This UMC book by Glory Dharmaraj has 31-pp Study Guide by Dianne Miller, as well as useful Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, Web Resources). in 2007 Amazon.com listed 8 books by Dharmaraj and 7 books by Miller.

Dharmaraj covers very much about India and Pakistan in six well-written chapters. She concisely describes ancient roots, trade roots, Kashmir, people at the margins, theologies from India, and challenges and opportunities, celebrations and actions. She retains central focuses of the Indo-Pakistan story – culture and customs, history and religions, Kashmir (the religion-political bone of contention – but mainly to explore India/Pakistan through the lenses of Christian mission education. To understand the India subcontinent, one must be religiously literate, which she certainly is.

We know little of the roots of Hinduism before the Aryan invasion (2000-1500 BCE) but we know much about the birth and growth in India of three faiths: Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. We know much about the arrival of Christianity (Thomas in 52 CE) and Islam via waves of Turkish invasions in the 11th and 12th centuries. The roles of these six religions and their cultures are crucial to the history of India, as are the role of the Europeans, who focused mainly on trade and exploitation.

Glory Dharmaraj tells these stories concisely but well, with more details on the Christian personalities and projects, particularly educational, as planned. I felt I learned (or relearned) quite a lot from the book as well as from the presentations given in a 4-week study of it at my church. We weren’t able to make much use of the book’s study guide since it was written for 2-hour sessions in a 4-week study, whereas we used the adult Sunday school period of one hour. I would have liked the full 8 hours planned for the book, which would have allowed much more detailed discussions. However, I feel that this book would also be a valuable learning experience for individual study, supplemented by the rich web resources available.