Missions, Mantras, Migrants and Microchips A History of the Indo-US Encounter, 1492 to the Present

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.

Leonard A. Gordon was educated in New York City public schools, at Amherst College, and at Harvard University. His book, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement (1974) was awarded the Watumull Prize of the American Historical Association. Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Bose was published in 1990 and an abridged version in 2014. He was co-editor of The Sources of Indian Traditions, 1700-the present.


Leonard’s teaching career at Columbia University and at the City University of New York spanned 1967 to 2002. From 1985 to 2021 he was director of the Taraknath Das Foundation which awarded grants to Indian graduate students in the U.S., gave an annual award for supporters of ties between India and the US and supported small NGOs in India. From 1963 onwards he has visited India many times for research and to reconnect with his Indian friends.

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