Incarnations: India in 50 Lives

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Nainsukh: Owner Transfixed by Goose Jun 05, 2015

Show notes

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 traditional Indian painting. Instead he showed the prince in his most unguarded moments: having his beard trimmed by a barber, being mimicked by a performer, huddled ill and depressed under a bulky quilt, and writing a letter bare-chested in his tent. "It's an almost modern, instagram-esque familiarity" says Sunil Khilnani.

The artist Howard Hodgkin, an appreciator and collector of Nainsukh's work, describes Nainsukh as "the first great modern artist of India". In his favourite painting, Balwant Singh and his pet goose stare at each other, both bird and prince transfixed.

Prof. Khilnani tells the story of two men: one a painter with a unique talent to express humanity and individuality, warmth and humour; the other a prince who unreservedly, unselfconsciously gave himself to the artist as subject.

Producer: Jeremy Grange Executive Producer: Martin Smith.

Shivaji: Dreaming Big Jun 04, 2015

Show notes

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 and deal-makers.

Shivaji is the presiding spirit of the state of Maharashtra and its capital, Mumbai. The city's airport and main railway station are named after him and there are plans for a statue of Shivaji, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, to be built out to sea from the city. His martial image, sword in hand, is a symbol of regional and Hindu identity. But Sunil Khilnani argues that Shivaji was a self-made man, the product of relentless self-improvement: "From relatively small beginnings, he plotted, sweated, and traded up to glory."

Prof. Khilnani discovers Shivaji's legacy in a gym in a working class neighbourhood of Mumbai and among career-minded pilgrims on a corporate bonding trip to the mountaintop site of Shivaji's coronation.

Producer: Jeremy Grange Original music composed by Talvin Singh.

Dara Shikoh: The Meeting Place of the Two Oceans Jun 03, 2015

Show notes

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 war against his brother Aurangzeb ended in humiliation, the prince condemned to death and paraded through the streets of Delhi on a miserable, worn-out elephant.

Dara was the eldest - and favourite - son of Emperor Shah Jahan. He became known in the Mughal court as Baba Dara - a Mughal Daddy's Boy - and spent his princely allowance pursuing his passion for religious ideas and translating scriptures. In doing so he opened a door to Indian religion and philosophy for later Western scholars.

Dara believed that all religions converged to a single monotheistic truth, like rivers meeting together in the ocean. This was enough for his brother to label him an apostate and to wage a war of succession for the Mughal throne. Sunil Khilnani is in Delhi where, after his capture, Dara Shikoh's public humiliation and execution were played out. He considers how different the course of Indian history might have been if Dara had been victorious and Aurangzeb had been the one paraded through the city dressed in rags.

Producer: Jeremy Grange.

Malik Ambar: The Dark Fated One Jun 02, 2015

Show notes

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 slavery which created elite warriors, educated and nurtured by their masters and treated almost like sons. Once freed, his power base grew. He took on the mighty Mughal Empire of the north using sophisticated guerrilla tactics and an ability to harass his enemy under cover of darkness.

Emperor Jahangir became obsessed with the Ethiopian, calling him "the ill-starred Ambar" and "Ambar of dark fate". A painting commissioned by Jahangir shows the Ethiopian's severed head on a spear and the Emperor firing arrows into it. However, as Prof. Khilnani reveals, all is not what it seems in that image.

Sunil Khilnani contrasts the rise to power of a black African in 16th century India with contemporary Indian attitudes towards people of African descent - a racism even shared by Mahatma Gandhi during his South African years.

Producer: Jeremy Grange.

Akbar: The World and the Bridge Jun 01, 2015

Show notes

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 life. His empire covered a huge swathe of the Indian subcontinent, from the Bay of Bengal in the east to the Arabian Sea, and southwards to the Deccan. Akbar showed no mercy in his pursuit of power and secured his gains with an iron fist. The defenders of a fort in Rajasthan chose mass suicide rather than surrender and Akbar went on to slaughter, some say, more than 20,000 inhabitants. And yet he seems to have grasped the diversity of beliefs and of culture across the land he ruled and propagated his own syncretic system of religious faith known as Din-I-Lahi. His stance has made him a pet for modern secularists but Professor Khilnani says we should be cautious. "However complex his motivations might have been, his commitment to pluralism yielded clear-cut instrumental advantages: it allowed him to expand his empire and maintain dominion over so many subjects."

Producer: Mark Savage Researcher: Manu Pillai Listeners can catch up with the series and see the list of remarkable Indians featured on the Radio 4 website.

