Incarnations: India in 50 Lives [Audiobook]

The lives and afterlives of 50 incredible Indian people from ancient India to the 21st century.

Historian Sunil Khilnani, Professor of History and Politics at Ashoka University, takes listeners on an immersive, whirlwind journey from ancient India to the 21st century through the life stories of 50 remarkable individuals, exploring their surprising legacies and illuminating both the wonders and the urgent conflicts of India today.

From the 5th century grammarian Panini, a pioneer in algorithmic thinking, to the wandering poetess Mirabai, challenger of the gender and caste order; from Malik Ambar, a 16th century north African who became a Deccan kingmaker, to Dhirubhai Ambani, the 20th century entrepreneur whose son now ranks among the world's richest billionaires; from Lakshmibai, the 19th century queen who enjoyed weightlifting, wrestling and steeplechasing, and who became a lightning rod for India's attitudes to women, to the contemporary painter M.F. Husain, who shaped a distinctive Indian modernism; Khilnani brings to life an extraordinary panorama of India's most revealing and resonant lives.

Guests featured include Javed Akhtar, one of the great songwriters of Indian cinema, renowned actress Sharmila Tagore, historian Romila Thapar, poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, artists Howard Hodgkin and Bharti Kher, Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, author and political activist Arundhati Roy, and Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock.

With the help of these experts, Khilnani investigates the lives of political strategists and social reformers, filmmakers and farmers, mathematicians and religious gurus, warriors and saints, artists and slaves, industry titans and freedom fighters, who have co-existed in a country bound together by its people, in all their differences and commonalities. The chosen lives conjure up an India full of relevance and infinite range, celebrating the variety of the country in all its diversity of thought, religion, politics and art.