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Rating: 
Summary: Sobering
Review: I admit I may have been mildly intoxicated before I read this book - intoxicated on Western Buddhism and New Age philosophies that legitimize themselves by associating themselves with Indian religions. This book sobered me up. Paine indicates that much of what many of us have mistaken for pure distilled India is really a hybrid mutation of India and its European interpreters and visitors. I honestly feel I came away with a much better understanding of characters like Madame Blavatsky, Krishnamurti, and Ghandi. There is also a great deal of material addressing individuals who adopted a homosexual lifestyle including E.M. Forster and Christopher Isherwood. I might wonder if Jeffery Paine is himself practicing homosexuality given the amount of time spent on the topic. (In fact, if he isn't, it would be a bit annoying.) The representation of this group seems a bit disproportionate but it may indeed be the case that a disproportionate amount of the Europeans experimenting with India in the early 1900s were of this group - well at least the ones that got famous. (In which case I shouldn't be so annoyed). Certainly India has played a part in our present culture albeit in a roundabout and almost covert way. Paine's book suggests that it was more as a catalyst than a direct effect. A place to which people embarked on holy quests and often did not find what they expected. If you have read a few new age books that swear allegiance to Indian philosophy and religion and are feeling a bit tipsy, or if you have an interest in the psychological history of the waning British empire and India as the British empire waned, I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: An inventive and compelling book
Review: I never would have thought of the theme of this book, but once immersed in it, found it totally engrossing. India has been the great seed bed for many Western thinkers. This is an exciting way of seeing the relationship between India and the U.S...and a well-documented account of it with fascinating stories.
Rating: 
Summary: ANAND'S MUSE
Review: The book delves into the feelings, emotions and travails as felt by some of the administrators, writers,social activists and reformers who have ';experienced ' India at close quarters.Curzon, Annie Besant,EM Forster, Chris Isherwood and finally Gandhi's experiences are chronicled in detail.The book tries to provide the reader with an understanding of India that is gleaned from the spiritual and pyschological processes of these visitors and tries to enunciate a depth of feeling. These 'outsiders'twist and turn at every corner in India and the reasons for their doing si might infuse an Indian to think more deeply , and accord the foreigner with a more intimate view of the seething cauldron that answers to the name of India.
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