For all of India's myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, recapturing the human dimension of how the world's largest democracy came to be. His trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, film stars, and corporate titans—some famous, some unjustly forgotten—bring feeling, wry humor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own. As he journeys across the country and through its past, Khilnani uncovers more than just history. In rocket launches and ayurvedic call centers, in slum temples and Bollywood studios, in California communes and grimy ports, he examines the continued, and often surprising, relevance of the men and women who have made India—and the world—what it is. We encounter the Buddha, "the first human personality"; the ancient Sanskrit linguist who inspires computer programmers today; the wit and guile of India's Machiavelli; and the medieval poets who mocked rituals and caste. Incarnations is an ideal introduction to India, and a provocative and sophisticated reinterpretation of its history.
In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannons, massacred unarmed pr...
Drawing on untapped new sources, the first global history of the Indian Expeditionary Forces in World War IWhile their story is almost always overlooked, the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who served the British Empire in World War I played a crucial ...
An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to IndependenceWho of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the e...
A colorful and revealing portrait of the rise of India’s new billionaire class in a radically unequal society India is the world’s largest democracy, with more than one billion people and an economy expanding faster than China’s. ...
This is the story of the eclipse of the British Raj and the birth of an independent India and Pakistan. The fabled India of the maharajas, with their palaces and harems, their gold-caparisoned elephants and their glittering private armies—the...
Narrator: Frederick Davidson Published: 05/01/1993
A monumental biography of the subcontinent from the award-winning author of The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul.
Second only to China in the magnitude of its economic miracle and second to none in its potential to sha...
The Indian subcontinent was the scene of dramatic upheavals a few thousand years ago. The Northwest region entered an arid phase, and erosion coupled with tectonic events played havoc with river courses. One of them disappeared. Celebrated as -Saras...
Lost in time for generations, the story of a 19th-century English gentleman in British India-a family mystery of love found and loyalties abandoned, finally brought to light. In 1841, twenty-year-old Nigel Halleck set out for Calcutta as a clerk in...
Narrator: James Cameron Stewart Published: 07/25/2017
A sweeping, interdisciplinary history of the world's third-largest river, a potent symbol across South Asia and the Hindu diaspora.
Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India's most important and sacred riv...
