Gurgaon: From Mythic Village to Millennium City

The book looks beyond Gurgaon’s skyscrapers, corporate offices and residential developments to explore the city's earlier identities and the forces behind its dramatic growth. It examines the experiences of long-time residents, migrants, businesses and developers, presenting Gurgaon as a city shaped by economic ambition, migration and rapid urbanization.

Veena Talwar Oldenburg is a historian and professor at Baruch College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is also the author of Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime and The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856–1877.

The book presents Gurgaon’s evolution from an obscure hamlet into a densely populated centre of commerce, technology and real estate. It explores the historical foundations of the city as well as its rapid transformation driven by migration, corporate investment, construction and changing aspirations. Alongside Gurgaon’s economic rise, the book considers its traffic, housing, social inequalities, civic challenges and changing cultural landscape.