Foreword by David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva)

Battles for Delhi: Dilli Kareeb Ast traces the highs and lows of Indian unity. It looks at those phases of Indian history from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries when Delhi was the capital city of Indian empires. It describes a series of important battles that were fought to preserve the unity of India either successfully or unsuccessfully, and these are mentioned as the Battles for Delhi. When India was a strong nation, its boundaries encompassed almost the whole of South Asia, and it was economically and militarily one of the strongest nations in the world. This book also looks at the phases when India was not a united country although the whole of its land mass was recognised and referred to as India. In such times, India was split into various units and it was not under a unifying rule.

The book opines that India was a strong and united country, as in the Mauryan, Gupta and Mughal ages, when a strong, centrally controlled kingdom existed. This kingdom was centred around a capital city that symbolised the power and strength of India. These strong kingdoms had capable rulers, an established administrative infrastructure, economic prosperity, and formidable military power. In ancient times the capital cities of these kingdoms were Patliputra and Kanauj, and since the thirteenth century AD it has been Delhi.

The book describes the conditions preceding these Battles for Delhi, the battles themselves, and their consequences. Encompassing over six hundred years of Indian history, this book describes thirteen battles from the Battle of Tarain in the late thirteenth century to the Indian War of Independence in 1857, making a strong case for a continuous effort to preserve and strengthen India’s unity.

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