How familiar are you with the history of India? Pre-Colonial, Colonial, Post-Colonial? What kind of authors and books do you read? What are your favorite eras, figures, subjects you think are underwritten?

Modestly familiar. 

Pre-colonial I know the big hits of from a World Civilizations level – the emergence of cities in the Indus Valley, the arrival of the Indo-Aryans and the creation of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the emergence of Buddism, etc. I have to admit I get a bit fuzzy about the ordering of some of the classical empires and then my memory skips to the Muslim conquest and the rise of the Mughals. 

I’m more familiar with the Colonial period – in fact the most recent book on Indian history I’ve read was Jon Wilson’s really interesting revisionist history Chaos of Empire, which argues that rather than being characterized by “unity, order, and success,” British imperial policy from the EIC to the end was “rooted far more in violence than in virtue, far more in chaos than in control.”

Post-colonial, I’m broadly familiar with the independence struggle, partition, and Nehru’s spin on socialist economic and social policy. I have to admit that my knowledge of recent Indian political history is fuzzier after the 70s.