Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives

by Sunil Khilnani

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374537210
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	310,081
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sunil Khilnani is the author of the acclaimed and influential The Idea of India (FSG, 1998). Formerly the Starr Foundation Professor and Director of the South Asia Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., he is currently the Avantha Professor and Director of the India Institute at King's College London. He is married to the writer Katherine Boo.

Table of Contents

Fifty Lives: Birthplaces Map x

Introduction 3

1 The Buddha: Waking India Up 9

2 Mahavira: Soldier of Nonviolence 16

3 Panini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow's Hoofprint 23

4 Kautilya: The Ring of Power 30

5 Ashoka: Power as Persuasion 37

6 Charaka: On Not Violating Good Judgment 45

7 Aryabhata: The Boat of Intellect 52

8 Adi Shankara: A God Without Qualities 57

9 Rajaraja Chola: Cosmos, Temple, and Territory 65

10 Basava: A Voice in the Air 72

11 Amir Khusrau: The Parrot of India 79

12 Kabir: "Hey, You!" 87

13 Guru Nanak: The Discipline of Deeds 95

14 Krishnadevaraya: "Kingship Is Strange" 103

15 Mirabai: I Go the Other Way 110

16 Akbar: The World and the Bridge 116

17 Malik Ambar: The Dark-Fated One 124

18 Dara Shikoh: The Meeting Place of the Two Oceans 130

19 Shivaji: Dreaming Big 138

20 Nainsukh: Owner Transfixed by Goose 145

21 William Jones: Enlightenment Mughal 150

22 Rammohun Roy: "Humanity in General" 158

23 Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: Bad-ass Queen 165

24 Jyotirao Phule: The Open Well 172

25 Deen Dayal: Courtier with a Camera 180

26 Birsa Munda: "Have You Been to Chalkad?" 187

27 Jamsetji Tata: Making India 194

28 Vivekananda: Bring All Together 203

29 Annie Besant: An Indian Tom-tom 211

30 Chidambaram Pillai: Swadeshi Steam 219

31 Srinivasa Ramanujan: The Elbow of Genius 228

32 Tagore: Unlocking Cages 236

33 Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers 245

34 Periyar: Sniper of Sacred Cows 254

35 Iqbal: Death for Falcons 263

36 Amrita Sher-Gil: This Is Me 272

37 Subhas Chandra Bose: A Touch of the Abnormal 280

38 Gandhi: "In the Palm of Our Hands" 289

39 Jinnah: The Chess Player 299

40 Manto: The Unsentimentalist 309

41 Ambedkar: Building Palaces on Dung Heaps 316

42 Raj Kapoor: The Politics of Love 326

43 Sheikh Abdullah: Chains of Gold 334

44 V. K. Krishna Menon: Somber Porcupine 342

45 Subbulakshmi: Opening Rosebuds 350

46 Indira Gandhi: The Center of Everything 358

47 Satyajit Ray: India Without Elephants 367

48 Charan Singh: A Common Cause 375

49 M. F. Husain: "Hindustan Is Free" 383

50 Dhirubhai Ambani: Fins 392

Notes 401

Acknowledgments 427

Index 431

Editorial Reviews

"A whirlwind tour of roughly 2,500 years of Indian history in 50 fast-paced chapters. . . . Khilnani's writing is easy to read, yet authoritative. He has spent much of his career studying-India . . . [and] strives to connect the lives and ideas of his subjects to one another and to contemporary India . . . Readers can dip in and out of chapters randomly without being confused, but Incarnations is most rewarding when read from start to finish . . . To my mind the best thing Khilnani has done is to leave the reader wanting more." --Vikas Bajaj, The New York Times Book Review

"An incisive work of popular history . . . undercutting, irreverent, and impish. It attempts to show, through prodigious but lightly worn scholarship, how complex and heterodox the Indian past was, and how it has been, and continues to be, constructed . . . Khilnani offers a fresh, cosmopolitan way of examining the Indian past. Everywhere he looks he sees rivers of influence and thought and ideas." --Karan Mahajan, The New Yorker

