India has been famously castigated for her soft-headedness, lack of coherence, cacophony of voices and tongues, indiscriminate tolerance... in short, as the Muddle Kingdom, in contrast to the neighbour in the north, a strong and unyielding Middle Kingdom. But we were the Western Kingdom to them, and the Centre of the World to ourselves. We have survived as a culture for millennia, while all other hard civilisations have bitten the dust. Why the Muddle Kingdom will outlast all others...
