Into India

by John Keay

Written in the 1970s, Into India achieved classic status and remained in print for twenty years. John Keay has since written more specialized studies of India and elsewhere, including a major new history of the subcontinent.

Genres: History, India, Travel

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

John Stanley Melville Keay FRGS is an English journalist and author specialising in writing popular histories about India and the Far East, often with a particular focus on their colonisation and exploration by Europeans.

John Keay is the author of about 20 books, all factual, mostly historical, and largely to do with Asia, exploration or Scotland. His first book stayed in print for thirty years; many others have become classics. His combination of meticulous research, irreverent wit, powerful narrative and lively prose have invariably been complimented by both reviewers and readers.

UK-based and a full-time author since 1973, he also wrote and presented over 100 documentaries for BBC Radios 3 and 4 from 1975-95 and guest-lectured tour groups 1990-2000. He reviews on related subjects, occasionally speaks on them, and travels extensively.

Reviews

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

The anti-Naipaul, sort of. This Britisher is a real India-lover and has a lot of fascinating things to say about the land, its history and above all its people. It was interesting to go back to Naipaul's book and compare their interpretations of similar experiences or events. I identified with a lot of the things Keay described. The end, when he left India, was especially demonstrative of his love for the place – he speaks disparagingly of the insincerity, "gracelessness" and "sameness" of the West. A different take, certainly!

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book about India that we'd have liked to have when we were first getting into Indian movies and didn't have any information about Kashmir or Tamil Nadu or any of the places featured in films. We made do by extensive use of Wikipedia and reading up on places, customs, and people as they came up. In the process, we built up a fair, albeit very general, knowledge of what we needed to know about India.

This book does all that with good writing and keen insight as to what a foreigner needs to know. This is not so much a travelogue as an overall guide to religious, sociological, and cultural history; geography; and the context of how each region fits into the overall country. As others have noted, this was last updated in 1999 but the overall take is still fairly accurate. John Keay and his wife traveled through a lot of India during the writing but those stories flow effortlessly into the main points he is making.

If the book was more up to date I'd give it five stars. It is right up there with my favorite Indian travel book, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God. Very enjoyable and informative indeed.

[Elisabeth Bibbings · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is considered the best guide to India for someone who has never visited the country before, even though it was written in the early 1970's. Certainly, the descriptions of the different castes and the Indians' attitude to each other through that social system are very informative. Also, I now know why Assam and Kashmir are more remote and insular in attitudes, as well as having learnt a lot more about the Sikh faith and the relationship or lack of it, between Muslim and Hindu.
John Keay's description of the Indian railway sums up the whole country probably - it's crazy, looks completely disorganised, it shouldn't work - but it does.

[Tiru Arasu · Rating 4 out of 5]

good narration

[Ronald Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an "introduction" to the complexities of India, I found this book disappointing when I bought and first read it in 1976. I found myself moving my eyes over a seemingly endless stream of place and ethnic names I couldn't read or pronounce. It now was much more meaningful with this reading, having since become more familiar with Indian sub-continent through other fiction and non-fiction of the region.

Keay did not write this as a travelogue. Instead he focused on the social and religious structures of major geographical areas of India with just enough historical references to give the reader an idea of how such complexity arose, and more importantly, the tensions one could expect in such a diverse society and, yet, the surprising ability of such diverse groups to co-exist within an emerging sense of nationhood.

While drastic changes have occurred there since this book was written, Into India provides a snapshot of that society and a glimpse at the role it played in the dramatic geopolitical and world economic changes then taking place. In that respect, I found this book was as interesting as I wanted to make it with the help of modern tools - Wikimapia to follow the geography discussed and Wikipedia to delve further into, or get updated information on topics raised.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although written nearly 40 years ago, it's not as dated as I'd feared; gives a good social/anthropological overview of the country from region to region.