Incarnations

by Sunil Khilnani

  “I am an Indian Turk”: Cited in Muzaffar Alam, “The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan,” in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley, CA, 2003), p. 144.

  “I have become you”: In Sharma, Amir Khusraw, p. 47.

  “When shall we see”: Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Speech on Music, Ahmedabad,” March 21, 1926, printed in Young India, April 15, 1926, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 30 (Ahmedabad, 1994), 160.

  “If a Khurasani”: In Sharma, Amir Khusraw, p. 88.

  12. Kabir: “Hey, You!”

  “Strutting about”: In Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, trans., Songs of Kabir (New York, 2011), p. 82.

  “A weaver’s son”: Ibid., p. 59.

  “If you say you’re a Brahmin”: Ibid., p. 28.

  “I’m Rama’s slave”: Ibid., p. 54.

  “‘Me shogun.’”: Ibid., p. 67.

  “I’ve squandered my whole life”: From “Banaras and Magahar,” in Vinay Dharwadker, trans. and ed., The Weaver’s Songs (London, 2003), p. 139.

  13. Guru Nanak: The Discipline of Deeds

  “As a team of oxen”: Cited in Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Vol. I: 1469–1838 (New Delhi, 2004), p. 44.

  “The Qazi tells untruths”: From “Raga Dhanasari Q,” in Navtej Sarna, The Book of Nanak (New Delhi, 2003), p. 25.

  “There is but one God”: In Sarna, The Book of Nanak, p. 133.

  “Those who abjure meat”: Ibid., p. 58.

  “When all has been tried”: Guru Gobind Singh, Zafarnama, verse 22, trans. Navtej Sarna (New Delhi, 2011), p. 23.

  14. Krishnadevaraya: “Kingship Is Strange”

  “with eyes like blue sapphires”: Allasani Peddana, The Story of Manu, trans. Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman (Cambridge, MA, 2015), p. 13.

  “Oh! What is this glorious empire?”: Krishnadevaraya, Amuktamalyada, II.78, in Srinivas Reddy, trans., Giver of the Worn Garland: Krishnadevaraya’s Amuktamalyada (New Delhi, 2010), p. 45.

  “In this city”: Domingo Paes, “Narrative of Domingo Paes,” trans. Robert Sewell, in his A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagara): A Contribution to the History of India (London, 1900), p. 256.

  “Seated enthroned in the hall”: Peddana, The Story of Manu, pp. 13–14.

  “If you ask ‘Why Telugu?’”: Krishnadevaraya, Amuktamalyada I.15, in Reddy, trans., Giver of the Worn Garland, p. 5.

  “If a neighbouring kingdom”: Krishnadevaraya, Amuktamalyada IV.266, trans. Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, in “A New Imperial Idiom in the Sixteenth Century: Krishnadevaraya and His Political Theory of Vijayanagara,” in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800 (Durham, NC, 2011), pp. 102–103.

  “The king is non-violent”: Krishnadevaraya, Amuktamalyada, IV.278, trans. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, in “A New Imperial Idiom in the Sixteenth Century,” in Pollock, ed., Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia, p. 105.

  15. Mirabai: I Go the Other Way

  “Mira sang because”: M. K. Gandhi, interview with the musicologist Dilip Kumar Roy, Feb. 2, 1924, cited in Among the Great (Bombay, 1947), p. 83.

  “She became Mira”: in T.J.S. George, MS: A Life in Music (New Delhi, 2004), p. 186.

  “How will the night pass?”: In A. J. Alston, trans., The Devotional Poems of Mirabai (New Delhi, 2005), p. 66.

  “Some praise me”: In S. M. Pandey, “Mirabai and Her Contributions to the Bhakti Movement,” History of Religions 5, no. 1 (Summer 1965): 57.

  “How can anyone touch me?”: In Alston, trans., The Devotional Poems of Mirabai, p. 43.

  “Your slanders are sweet”: In Pandey, “Mirabai and Her Contributions to the Bhakti Movement,” p. 57.

  “On your lips”: In S. M. Pandey and Norman H. Zide, trans., Poems from Mirabai (Chicago, 1964), p. 2.

