This course critically unpacks three key, enduring tropes about India that are at the root of social, political, and cultural strife in contemporary times: a) India as ​‘timeless,’ b) India as ​‘autochthonous’ (or as independently emergent), and c) India as ​‘pure’ (in racial, religious, caste or other similar terms). Recognizing that no single academic discipline can provide the methodological and explanatory wherewithal to make sense of these issues, this course takes a decidedly multi-disciplinary approach to analyzing them. Hence, its content is drawn from a range of social science and humanities disciplines, as well as from the natural sciences wherever required. Students are invited to develop an informed, broad-based understanding of the way that ​‘India’ has been forged within the cauldron of global, regional and local processes, over (deep-) time, with spatial linkages to other parts of the natural and social world, involving continuous movements of people, goods, and culture within and across its shifting frontiers, resulting in a wondrous, thoroughgoing ​‘mixture’ that is India. Overall, UI I serves as a basic and critical introduction to India’s geographical, geological, environmental, evolutionary, economic, cultural, and political pasts, and equips students to historically account for its present diversity and complexity.