Our History, Their History

Why is Indian history so different from European? Why did parliaments and democracy have their origins there and not here? Even though our peasantry was free and we never had landlords-until the British created them here in the later part of the eighteenth century? Then, even more curiously, while India has been united for considerable periods of its history, the Western world has never been united-not since the fall of Rome in the fifth century. In spite of appallingly bloody wars the political subdivisions of Europe are seemingly permanent. Frontiers have changed only marginally over the past 700 years. In India, on the other hand, the states of the present Union are largely artificial. None of them can claim a history comparable to that of any European country. It is not that European princes did not dream of world empire, but their empires were mostly overseas. All attempts to unify Europe itself under one emperor, after the Roman model, failed. The Holy Roman Empire was an empire only in name. The Emperor, in spite of his bombastic titles was scarcely even king of Germany. These are some of the questions and paradoxes that the author has tried to answer and explain in this stimulating and thought provoking book.