Incarnations
eBook - ePub

Incarnations

India in Fifty Lives

  1. 465 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Incarnations

India in Fifty Lives

About this book

An entertaining and provocative account of India's past, written by one of the country's leading thinkers
For all India's myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, bringing to life fifty extraordinary men and women who changed both India and the world. Journeying across India in pursuit of their stories—visiting slum temples, ayurvedic call centers, Bollywood studios, textile mills, and Mughal fortresses—Khilnani offers trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, artists, iconoclasts, and entrepreneurs. Some of these historical figures are famous. Some are unjustly forgotten. And all, Khilnani convinces us, are deeply relevant today. As their rich and surprising lives take the reader through twenty-five hundred winding years of Indian and world history, Khilnani brings wit, feeling, historical rigor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own.
We encounter the Buddha not as the usual beatific icon but as a radical young social critic. We meet the ancient Sanskrit linguist who inspires computer programmers today. We hear the medieval poets, ribald and profound, who mocked rituals and caste and whose voices resonate in contemporary poetry. And we see giants of the twentieth-century Independence movement—among them Mohandas Gandhi; Ambedkar, the Untouchable lawyer turned constitution maker; and the legendary singer M. S. Subbulakshmi—not as cardboard cutouts but as complex and striving human beings. At once a provocative and sophisticated reinterpretation of India's history and an incisive commentary on its present-day conflicts and struggles, Incarnations is an authoritative, sweeping, and often moving account of a nation coming into its own.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
  • Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
  • Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Incarnations by Sunil Khilnani in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Notice
  4. Dedication
  5. Fifty Lives: Birthplaces Map
  6. Introduction
  7. 1. The Buddha: Waking India Up
  8. 2. Mahavira: Soldier of Nonviolence
  9. 3. Panini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow’s Hoofprint
  10. 4. Kautilya: The Ring of Power
  11. 5. Ashoka: Power as Persuasion
  12. 6. Charaka: On Not Violating Good Judgment
  13. 7. Aryabhata: The Boat of Intellect
  14. 8. Adi Shankara: A God Without Qualities
  15. 9. Rajaraja Chola: Cosmos, Temple, and Territory
  16. 10. Basava: A Voice in the Air
  17. 11. Amir Khusrau: The Parrot of India
  18. 12. Kabir: “Hey, You!”
  19. 13. Guru Nanak: The Discipline of Deeds
  20. 14. Krishnadevaraya: “Kingship Is Strange”
  21. 15. Mirabai: I Go the Other Way
  22. 16. Akbar: The World and the Bridge
  23. 17. Malik Ambar: The Dark-Fated One
  24. 18. Dara Shikoh: The Meeting Place of the Two Oceans
  25. 19. Shivaji: Dreaming Big
  26. 20. Nainsukh: Owner Transfixed by Goose
  27. 21. William Jones: Enlightenment Mughal
  28. 22. Rammohun Roy: “Humanity in General”
  29. 23. Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: Bad-ass Queen
  30. 24. Jyotirao Phule: The Open Well
  31. 25. Deen Dayal: Courtier with a Camera
  32. 26. Birsa Munda: “Have You Been to Chalkad?”
  33. 27. Jamsetji Tata: Making India
  34. 28. Vivekananda: Bring All Together
  35. 29. Annie Besant: An Indian Tom-tom
  36. 30. Chidambaram Pillai: Swadeshi Steam
  37. 31. Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Elbow of Genius
  38. 32. Tagore: Unlocking Cages
  39. 33. Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers
  40. 34. Periyar: Sniper of Sacred Cows
  41. 35. Iqbal: Death for Falcons
  42. 36. Amrita Sher-Gil: This Is Me
  43. 37. Subhas Chandra Bose: A Touch of the Abnormal
  44. 38. Gandhi: “In the Palm of Our Hands”
  45. 39. Jinnah: The Chess Player
  46. 40. Manto: The Unsentimentalist
  47. 41. Ambedkar: Building Palaces on Dung Heaps
  48. 42. Raj Kapoor: The Politics of Love
  49. 43. Sheikh Abdullah: Chains of Gold
  50. 44. V. K. Krishna Menon: Somber Porcupine
  51. 45. Subbulakshmi: Opening Rosebuds
  52. 46. Indira Gandhi: The Center of Everything
  53. 47. Satyajit Ray: India Without Elephants
  54. 48. Charan Singh: A Common Cause
  55. 49. M. F. Husain: “Hindustan Is Free”
  56. 50. Dhirubhai Ambani: Fins
  57. Notes
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. Index
  60. Photographs
  61. Also by Sunil Khilnani
  62. A Note About the Author
  63. Newsletter Sign-up
  64. Contents
  65. Copyright