Village India

“Although one-seventh of the world’s population – more than 615 million people – lives in India’s villages, few people outside the subcontinent know anything about them. This lesser-known India, an India that is largely rural, beautiful in its complexity, and rich in both customs and creativity, is the subject of this new and exciting volume.

Never before has Indian village life been revealed in all its breathtaking diversity. Journeying to places that tourists do not usually see and visiting areas now prohibited to foreigners, the author, Stephen P. Huyler, has amassed a wealth of material, affording a rare glimpse into this amazing culture. His text, which is both authoritative and personal, opens with a foreigner’s impression of a typical Indian village – a dazzling array of colours, sounds, textures, and scents. It then moves on to a discussion of villages in India today, their physical organization, social structures, arts; a look  at their extraordinary past; and closes with a state-by-state odyssey that reveals just how enormously varied the many regions’ communities, peoples, and customs really are.

The more than 290 photographs directly communicate the sensation of visiting these villages firsthand. Here are the exuberance of market day, the stands overflowing with flowers, foods, and dyes; the skill of the village potter, his hand-built horse and rider emerging from a red-hot kiln; the intensity of vibrant colors – vermilion, bright yellow, indigo, and orange – in saris, turbans, and wall paintings; the majesty of local fishermen, their immense fishing nets draped about them like so many ermine stoles. And everywhere, the symbols of religion, whether in the form of a cow crowned with marigolds or monumental clay horses, thousands of years old, standing guard at the entrance to a village.

An excellent general introduction to India, Village India is also an unforgettable foray into the lesser-known regions of this truly astounding country.”