The book highlights certain habits and tendencies of the Indian people which have time and again held India back; a spirit of self-righteousness, a blind belief in fate or destiny, general passivity and timidity, self-imposed isolation from the outside world, an inability to keep pace with the advancement in strategy and technology made in other countries, particularly in warfare. From the time of Porus to the Sino-Indian war of 1962, India repeatedly fought its adversaries with outmoded weapons and faced debacle. Even Indira Gandhi, one of the country’s strongest Prime Ministers after independence, failed to negotiate a favourable settlement on Kashmir despite an overwhelming victory in the 1971 war against Pakistan — underlining a long history of compromises at the cost of national interests.

Despite all the efforts made by some of India’s great rulers, saints and scholars, Indians have yet to develop a sense of shared pride in their civilisation. There is, in fact, a tendency to repudiate the past worsened by a notion of secularism which has come to mean the giving up of India’s spiritual values and heritage. Instead of making efforts to integrate Indian society, contemporary politicians continue to exploit the distortions spread earlier by foreign rulers about racial divisions, linguistic and regional differences and religious incompatibility in order to win elections. They also appear oblivious to the vital historical lesson that this vast country has always faced disintegration whenever its central leadership grew weak.

"It is a sad fact that all through their history, Indians never developed a sense of nationhood," cautions the author. "Indians also lack a sense of history, and have failed to learn from it." It is a caution worth heeding in order to build India’s political unity and cultural solidarity.