It is true that the early Nehruvian textbooks were written by Romila Thapar and so on, many of whom were Marxists. Sometimes, those textbooks did sor… - William Dalrymple

Everybody has their own India and I think it’s a nonsense construction, “a real India”. The real India might be the India of the villages and certainly there’s a lot to be said of the fact that India’s heart lies in its villages. But I live 5 miles down the road from Gurgaon with kyscrapers and software companies and backoffice projects and call-centers. And that’s a very real India too, so I think “real India” doesn’t make much sense-- anymore than the real US with apple pie and Thanksgiving and family around campfires; is that anymore real than Manhattan?

What has gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan has many echoes with what was going in this part of the world in 18th and 19th century - setting up of puppet governments, the lending of troops and the training of local troops in recent Western techniques. Anyone that knows the history of South Asia in 18th century can see million echoes in what has been going in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am basically writing for a general audience rather than an academic audience. So, I explain stuff, I don’t assume knowledge of any of this on the part of the reader. In a kind of general sense I suppose I have, when I am deciding how much needs to be explained, in mind my primary audience.