Mirabai: I Go the Other Way May 29, 2015

Show notes

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 singer devoted to the Hindu god Krishna. "All this, of course, was scandalous behaviour," says Professor Sunil Khilnani "But Mira proved herself ungovernable in her spiritual zeal". Mirabai composed up to a hundred songs or bhajans which have been passed down through the centuries by oral tradition. Others have been added in her name over the centuries. Today some see Mirabai as a potent symbol of feminism and self-transformation, others as a passionate religious inspiration.

With field recordings by Parita Mukta and readings by Sheenu Das

Produced by Mark Savage Researcher: Manu Pillai Listeners can catch up with the series and see the list of remarkable Indians featured on the Radio 4 website.

Krishnadevaraya: Kingship Is Strange May 28, 2015

Show notes

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 both learned and thoughtful, with an artistic temperament. He was a compulsive self-promoter whose presence is felt amongst the ruins at Hampi, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it is in the Amuktamulyada, his long poetic work, that we hear his original voice which marks, says Professor Khilnani, "the emergence of an individual self, a subjective voice - centuries before the arrival of colonial ideas of the individual".

Produced by Mark Savage Researcher: Manu Pillai Editor: Hugh Levinson.

Guru Nanak: The Discipline of Deeds May 27, 2015

Show notes

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 on the road and is said to have travelled as far as Mecca and the Himalayas. But, unlike his predecessors, when he had achieved enlightenment he returned to his homelands in the Punjab. He taught his disciples that, rather than renouncing the world and retreating from it, they must use their faith to change it from within. Nanak's 'disciplined worldliness' emphasised the importance of work and family.

He also instituted an idea which is practised in Sikh temples all over the world. Sunil Khilnani visits the Gurudwara Nanak Piao in Delhi as they serve the langar, a meal provided by volunteers to anyone who comes, regardless of status, sex or religion. Everybody eats together in an equalizing act, a dispelling of the taboos designed to protect caste boundaries.

Sunil explores the life of a man whose ideas were polemical and provocative. In announcing that "there is neither Hindu nor Muslim" Nanak wasn't proposing a harmonious blend of religions. Instead, he was rejecting other paths and creating an entirely new religion, one which now has around 30 million followers.

Producer: Jeremy Grange Original music composed by Talvin Singh.

Kabir: Offender and Offendables May 26, 2015

Show notes

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 and an abrasive debunker of humbug.

There are plenty of legends around the poet - for example that, after his death, his body transfigured into flowers so that he could be neither cremated by his Hindu followers s nor buried by Muslim devotees - but we actually know very little about Kabir's life. One of the few certain facts is that he lived in India's most sacred city, Varanasi. Sunil Khilnani finds himself in the poor neighbourhood of Bajardhia where low-caste Muslims still work today as weavers. Sitting in cramped rooms among men with little work, Sunil reflects on the man who described himself as 'a patient weaver's son' but who is actually one of the most impatient, acerbic, fed-up voices in the Indian cultural canon.

Kabir has become venerated across northern India as a saint, almost a god. Yet Sunil finds Kabir's name being invoked in secular circles too, for example the annual Jaipur Literary Festival, a 21st century haven for independent thinking. Here he meets the eminent poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, translator of Kabir's poems into modern idiom and an advocate for the poetic dissenter who wasn't afraid to offend the powerful.

Producer: Jeremy Grange Original music composed by Talvin Singh.

Amir Khusro: The Parrot of India May 26, 2015

Show notes

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 help his words endure for 700 years. Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the man who called himself 'The Parrot of India'.

After a career as a soldier, Khusro gained fame in the royal courts of Delhi where poets improvised and extemporised for their patrons, competing with each other in a kind of medieval poetry slam. But despite being the most admired court poet of his time, he eventually suffered burnout and turned for spiritual strength to the great Sufi Muslim saint Nizamuddin Auliya. From then on his poetry focussed on the ideal of Sufi devotion, a merging of identity between master and follower.

Sunil Khilnani visits old Delhi and Khusro's tomb where his songs, passed down through 700 years of oral tradition, are still performed. Those songs have also come to live in the unconscious of millions of Indians through their use in cinema. Javed Akhtar, one of the great song-writers of Indian cinema, pays tribute to his 13th century predecessor.

The founding fathers of modern India made Amir Khusro a mascot of cultural harmony. Sunil Khilnani explores the life of a Sufi Muslim who has become the embodiment of the nation's unofficial motto: 'Unity in Diversity'.

Producer: Jeremy Grange Executive Producer: Martin Smith Original music composed by Talvin Singh.

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