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Very little of his knowledge seems derived from local sources. He seems well read and well-connected with the Western scholarship on India - but to get an understanding of India by himself he only has had its illiterate people to talk to.

Such is Nehru's commitment to ancient Vedic wisdom against idolatry that he goes on dreaming that idolatry might have come to India from Greece.

Nehru's interest in India is poetic - but never religious. He is quick to compare the modern condition of India with the trimurti of Elephanta caves but he never invokes the cycles of Hindu trinity explicitly.

His claims seem well-founded - "The power which has succeeded in welding all the subordinate
ruling powers into one great system of government is essentially naval; and since it controls the sea-ways, it has been forced in the interests of security, to close the land-ways."

In his belief in racial classification, Nehru is no different from the scientific racists of the time - as he attributes strong character of jats with their scythian/hun origin.

His praise for ancient wisdom is consistently limited by scientific method - in which his faith in unmovable - as he admits in the introduction of the book.

For his legacy of secularism, the praise of "Aryadesha" seems misplaced.

He considers Guptas "imperial" and Ashoka as a great "builder".

The book feels commonplace and unoriginal but that's only because its contents have formed the blueprint of India's education for the latter 20th century.

His treatment of Hindu identity is problematic - since he tries to cherrypick what's sanitary amidst the chaos of rituals he doesn't understand.

What is amazing is that Nehru still sees a continuity in India.

Nehru does see the natives as sluggish and withdrawn - as his education and life in the West has given him a Western view of Indians. In his own words, "Indian life becomes a sluggish stream, living in the past, moving slowly through the accumulations of dead centuries. The heavy burden of the past crushes it and a kind of coma seizes it."