The book traverses India’s monumental journey from the time it asserted its independence by breaking away from the larger landmass up to its political Independence from British imperial rule,Īlong the way, it reveals how life sprang and flourished around India’s many rivers, the importance of the symbology of the lion not only to India but in other ancient cultures too, the linkages of trade and how they helped navigators to seek out the world and map it, bit by bit. The author begins by placing India in the context of the history and geography of the world, by explaining the tectonic shifts and other occurrences that caused the landmass known as the Indian subcontinent to break away from the larger landmass to which it had been attached for hundreds of thousands of years. Through this fact-rich book, Sanyal teaches us to be fascinated with this enormous country, so full of contradictions, polarities and differences, where fact meets fiction and legend, and where mythology and symbology are always within arm's reach. Just as the Uttara Path and the Dakshina Path met at Varanasi, the British-built Northern Railway and Southern Railway had their nerve centre in Mughalsarai, just outside Varanasi. The vestiges of ancient times remain with us in so many ways. Even when India fought against the devious intentions of the marauding invaders, she still adopted and retained the positive vestiges of their culture, as in the case of the Mughals and their biryani. Her heritage extends back over many thousands of years, over the passage of which, different groups of people, friendly or inimical, whether seeking to conquer or to find refuge against persecution, have been assimilated. India, the book amply proves, has never needed civilizing. The strength of that research and the power of the narrative gives the lie to the British imperialist claim that they were in India in order to civilize her and that India has had no civilisational history. I can well believe his statement that if the publishers had not taken the draft away from him, he would have continued with the research forever. The depth of research and reading that he has done for this book is simply fantastic and highly impressive. Reading through this interesting book gave me, as a reader, the sensation of a work to which the author has given his all. Ideas, facts and conversations that I seem to have hidden away somewhere in my head all came tumbling out as I wrote out the chapters one by one.'

I was prepared to enjoy Sanjeev Sanyal's Land of The Seven Rivers ever since I read the second line of his Author's Note in which he says, ' as I wrote this book, it felt like I have been preparing for it for all my adult life.

Land of seven rivers sanjeev sanyal