If starting from https://www.sanskritimagazine.com/little-known-history-of-goa-and-the-portuguese-inquistion/ and working farther into the past is acceptable. A fair bit to the south of the gangetic region.
Also, depending on your end goals, which are difficult if not impossible to discern from your post as of this writing, you might want to find out the background of the authors of the book. Most stories about India as is known outside India is narrated and steadfastly owned by non Indian voices. So if you are looking to work in a think-tank for instance, you'd steer towards authors who advocate German speaking region's interests with regards to India. Or if you are looking to work in diplomatic capacities, the authors might be of that leaning.
Bear in mind the current government's push to own the narrative to the exclusion of outside voices. Totally understandable, whilst being something to be mindful of.
Regarding religion. Doubtful of getting anywhere without running into religion as far as India goes. The science vs religion dichotomy works differently outside of the West, for all I can see.
The India of Mahabharat era encompasses today's Afghanistan, for what it's worth. Going by Indian archaeologists -- https://www.booksfact.com/history/ancient-gandhara-kingdom-kandahar-afghanistan.html
Also, another decent starting point would be, Constantino Giuseppe Beschi. The man who most recently resuscitated the then dying language of Tamil and led to original Christian literature being written in it. Tamil, along with Sanskrit is listed as a classical language by UNESCO IIRC.
In the video, and in the blogpost that is effectively the transcript of the video, he clearly states that though locking away the source code is within IBM's or RedHat's rights.
What seems to have done it for him is, the subscription terms and conditions that prevent redistribution of source code by subscribers or else have the subscription revoked. This is what he argues as being borderline illegal and that RedHat could be banking on the army of lawyers on IBM's retainer.
And, knowing Oracle, what is to stop them from becoming a subscriber? That way, RedHat has a poster child of a subscriber, Oracle gets access to the code which they can and most likely will, with their own army of lawyers, repackage and publish as Oracle Linux. Admittedly this is my cynical take on Jeff's.
Time to start debating moving more projects under GPLv3 or AGPLv3 which demand more innovative ways to run a business than what IBM is doing.