"Beautifully written with both scholarship and an enviably light touch, thoughtfully constructed and enviably erudite in its wide-ranging references, and as much at ease discussing higher mathematics and philosophy as politics and art, Incarnations is a major work by one of India's most impressive minds, and the best possible introduction to both the complexities and the charms of Indian history." --William Dalrymple, The Guardian

"Incisive and elegantly written . . . A work of distinction." --John Keay, The Times Literary Supplement

"Revelatory, bold and contemplative . . . Scholarly and accessible, lively and deeply serious . . . Is this simply cashing in on the idea behind the blockbuster A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor? Can anyone ever match the erudition and verve of the erstwhile director of the British Museum? Yes and yes. And though this may be heretical, at times Khilnani may even have surpassed him." --The Independent

"A tour de force of intellectual history, engagingly written." --Financial Times

"Khilnani is a rare blend of scholar and cracking travel writer . . . This exceptional book serves as a further reminder of India's great strengths." --Sunday Times (UK)

"Khilnani builds a mosaic of India's history since the time of the Buddha . . . [and] shows how the past has been remade to serve present-day agendas . . . [Incarnations is] punchy, personal, and quick moving, creating an incentive to learn more." --Andrew J. Nathan, Foreign Affairs

"It is hard to think of this mammoth task being executed any better. Even those who know Indian history well will be introduced to figures they did not know--and discover new things about familiar figures." --The Telegraph

"Fuelled by a quiet, relentless curiosity and an extraordinary ability to capture the sweep of history. Incarnations is an essential, and timely, read . . . It is also an exceptionally liberating intellectual journey to take. Mr. Khilnani's prose is light and fast-paced . . . the solid labour of travel, research and meetings with other scholars as well as interviewees builds a stronger foundation for Incarnations than most non-fiction books about India can claim. And a more entertaining one than most, too." --Business Standard

"This is a terrific book. Each biography runs into 10-13 pages, and though the prose is deceptively easy, you probably want to take your time as you savour the book, perhaps reading a piece daily. Or even reading and rereading it in this fashion for a long time to come. I know I will be placing a copy with each of my children so that they may know, in these anxiety-inducing times, what it truly means to be Indian." --Mint (India)

"Khilnani's choices are spirited, relevant, and aimed to provoke 'pressing contemporary questions' . . . immensely readable." --Kirkus Reviews

"An idiosyncratic and lively journey across 2,500 years of Indian history, offering bite-size essays on the lives of 50 exemplary figures whose achievements and afterlives have influenced contemporary Indian identity . . . Khilnani's essays are provocative and serious, a worthy rebuttal to the image of Indian history as 'curiously unpeopled.'" --Publishers Weekly

"How does one capture the multifaceted complexities of a country like India? Historian Khilnani presents a novel approach: weave a tapestry of 50 figures from the country's rich and ancient history that serves not only as an innovative introduction to the world's largest democracy but also a gauge to evaluate how that past informs the present . . . The well-researched yet short chapters cover a lot of ground with ease, and Khilnani succeeds in achieving his goal of emphasizing the continued relevance of history." --Poornima Apte, Booklist

From the Publisher

Khilnani…provides a whirlwind tour of roughly 2,500 years of Indian history in 50 fast-paced chapters. Each is a biographical sketch of an important personality from Indian politics, art, culture and economics, starting with the Buddha and ending with Dhirubhai Ambani, the son of a teacher who ended up building India's largest and most successful corporations. Among these figures are the giants like Gandhi whom many readers will be familiar with. But the book really shines when Khilnani writes about the ideas and exploits of the many lesser-known characters…Khilnani's writing is easy to read, yet authoritative…A potential pitfall of a book that seeks to tell the story of a country through 50 mini-biographies is that the stories won't hang together and the sum of their parts will seem dull. But Khilnani avoids that trap and strives to connect the lives and ideas of his subjects to one another and to contemporary India.

