The most accurate and readable one-volume history of India is now brought fully up to date, with new chapters covering the current Punjab crisis, the Hindu-Sikh conflicts that followed Operation Bluestar and Indira Gandhi's assassination, and the strengths and weaknesses of Rajiv Gandhi's government. Wolpert places recent developments such as the Bhopal disaster, the war in Sri Lanka, rampant growth and pollution in Delhi, "dowry deaths" and the alarming rebirth of Sati -widow burnings within the context of India's 4,000 years of continental continuity and communal complexity. No other history records as brilliantly, nor as truthfully, the brightest achievements of Indian civilization and the dark depths of its socio-sexual inequities and economic-political corruptions.