India

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857  by William Dalrymple, Alfred A. Knopf (2007)  Mughal Empire in India The Mughal empire was founded by Zahir ud-din Muhammad Babur by in 1526. Their culture was more Persian than Mongol. They built the Taj Mahal. In 18th century the Mughal Emperor hired the British East India Company as its tax collector. The British gradually conquered many princely states of India. By the time of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, the the Mughal th

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity  by Katherine Boo, Random House, 2012.  Bombay Slum The author spent three years living in the Annawadi slum near the Bombay airport. The slum had about 3000 residents, almost none of whom had jobs in the formal economy. The author describes how the children supported their families by scavenging what tourists in nearby hotels threw away. Most of the husbands were lazy drones, so the women and children

Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II  by Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books, 2010.  Indian Textiles In fact, India was the world’s number one producer of textiles before the British Industrial Revolution. To protect Britain’s nascent textile industry, the British slapped high tariffs on textile imports from India. Thereafter, India could export only the raw material, the cotton, to Great Britain, and not its manufactured goods,

Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition  by Nisid Hajar, Houghten Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.  Independence from Great Britain This is a book about what happened in August, 1947, when Britain gave its colony India its independence. Simultaneously when it freed India, it also partitioned India into Muslim and Hindu countries. Clement Atlee was British Prime Minister during the partition of India.  Timeline Before Partition 1937: The Congress Party rejected partne

India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age  by Gurcharan Das, Anchor Books, 2002.  Nehru Jawarlahal Nehru spent some time in England, where he was trained by the Fabian socialists. Nehru brought socialism back to India. The Indian socialists looked to the Soviet Union as their role model. On the plus side, Nehru favored democracy and secularism. He also helped pass the Hindu Code act, which gave women an equal share of fa