Modern India

It's a book written by a white American man in 1903 for the white Americans back home so that they could get a taste of ~exotic~ India. I probably shouldn't have to point out that it was colonialist, patronizing, and judgmental about the stupidest things. I was expecting that going in. I read it and read the entire way through because I wanted to get a good feeling for the relationships and politics of the time, and there were certain historical bits of information that I wasn't aware of thrown in. But the guy had a boner for numbers and the lists of census numbers got really tiresome.

Still, it's a historical perspective of British India that might be useful as long as you're taking it with a HUGE grain of salt.