With the International Indian Film Academy Awards - the so-called Bollywood Oscars - coming to Yorkshire next week, the onward march of Indian culture into the West establishes a major beach-head.

Even Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are rumoured to be attending one of the major events that take place in Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull and York, cementing Bollywood's true international status as a credible contender in a world where the cultural imperialism of the all-conquering Hollywood movie machine is still considered the only true source of valid entertainment.

And why not? With an estimated population of 1.1 billion, 23 official languages, more than 1,600 dialects, an area of more than three million square kilometres and the boast of being the largest democracy on the planet, there is no reason why the influence of this vast melange of people and cultures should not reverberate on a global scale.

It is perhaps only our supreme arrogance in the West that allows us to consider any culture that isn't American or European to be somewhat beneath our notice. That and, perhaps, the relative youth of India as we know it today; the country is only 60 years old. Prior to that it had been for 350 years the playground - and hunting ground - of the British Empire, and the place where the sun finally set on the aspirations of Britannia to rule the world.

What most of us know about India tends to get murky - or perhaps of little interest - after 1947, when Gandhi led his peaceful protest to end the rule of the British Raj and gain full independence for the sub-continent.

Our romantic image of India is shot through with our own contributions - good and bad - to its development. Kipling and Clive; handlebar-moustachio'd blusterers shooting tigers; gin and tonics at dusk on smoky verandas to ward off the mosquitos; tiffin and milky, sweet tea; the Partition of India and what became Pakistan, with the six decades of tension and conflict left in its wake. And, of course, the ubiquitous call centres where Indians rename themselves "Carol" or "Wayne" and feign knowledge of British popular culture to make us feel more at ease when trying to sell us insurance or deal with our banking problems.

India of itself is as diverse as it is huge. From the ordered, wide avenues and neatly-tended lawns of New Delhi - as though someone had re-imagined London and plonked it in a sub-tropical location - to the high-rise towers of Calcutta sitting at odds with the shanty towns at their feet, to the beach paradises of Goa and Kerala, where pot-smoking hippies gave way to full-moon ravers, who in turn conceded the territory to package deal tourists, there is no single "India" to talk about.

The contribution of India to Western life is also varied and growing in stature and importance. Bollywood, of course; generally tongue-in-cheek appropriations of this vastly popular medium for our own movies and TV ads, the influence of silks and saris, henna tattoos and bindis in periodic fashion movements. Shilpa Shetty and Big Brother, naturally. Snatches of bhangra music floating up from cars idling at traffic lights on sunny days.

In an attempt to fill the gaps in our knowledge, Indian academic and writer Ramachandra Ram' Guha has written the definitive guide to the history of India since 1947. The 900-page tome India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy is the end result of 35 years travelling to every corner of the sub-continent and immersing himself in the many different places that form the country into which he was born in 1958.

He was educated in Delhi and Calcutta and has taught at the universities of Oslo, Stanford and Yale. Now a full-time writer based in Bangalore, his books cover a wide range of subjects: environmentalism, Himalayan peasants and cricket.

He says: "Over 35 years I travelled India very extensively. Each Indian province is as large as a European country. This has influenced my writing a great deal, and India is an endlessly fascinating country. My travels have been an extended preparation for the writing of this book."

He is in no doubt that India is on the verge of a cultural explosion into the rest of the world... if it hasn't happened already.

Ram says: "The great thing about Bollywood in particular is that it cuts across the cultural divides. I think that film, Indian dress, fabrics, food, music... they all provide inspiration for the West. There are many aspects of Indian culture which are now entering global culture."

But it is India's political landscape which Ram feels will have the more lasting and important impact. He says: "There is something of an inadequate appreciation of India in the West. No-one really expects such a large country to be democratic, but the robustness of the Indian democracy should never be underestimated."

He is at pains, however, to not paint India as an Earthly paradise. The ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir territory are often the main news items we receive from the sub-continent. He says somewhat ruefully: "The political leaders today are interested in expanding our military and technological capabilities. India, I'm afraid, sometimes bullies its neighbours, which I do find disturbing."

The often strained relationships between India and Pakistan - divided by the British and now seemingly glaring at each other across the tug-of-war Kashmiri district - would seem to be one of the sticking points in walking towards the future. But it is not a problem that Guha feels is insurmountable.

He says: "If you bracket the Kashmiri issue but don't let it hold up other things, India and Pakistan share a great deal in common.

"It's like England and France. There is a history of conflict but nowadays there are so many points of recognition. You don't see yourselves as enemies, and I think that will come for India and Pakistan.

If India's past is well known to us, and its present is becoming more keenly felt, what of its future? A couple of years ago, the author Ian McDonald unleashed his magnum opus on the world; River of Gods, a sprawling, epic novel of some 600 pages (a country as vast as India demands literature of equal stature) which imagined the sub-content on August 15, 2047 - the centenary of India gaining freedom and independence.

McDonald's India is fractured into independent states; the slums still exist but technology runs rampant and India's place on the world stage is assured.

He has said: "As I was thinking about it, India was emerging as a major cultural and scientific player. I was saving web pages on to my computer, about weird things happening - the whole Bangalore software thing, and everything being outsourced to India.

"A lot of Indians speak English (which is one of India's great advantages over China - the other being that it's the world's largest democracy, and the democratic streak runs very, very deep), and the people working in call centres were given British names and shown old copies of British soap operas like EastEnders and Coronation Street so they could chat away with customers when they were on hold.

"I thought, That is wonderful. That's where the future is going.' The more research I did, the more I thought, There's a huge gaping hole in science fiction. A lot has been done about China, but people have been overlooking India.' When do you ever see an Indian on Star Trek? There are Chinese all over the place, but you never see an Indian."

Although he accepts that India's place in the world in the 21st century is "the big debate at the moment", looking into the crystal ball is not something Ram Guha is keen to do. He laughs: "I'm a historian not an astrologer. But I think that what India can offer the world is our robust democratic tradition. And other countries could learn from our linguistic diversity. People with different languages and cultures can work together; we have proved that. As long as different groups don't impinge on each other, then cultural diversity can be expressed in a non-violent way."

The Bollywood Oscars in Yorkshire this coming week could be seen as the vanguard of an Indian assault on Western culture that has been a long time in preparation.

But if such an assault actually exists, it is not a steam-roller of cultural imperialism. In the tradition of Gandhi's bid for independence that led to the creation of India as we know it 60 years ago this summer, the sub-continent's invasion of our fashion, entertainment and general psyche will be a brightly-coloured and peaceful revolution that nevertheless affects all of us in some way.

  • India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, by Ramachandra Guha, is published in hardback by Pan Macmillan, priced £25.