The New York Times Book Review - Vikas Bajaj

07/25/2016
In this spin-off from his eponymous BBC radio show, Khilnani (The Idea of India) embarks on an idiosyncratic and lively journey across 2,500 years of Indian history, offering bite-size essays on the lives of 50 exemplary figures whose achievements and afterlives have influenced contemporary Indian identity. Khilnani is joyously and unabashedly political in his choice of subjects; engaging with the Indian past in all its complexity is particularly important, he notes, in light of current political trends that seek to reduce what it is to be Indian “into a single religious concoction.” The essays place such well-known religious figures as the Buddha and Hindu monk Vivekananda alongside political activists “Red Annie” Besant and Jyotirao Phule. What unites them is Khilnani’s argumentative yet playful tone, as well as his sensitivity to the ways in which historical memory can be constructed, appropriated, and reappropriated. If the book has one flaw, it is its structure, with each essay barely skimming the life of its subject. Is six pages really enough for an account of the life of the Buddha, even a highly condensed one? Length aside, Khilnani’s essays are provocative and serious, a worthy rebuttal to the image of Indian history as “curiously unpeopled.” (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2016
India's historical narrative is elucidated through the lives of the story writers themselves in this companion volume to the BBC's eponymous radio series. Challenging the perception of India's vast chronology as a "curiously unpeopled" saga devoid of actual change makers, Khilnani (politics, King's Coll. London; The Idea of India) explores key turning points through illuminating narrative profiles rather than rote recitation. Including orthodox and adventurous choices, each individual is the incarnation or embodiment of different abstract ideas, personalizing India's struggle through their journeys across more than two millenia. Many comprehensive treatments, such as John Keay's India, are far too in-depth for all but the most academic audience. Khilnani's humanization of India's rich history brings it within reach of the amateur and scholar alike. Readers will be aided by the additional detailed maps showing the birthplaces of subjects. Many chapters depict regional struggles whose importance is diminished without adequate references. However, despite these lacking elements, the text remains a seminal and largely unparalleled work suitable for enthusiastic and informed readers. VERDICT The cultural, political, and religious evolution of India as told through its people will engage and educate. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/16.]—Jessica Bushore, Xenia, OH

Library Journal

2016-06-21
A selection of brief biographies of some of the most brilliant minds and personalities over the long course of Indian history.From Buddha to Dhirubhai Ambani, the self-created celebrity entrepreneur of Reliance Industries, these 50 chronological lives span politics, the arts, academics, and social reform and include a handful of women and a few Westerners by birth, as well. Indian scholar Khilnani (India Institute/King's Coll. London; The Idea of India, 1998, etc.) takes a soft-pedaling approach, fleshing out the entries with enough historical context to render the narrative accessible for all readers and concluding with a discussion of the subject's importance in the overall scheme. Mahavira, from the fifth century B.C.E., was the Jainist seeker and teacher whose core principles of many-sidedness, truth, and nonviolence Mohandas Gandhi later incorporated to groundbreaking effect. Early Brahmin thinker Panini (fourth century B.C.E.) set out an early distillation of the sacred language of Sanskrit, and Adi Shankara (eighth century C.E.) organized the plurality and diversity of Hindu scriptures. Lawyer and politician Ambedkar, born an "untouchable" in 1891, challenged the Brahminic hierarchy of class and enshrined rights for Dalits (his term, meaning "broken") in the new Constitution of 1950. Khilnani also includes a variety of Muslim leaders—e.g., Pakistani founding spirit Muhammad Iqbal (b. 1877), a poet and lawyer who championed a spiritual democracy (the "ultimate aim of Islam"), and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a father of modern Pakistan whose shortsightedness is largely responsible for the disastrous violence following Partition of 1947. Some of the women include ecstatic religious poet Mirabai (1498-1557) and Congress Party leader Indira Gandhi (curiously, Indira's towering father, Nehru, is absent). William Jones and Annie Besant appear as important Westerners who immersed themselves in Indian languages and mores and inculcated the West. Khilnani's choices are spirited, relevant, and aimed to provoke "pressing contemporary questions."An immensely readable teaching tool.

Kirkus Reviews