
Guest post by Quintus Curtius on Indian society and history
A nation’s geography is its destiny. When discussing India, we have to keep in mind that it is a more a continent than a country: from the Himalayas to the tropics of Sri Lanka, its two million square miles has hundreds of cultures, languages, cuisines, religions, and folkways. There is not one India, but many. Its history is staggeringly ancient; the oldest of its civilizations, the Mohenjo-daro, dates from at least 3000 B.C. While the northern regions share in the cold of the Himalayas, the southern parts from Delhi to Sri Lanka are oppressed by unrelenting heat. The alluvial plains of the Punjab, however, offer an agricultural fecundity that can feed more than one nation.