Reddit reviews A Concise History of Modern India, 3rd Edition

One major point that people should know about Pakistan is that they are culturally, religiously, historically and linguistically tied to India and to an extent, Bangladesh and Afghanistan (the latter tie being stronger than the former).

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were once a single entity under the British Raj. Most Indian nationalists at that time, and some (though a smaller component) of Greater India nationalists see these three countries as one entity.

There are many reasons as to why India and Pakistan split, some of them are very legitimate concerns, whereas there are some issues that were very clearly motivated by personal interests of several leaders.

There is more to the split between India and Pakistan aside from the Republican split from the British Raj, there are other factors playing into the division of India into India and Pakistan, such as those that pertain to the treatment of the many Princely States.

Here are some solid recommendations as far as reading is concerned on this particular part of the world:

Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and the Battle for Pakistan by Qutubuddin Aziz & Katherine Wang

Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha

A Concise History of Modern India
by Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan
by Yasmin Khan

Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum by Stephen Cohen

One thing to note -- the narrative you mention of Hinduism having some sort of "Golden Age" prior to the arrival of Islam is a narrative largely constructed by the British in order to justify their rule in India. They wanted to help Indians return to a more "civilized" time when issues like women's rights were "better" somehow.

Also, by framing issues in India as a product of Muslim influence, they could further deepen the Hindu-Muslim divide and increase their "divide and rule" policy.

See "A Concise History of Modern India" by Metcalf and Metcalf. Amazon link.

As far as materials, not that I'm aware. That is the course, and here is the course text we used. It is a pretty easy read, easy enough that I still have it on my shelf.

Responding again because I've been reading this book and it just happened to cover this topic. The authors agree with what they call "fresh scholarship" which says that the varnas from Sanskrit Vedic texts and jati subcastes only had "loose regional or occupational meaning" and featured "[more] individual mobility than most commentators since the colonial period have recognized."

They argue that caste only really started to become rigidly hierarchical in the Mughal period, when the Hindu kshatriyas used the Hindu texts to show the Mughals that they were higher ranked in order to move up/gain advantage in their era's socio-economic ladder. However, the authors argue the way these kshatriyas used the texts was not how they were used previously. In other words, as the CNN article claimed, it was kshatriya culture in the Mughal era that used caste this way, not Hinduism itself that taught such discrimination. The authors sum up:

>..the image of pre-colonial India as a land of self-sufficient villages, rigid caste hierarchies, and overall stagnation, reads characteristics of colonial society into the pre-colonial past.

Now we can say "Well I disagree," but we have to admit that these scholars have studied this issue far more than we have. If they find the above argument persuasive, then I will have to side with them on it. I just don't have the expertise to challenge it, nor do I believe they have any reason to mislead us on it--especially given these authors and scholars are usually Western and not Hindu apologists of some sort.

However let's return to the question you raised on this: if the caste system wasn't so rigid or discriminatory, if it was really as loose and occupational as scholars claim, then why did people prior to the British condemn or criticize it?

I would return to the point made before: yes certain cultures in Indian history used caste as a tool for discrimination, but was it rooted in Hinduism itself? Buddha criticized the brahmins of his day, but were they too just doing what the kshatriyas during the Mughal period did: (mis)use the texts merely to enforce a socio-economic hierarchy that advanced/maintained their own power? Did the Buddha criticize Hinduism, or the corrupt priests of his day? Not saying which is which, but I think that's a key question. (I'm not as familiar with Kabir or the Gurus you mentioned, though I believe they emerged in the 14th-15th century which is just before the Mughal period/16th century.)

And also: levels of discrimination can vary within a geographic or political area, yes? As you yourself pointed out in our previous debate on racism toward Sikhs, all of America isn't one thing. Certain regions (more rural, Southern areas) have more, some (more coastal, urban areas) have less. A person who emerges as a critic of the discrimination he sees in his area may not reflect the majority of people in an entire country, right?

Anyway just throwing all this out there, as always I welcome your response.