Missions, Mantras, Migrants and Microchips (Hardcover)

The fame of people like Priyanka Chopra, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Kumail Nanjiani, Indra Nooyi, Mindy Kaling, M. Night Shyamalan, Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) sponsorship of the New York City Marathon, the ubiquitousness of Indian restaurants and yoga studios in many American cities and much else illustrates the close relationship the US and India enjoy today.

From the 1780s onwards, there have been relationships of various kinds, all mediated, until India’s independence, through the British Raj. While ties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were somewhat thin, the closer relationship through three-quarters of the twentieth century, has now become an extremely close one as India has sent large rivers of people and goods to America, and Americans have responded with growing interest and involvement in India. This, despite occasional blips like the Bhopal industrial disaster.

Missions, Mantras, Migrants and Microchips takes the long view of the Indo-US encounter. Besides documenting well-known ties, it also brings into focus some ignored and forgotten people like Kumar Goshal, Ida Scudder, Charles Page Perin, John Bissell and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Deeply researched and engagingly written by veteran historian Leonard A. Gordon, this work is the definitive account of the Indo-US connection.