Incarnations: India in 50 Lives

Incarnations: India in 50 Lives episodes:

• 03.25.2016

  Dhirubhai Ambani: Fins

  Professor Sunil Khilnani from the King's India Institute in London, on the life and legacy of the Indian business tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of Reliance Industries. The son of a penurious schoolteacher, Ambani credited himself with an almost animal...

  
• 03.24.2016

  MF Husain: Hindustan Is Free

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at controversy over the Indian artist MF Husain, who spent the last days of his life in exile. Husain is considered by some to be the...

  
• 03.23.2016

  Charan Singh: A Common Cause

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, explores the life and legacy of Charan Singh, the lawyer turned politician who championed the cause of India's farmers. Singh is remembered today as the politician who took on Indira...

  
• 03.22.2016

  Satyajit Ray: India without Elephants

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life and work of filmmaker Satyajit Ray. In the history of Indian cinema, there is a Before Ray, and an After. As Sunil Khilnani says, “he’s the first truly modern filmmaker we have.” But Satyajit Ray’s...

  
• 03.21.2016

  Indira Gandhi: The Centre of Everything

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life of Indira Gandhi, India's first woman prime minister, whose darkest moment was a two year period known as "the emergency". Jails filled up with her...

  
• 03.18.2016

  Subbulakshmi: Opening Rosebuds

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life of south Indian singer MS Subbulakshmi. Subbulakshmi’s singing voice, striking from the start, would ultimately range three octaves. A perfectionist, she had the capacity to range across genres but narrowed over the years to what...

  
• 03.17.2016

  Krishna Menon: Sombre Porcupine

  Professor Sunil Khinani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life of Krishna Menon, the abrasive Indian diplomat and statesman who invented the concept of non-alignment. He was one of the most reviled figures of the Cold...

  
• 03.16.2016

  Sheikh Abdullah: Chains of Gold

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the Lion of Kashmir. Born in Srinagar as a burden, Abdullah’s father died before he was born. Dispossessed of their share of family property, Abdullah and his two elder brothers were...

  
• 03.15.2016

  Raj Kapoor: The Politics of Love

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute, looks at the life of the celebrated actor and movie director Raj Kapoor who attracted a huge following well before the term 'Bollywood' became known. Kapoor started making films, just as...

  
• 03.14.2016

  Bhimrao Ambedkar: Building Palaces on Dung Heaps

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute, looks at the life of Bhimrao Ambedkar, champion of the community previously known as 'untouchables' whom he renamed as Dalits. Ambedkar, who was a Dalit himself and fought against caste...

  
• 03.11.2016

  Manto: The Unsentimentalist

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life and work of India's master of the short story Saadat Hasan Manto. Manto didn't fuss much over his sentences. He wrote in a rush, at hack speed, for money – and often legless drunk. His...

  
• 03.10.2016

  Jinnah: The Chess Player

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life and legacy of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Descriptions of his early life do not sound like someone who would go on to lead...

  
• 03.09.2016

  Gandhi: In The Palm of Our Hands

  Professor Sunil Khilnani explores the life and legacy of the Mahatma Gandhi: lawyer, politician and leader of the nationalist movement against British rule in India. He is generally admired outside India, but is the subject of heated debate and contention...

  
• 03.08.2016

  Subhas Chandra Bose: A Touch of the Abnormal

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life of political leader and freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose. When Bose's father named his ninth child Subhas – "one of good speech" – he wasn't imagining the boy applying an oratorical gift to fervent radicalism. ...

  
• 03.07.2016

  Amrita Sher-Gil: This is Me

  Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the painter Amrita Sher-Gil – 20th century India’s first art star – who died under shrouded circumstances in 1941 at the age of just 28. Sher-Gil left a vortex of stories behind her: about...

  
• 03.04.2016

  Iqbal: Death for Falcons

  Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the poet and philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal. One of India’s most patriotic, eloquent writers, Iqbal is also celebrated as Pakistan’s national poet. In his spare time, he wrote one of the first Urdu textbooks...

  
• 03.03.2016

  Periyar: Sniper of Sacred Cows

  Sunil Khilnani tells the story of EV Ramaswamy Naicker, known to his followers as Thanthai Periyar: the Great Man – a self-conscious dig at his nemesis Gandhi, the Great Soul. Periyar is best known in India as an anti-Brahmin activist,...

  
• 03.02.2016

  Visvesvaraya: Extracting Moonbeams from Cucumbers

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life and work of engineer, planner and politician Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. Visvesvaraya was a frail bureaucrat who walked hunched, as if the burden of state-building literally pressed down on his shoulders. But in the popular imagination he...