  “Approve of me or disapprove”: “Why Mira Can’t Come Back to Her Old House,” in Robert Bly and Jane Hirshfield, trans., Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (Boston, 2004), p. 21; translation adapted.

  16. Akbar: The World and the Bridge

  “His expression is tranquil”: In J. S. Hoyland, trans., and S. N. Banerjee, ed., The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J.: On His Journey to the Court of Akbar (London, 1922), p. 197.

  “He can give his opinion”: In Hoyland, trans., and Banerjee, ed., The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J, p. 201.

  “His eyes and eyebrows”: In Alexander Rogers, trans., and Henry Beveridge, ed., The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri: Or, Memoirs of Jahangir (London, 1909–14), pp. 33–34.

  “Thou hast come to”: In Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India: c. 1200–1800 (Chicago, 2004), p. 136.

  “With the help of reason”: In Ali Anooshahr, “Dialogism and Territoriality in a Mughal History of the Islamic Millennium,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55 (2012): 228.

  “Knowest thou at all”: In H. Beveridge, trans., The Akbarnama of Abu-l-Fazl (Calcutta, 1907), 1:16–17.

  “the great advantage”: Fr. Daniel Bartoli SJ, Missione al gran Mogor del p. Ridolfo Aquaviva della Compagnia de Gesú (Rome, 1663), cited in Vincent Arthur Smith, Akbar: The Great Mogul, 1542–1605 (Oxford, 1917), p. 212.

  17. Malik Ambar: The Dark-Fated One

  “a cruel Roman face”: Translated from Pieter van den Broecke, “Travels of Pieter van den Broecke,” in W. Ph. Coolhass, ed., Pieter van den Broecke in Azië (The Hague, 1962), 1:147–48.

  “the ill-starred Ambar”: In Rogers, trans., and Beveridge, ed., The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri: Or, Memoirs of Jahangir, passim.

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

  “This was not one of the majestic”: François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, 2nd ed., trans. Archibald Constable, ed. and rev. Vincent A. Smith (London, 1916), p. 98.

  “Since [this book] is the meeting-place”: Dara Shikoh, Majma al-bahrayn, ed. Muhammad Riza Jalali Na’ini (Tehran, 1987–88), trans. C. Ernst, in his “Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Arabic and Persian Translations from Indian Languages,” Iranian Studies 36, no. 2 (June 2003): 186.

  “in a clear style”: Cited in B. J. Hasrat, Dara Shikuh: Life and Works (Calcutta 1953; New Delhi, 1982), p. 266; in William Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Indian Tradition (New York and New Delhi, 1958), pp. 446–48.

  “Over-confident in his opinion”: Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor: Or Mogul India 1653–1708, vol. 1, trans. and ed. William Irvine (London, 1907), pp. 221–22.

  “The fear of seeing”: In Manucci, Storia do Mogor: Or Mogul India 1653– 1708, vol. 3, trans. and ed. William Irvine (London, 1907), p. 261.

  19. Shivaji: Dreaming Big

  “proud-spirited and warlike”: In Thomas Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, 629–645 A.D., ed. T. W. Rhys Davids and Stephen W. Bushell, vol. II (London, 1906), p. 239; cf. Xuanzang, Si-Yu-Ki. Buddhist Records of the Western World, trans. Samuel Beal (London, 1884), p. 256.

  “What is the solution?”: Sabhasad bakhar (1694), as cited in Prachi Deshpande, Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960 (New York, 2007), p. 27.

  “Negligence for a single moment”: Jadunath Sarkar, Anecdotes of Aurangzib (Calcutta, 1963), p. 49; cited in M. N. Pearson, “Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” Journal of Asian Studies 35, no. 2 (Feb. 1976): 230, reprinted in Meena Bhargava, ed., The Decline of the Mughal Empire (New Delhi, 2014), ch. 5, p. 96.

  “exercising all the powers”: François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, 2nd ed., trans. Archibald Constable, ed. and rev. Vincent A. Smith (London, 1916), p. 198.

