INDIA through Alien eyes

Many foreigners have written about India in the distant past. What had they expected and what did they actually fi nd? Indians have never ceased to wonder at the obsession of the western mind with India since antiquity. If you look east it is East Indies; if you look west it is West Indies. On the North American landmass there are Red Indians and there are numerous Indian tribes in South America too.

Across a vast unwelcoming land mass, and across choppy seas, people from other lands set ou...