Nacido en una familia de funcionarios, estudió economía en la Universidad de Delhi doctorándose en 1987 con la tesis "Trade and the Regional Economy of South India, c. 1550–1650" [2]
Está especializado en la India del Sur de los siglos XVI y XVII, y su obra sobre Vasco de Gama le ha dado cierta reputación internacional.[3]
The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500-1650, 1990
Merchants, Markets and the State in Early Modern India, 1990
Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal, 1500-1700, 1990 (Comércio e Conflito: A Presença Portuguesa no Golfo de Bengala, 1500-1700, 1994).
(con V. Narayana Rao y David Shulman), Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nayaka-period Tamil Nadu, 1992
The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History, 1993
Money and the Market in India, 1100-1700, 1994
Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World (Series: An Expanding World, Vol. 8), 1996
(con Kaushik Basu) Unravelling the Nation: Sectarian Conflict and India’s Secular Identity, 1996
(con Burton Stein) Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, 1996
The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama, 1997
(con Muzaffar Alam) The Mughal State, 1526-1750, 1998
Sinners and Saints: The Successors of Vasco da Gama, 1998
Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India, 2001