India’s History, India’s Raj: Essays in Historical Understanding highlights the myriad facets in the story of how Indians themselves participated in the construction not only of the Indian Raj but of Indian history. Due to distortions, omissions, or ideological bias, much of this story remains unbalanced or simply misunderstood. Never before in history has the whole ‘continent’ of geographic India, surrounded by mountain ranges to the north and oceans to the south, been unified under a single political system. That is—until modern times. However long each monarch reigned, neither lasted their entire length of the political system over which they ruled. Maurya Empire began with Chandragupta and lasted beyond Ashoka; and Mughal rule began with Babur and Humayun and lasted beyond Aurangzed. Yet, some micro-systems, such as villages, defied this trend and continued to flourish.