Abstract

“The first and most essential thing to learn about India,” declared a famous British administrator in 1888, is “that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India, possessing, according to European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious.”1 The statement sounds startlingly silly until one notices the defining clause, “according to European ideas.” Then one can change it to read, “One of the most essential things to learn about India is to not try to fit it into a European idea of what is essential for India.” Confusion arises because the term “India” has been used, by both foreigners and Indians, for four quite different entities. India is, first of all, a geographic term for the subcontinental region demarcated by the great sweep of hills and mountains from the northwest on the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal on the northeast, and bordered on two sides by those seas and the Indian Ocean. The ancient literature makes clear its people were aware of this distinctive, well defined land mass.

Keywords: Anthropology, Economics, Education, India, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Sociology, South Asia, World History

How to Cite:

T. Embree, A., (2003) “Top Ten Things to Know about India in the Twenty-First Century”, Education About Asia 8(3).

Rights: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/top-ten-things-to-know-about-india-in-the-twenty-first-century/