  
• 03.01.2016

  Tagore: Unlocking Cages

  Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore. Born in 1861 To a prosperous Bengal family, Rabindranath Tagore went on to win India’s first Nobel Prize, for literature, in 1913. While India has often...

  
• 02.29.2016

  Ramanujan: The Elbow of Genius

  Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. We are accustomed to mathematicians as enigmatic beings, but the case of Ramanujan, one of the most important mathematicians of the twentieth century, is particularly mysterious. His life seems to...

  
• 02.26.2016

  Chidambaram Pillai: Swadeshi Steam

  Sunil Khilnani explores the thwarted revolutionary ambitions of Chidambaram Pillai. Chidambaram Pillai was a feisty baby-faced lawyer from Tuticorin in southern India. His is one of the many, largely forgotten stories of failure that litter the path to independence. But...

  
• 02.25.2016

  Annie Besant: An Indian Tomtom

  Sunil Khilnani explores the journey of Annie Besant, from late Victorian campaigner and social reformer in England to leader of India’s Congress Party. Possessed of a self-belief some thought inappropriate for a woman, Annie Besant’s struggle against convention would make...

  
• 02.25.2016

  Jamsetji Tata: Swadeshi Capitalist

  Professor Sunil Khilnani explores the life and legacy of the industrialist Jamsetji Tata, one of a series of remarkable individuals who have made India what it is today. Tata played a vitally important role in establishing India’s manufacturing base...

  
• 02.24.2016

  Vivekananda: Bring All Together

  Sunil Khilnani explores the life and work of Swami Vivekananda, a social and religious reformer who became India’s first global guru, credited with introducing yoga to the west. Vivekananda was a restless, baby-faced monk from Calcutta. And his image –...

  
• 02.22.2016

  Deen Dayal: Courtier with a Camera

  Professor Sunil Khilnani returns with Incarnations. In the first programme he profiles the pioneering photographer Lala Deen Dayal. Born in 1844, Lala Deen Dayal would go on to become the court photographer for the fabulously wealthy sixth Nizam of Hyderabad,...

  
• 06.12.2015

  Birsa Munda: Have You Been to Chalkad?

  Prof. Sunil Khilnani profiles Birsa Munda, the young, charismatic healer who led his tribal community in revolt against the British and whose life, more than a century after his death, poses the question: 'Who owns India?' Scattered across the subcontinent,...

  
• 06.11.2015

  Jyotirao Phule: The Open Well

  A portrait of the social reformer and anti-caste campaigner. Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the India Institute, King's College London, visits Pune where Jyotirao Phule set out to educate women and promote the cause of the lower-caste members of Indian society....

  
• 06.10.2015

  Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi: Badass Queen

  Prof. Sunil Khilnani explores the life of Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi, the queen who fought against the British and became a heroine of India's 1857 Rebellion. "The Rani was certainly no ordinary queen," he says of the woman who was...

  
• 06.09.2015

  Rammohan Roy: Humanity in General

  Prof. Sunil Khilnani profiles Rammohan Roy, the Bengali scholar and reformer who became a worldwide intellectual celebrity and campaigned against Sati, the suicide of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. Rammohan Roy was part of an international set of radicals...

  
• 06.08.2015

  William Jones: Enlightenment Moghul

  Professor Sunil Khilnani looks at the contribution Sir William Jones made to our understanding of Indian history and culture. Jones set sail for India at the end of the 18th century where he became one of the greatest advocates for...

  
• 06.05.2015

  Nainsukh: Owner Transfixed by Goose

  Prof. Sunil Khilnani profiles Nainsukh, the 18th century artist whose intimate and engaging portraits of a prince's life created a new vision for Indian art. In his paintings of his patron, Balwant Singh, Nainsukh departed from the rigid formality of...

  
• 06.04.2015

  Shivaji: Dreaming Big

  Shivaji was the 17th century warrior-king who challenged the Muslim Moghul Empire and today stands as a symbol of Hindu pride. Prof. Sunil Khilnani explores Shivaji's multiple incarnations, the latest of which is as a role model for corporate networkers...

  
• 06.03.2015

  Dara Shikoh: The Meeting Place of the Two Oceans

  Prof. Sunil Khilnani profiles one of the most beguiling intellectual figures of his age, a man whose story resonates today as one of India's great 'what if' moments. Dara Shikoh was the scholar and heir to the Mughal throne whose...

