
- 465 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
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 storiesâvisiting slum temples, ayurvedic call centers, Bollywood studios, textile mills, and Mughal fortressesâKhilnani 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 movementâamong them Mohandas Gandhi; Ambedkar, the Untouchable lawyer turned constitution maker; and the legendary singer M. S. Subbulakshmiânot 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.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Fifty Lives: Birthplaces Map
- Introduction
- 1. The Buddha: Waking India Up
- 2. Mahavira: Soldier of Nonviolence
- 3. Panini: Catching the Ocean in a Cowâs Hoofprint
- 4. Kautilya: The Ring of Power
- 5. Ashoka: Power as Persuasion
- 6. Charaka: On Not Violating Good Judgment
- 7. Aryabhata: The Boat of Intellect
- 8. Adi Shankara: A God Without Qualities
- 9. Rajaraja Chola: Cosmos, Temple, and Territory
- 10. Basava: A Voice in the Air
- 11. Amir Khusrau: The Parrot of India
- 12. Kabir: âHey, You!â
- 13. Guru Nanak: The Discipline of Deeds
- 14. Krishnadevaraya: âKingship Is Strangeâ
- 15. Mirabai: I Go the Other Way
- 16. Akbar: The World and the Bridge
- 17. Malik Ambar: The Dark-Fated One
- 18. Dara Shikoh: The Meeting Place of the Two Oceans
- 19. Shivaji: Dreaming Big
- 20. Nainsukh: Owner Transfixed by Goose
- 21. William Jones: Enlightenment Mughal
- 22. Rammohun Roy: âHumanity in Generalâ
- 23. Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: Bad-ass Queen
- 24. Jyotirao Phule: The Open Well
- 25. Deen Dayal: Courtier with a Camera
- 26. Birsa Munda: âHave You Been to Chalkad?â
- 27. Jamsetji Tata: Making India
- 28. Vivekananda: Bring All Together
- 29. Annie Besant: An Indian Tom-tom
- 30. Chidambaram Pillai: Swadeshi Steam
- 31. Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Elbow of Genius
- 32. Tagore: Unlocking Cages
- 33. Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers
- 34. Periyar: Sniper of Sacred Cows
- 35. Iqbal: Death for Falcons
- 36. Amrita Sher-Gil: This Is Me
- 37. Subhas Chandra Bose: A Touch of the Abnormal
- 38. Gandhi: âIn the Palm of Our Handsâ
- 39. Jinnah: The Chess Player
- 40. Manto: The Unsentimentalist
- 41. Ambedkar: Building Palaces on Dung Heaps
- 42. Raj Kapoor: The Politics of Love
- 43. Sheikh Abdullah: Chains of Gold
- 44. V. K. Krishna Menon: Somber Porcupine
- 45. Subbulakshmi: Opening Rosebuds
- 46. Indira Gandhi: The Center of Everything
- 47. Satyajit Ray: India Without Elephants
- 48. Charan Singh: A Common Cause
- 49. M. F. Husain: âHindustan Is Freeâ
- 50. Dhirubhai Ambani: Fins
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- Photographs
- Also by Sunil Khilnani
- A Note About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
- Contents
- Copyright