The revised edition of Robert Stern's book bring India's story up-to-date. Since its original publication in 1993 much has altered and yet central to the author's argument remains his belief in the remarkable continuity and vitality of India's social systems and its resilience in the face of change. This is a colorful readable and comprehensive introduction to modern India. In a journey through its family households and villages the author explains its long-lived and little understood caste and class systems its venerable faiths and extraordinary ethnic diversity its history as 'the jewel in the crown' of British imperialism and its post-Independence career as a major agricultural and industrial nation. While paradoxes abound in an India that is constantly transforming Stern demonstrates how and why it remains the largest and most enduring democracy in the developing world.

Introduction: change the societies of India and Indian society; Part I. The Changing Countryside: 1. Families and villages; 2. Varna jati and caste Muslim quasi castes and untouchability; 3. Class: primordial group representation stimuli-response and patron–client relationships; 4. Homelands 'linguistic' 'tribal' and 'regional' states: nation provinces and bourgeois revolution; Part II. Change from Above: 5. British imperialism Indian nationalism and Muslim separatism; 6. Political and economic development in the Indian Union and its international politics.