  
• 06.02.2015

  Malik Ambar: The Dark Fated One

  Prof. Sunil Khilnani profiles the life of Malik Ambar, an Ethiopian slave who rose to become a power-broker and king maker. Malik Ambar's story challenges some of our familiar perceptions of slavery. He was part of a tradition of military...

  
• 06.01.2015

  Akbar: The World and the Bridge

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, tells the story of Akbar, the greatest ruler of the Mughal Empire. Akbar seems to have managed to combine a ruthless early career with a startling religious tolerance in later...

  
• 05.29.2015

  Mirabai: I Go the Other Way

  Sunil Khilnani tells the story of Mirabai, the 16th century mystic poet who is one of India's most revered saints. Mirabai was born into a conservative warrior caste in Rajastan but rejected traditional family life and became a wandering religious...

  
• 05.28.2015

  Krishnadevaraya: Kingship Is Strange

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, visits Hampi in today's Karnataka, site of the sprawling capital of Krishnadevaraya, 16th-century warrior and self-doubting king. Krishnadevaraya lived in a brutal age and yet his writings show he was...

  
• 05.27.2015

  Guru Nanak: The Discipline of Deeds

  Today's Incarnation is a poet who established one of the great world religions: Guru Nanak, the 15th century founder of Sikhism. Like the Buddha and Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion, Nanak was a wanderer. He spent 25 years...

  
• 05.26.2015

  Kabir: Offender and Offendables

  Today's subject is the low-caste weaver and poet who dared to upturn the social orthodoxies of 15th century India - and who still challenges us today. Sunil explores the life and poetic legacy of Kabir - a dissenter, a provoker...

  
• 05.26.2015

  Amir Khusro: The Parrot of India

  By turns warrior, prisoner of war, court poet and passionate Sufi devotee, Amir Khusro was above all a quick-witted literary survivor. And his ability to write for all manner of patrons and audiences, added to his faith in Sufism, would...

  
• 05.22.2015

  Basavana: A Voice in the Air

  A portrait of Basavana, the radical poet and religious guru from the 12th century, whose words have inspired many other Indian poets, writers and dramatists. Professor Sunil Khilnani tells the story of a man whose deceptively simple verses protest against...

  
• 05.21.2015

  Rajaraja Chola: Cults of the Imagination

  Rajaraja was not the first of the Chola dynasty but he took their empire to its zenith - from a relatively small kingdom to the dominant empire in India. Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, visits...

  
• 05.20.2015

  Shankaracharya: A God Without Qualities

  Is that a snake or a coiled rope? Intriguingly, that is the question which starts Professor Sunil Khilnani's look at the life and legacy of Adi Shankaracharya, the philosopher and theologian who set Hinduism - the third largest religion in...

  
• 05.19.2015

  Aryabhata: The Boat of Intellect

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, explores the life and legacy of Aryabhata, the legendary Indian mathematician and astronomer. Unknown in the West until a few decades ago, he is said by some to rank with...

  
• 05.18.2015

  Charaka: On Not Violating Good Judgement

  Professor Sunil Khilnani visits a modern-day clinic which follows the practices set out by Charaka, a medical pioneer whose handbook is still widely used in India today. His text, known as the Charaka Samhita or 'Compendium of Charaka', is an...

  
• 05.15.2015

  Ashoka: Power and Persuasion

  Professor Sunil Khilnani of the King's India Institute in London looks at the life and legacy of the emperor Ashoka, who ruled over a large part of the Indian sub-continent. He came to power around the time the Romans were...

  
• 05.14.2015

  Kautilya: The Circle of Power

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life and legacy of Kautilya, whose treatise on political power dates back at least two thousand years. The Indian political strategist has been compared to Machiavelli. Some...

  
• 05.13.2015

  Panini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow's Hoofprint

  Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life and legacy of Panini, a master of the ancient Sanskrit language who lived around two and a half thousand years ago. His grammar, known as the...

  
• 05.12.2015

  Mahavira: Soldier of Nonviolence

  Professor Sunil Khilnani of the King's India Institute explores the life and legacy of Mahavira Jain. Born more than two thousand years ago, Mahavira is the inspiration for millions of followers of the Jain religion. It teaches that the way...

  
• 05.12.2015

  The Buddha: Waking India Up

  Over the course of 50 episodes, Sunil Khilnani, director of the King's India Institute in London, takes listeners on a whirlwind journey from ancient India to the 21st century through the prism of the life stories of 50 remarkable individuals....