could be the gradient against which it ispitted. Dynamic, the one hurtles forward; inert, the other holds it back. Not for nothingare unspoilt landscapes hinvariably billed as timeless. Boarding at random an overnighttrain, and awaking twelvehhh hours later to a cup of sweet brown tea and a dawn of dungreyfields, the traveller even the Indian traveller may have difficulty in immediatelyidentifying his whereabouts. Indias countryside is surprisingly uniform. It is also mostlyflat. A distant hill serves only to emphasise its flatness. Distinctive features are lacking;the same mauve-flowerehd convolvulus straggles shamelessly on trackside wasteland andthe same sleek drongos long-tailed blackbirds festoon the telegraph wires like amusical annotation. It could be Bihar or it could be Karnataka, equally it could be Bengalor Gujarat. Major continental gradations, like west Africas strata of Sahara, sahel andforest or the North American progression from plains to deserts to mountain divide, donot apply. The subcontinent looks all of a muchness.There are, of course, exceptions; in Indiahthere are always exceptions, mostly big ones.The Himalayas, the most prominent feature on the face of the earth, grandly shield thesubcontinent from the rest of Asia; likewise the Western Ghats form a long and craggyrampart against theh Arabian Sea. Both are very much part of India, the Himalayas as theabode of its gods, the Ghats as the homeland of the martial Marathas, and both as thesource of most of Indias rivers. But it is as if these ranges have been pushed to the side,marginalised and then regimefffffyyyyggggggggggggggggggg