  “Sevagee is making a throne”: Narayan Senavi, Letter to the Deputy Governor of Bombay, April 4, 1674, in English Factory Records on Shivaji (1659–1682) (Poona, 1931), p. 328; cited in V. S. Bendrey, ed., Coronation of Shivaji the Great: Or the Procedure of the Relig
ious Ceremony performed by Gagabhatta for the Consecration of Shivaji as a Hindu King (Bombay, 1960), p. 30.

  “On each side of the throne”: Henry Oxinden, “Oxinden’s Narrative,” May 13–June 13, 1674, in English Factory Records on Shivaji (1659–1682), p. 375; cited in Bendrey, ed., Coronation of Shivaji the Great, p. 39.

  “many elephants”: Senavi, Letter to the Deputy Governor of Bombay, April 4, 1674, in English Factory Records on Shivaji (1659–1682), p. 328; cited in Bendrey, ed., Coronation of Shivaji the Great, p. 31.

  a “peasant boy”: James W. Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (Oxford, 2003), p. 22.

  21 . William Jones: Enlightenment Mughal

  “The Laws of the Hindus”: In Lord Teignmouth, ed., Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones, new ed. (London, 1804), p. 228.

  “A far-seeing man”: Cited in Michael J. Franklin, Orientalist Jones: Sir William Jones, Poet, Lawyer, and Linguist, 1746–1794 (Oxford, 2011), p. 37.

  “From my earliest years”: William Jones, Letter to C. Reviczki (undated, probably Jan./Feb. 1768), in Lord Teignmouth, ed., Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones, p. 44. The text breaks off at this point, with a note from the editor that reads, “The remainder of this letter is lost; but from the context, and the answer of Reviczki, we may conclude that it contained an elaborate panegyric on Eastern poetry, expressed with all the rapture which novelty inspires, and in terms degrading to the muses of Greece and Rome.”

  “certainly not preach”: William Jones, Letter to Lord Ashburton, April 27, 1783, in Garland Cannon, ed., The Letters of Sir William Jones, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1970), p. 616; cited in Franklin, Orientalist Jones, p. 4.

  “The Sanscrit language”: William Jones, “The Third Anniversary Discourse, on the Hindus,” delivered to the Asiatick Society of Bengal, Feb. 2, 1786, in Anna Maria Jones and Lord Teignmouth, eds., The Works of Sir William Jones: In Six Volumes, vol. 1 (London, 1799), p. 26.

  “If now it be asked”: William Jones, First Discourse Delivered to the Asiatick Society of Bengal, Feb. 24, 1784, in J. Elmes, ed., Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society: And Miscellaneous Papers … by Sir William Jones, with an essay by Lord Teignmouth, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London, 1824), p. 4.

  “Gentlemen, when I was”: William Jones, First Discourse Delivered to the Asiatick Society of Bengal, Feb. 24, 1784, in Elmes, ed., Discourses, p. 1.

  “so much like Shakespeare”: William Jones, in Cannon, ed., The Letters of Sir William Jones, p. 806; cited in Franklin, Orientalist Jones, p. 262.

  “Her charms cannot be”: Cited in Franklin, Orientalist Jones, pp. 265–66.

  “All is animated”: Friedrich von Schlegel, Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1819), p. 211.

  “I never was unhappy”: William Jones, in Cannon, ed., The Letters of Sir William Jones, p. 778; cited in Franklin, Orientalist Jones, p. 241.

  “Morning—One letter”: In Lord Teignmouth, ed., Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones, p. 242.

  “a single shelf”: T. B. Macaulay Minute on Education dated Feb. 2, 1835, in H. Sharp, ed., Selections from Educational Records, Part I (1781–1839) (Calcutta, 1920; repr. New Delhi, 1965), pp. 107–17.

  22. Rammohun Roy: “Humanity in General”

  “lion of the season”: Lord Bentinck, in C. H. Philips, ed., The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, Governor General of India, 1828–1835, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 658–59; cited in Lynn Zastoupil, Rammohun Roy and the Making of Victorian Britain (New York, 2010), p. 7.

  “peculiar delirium of pieties”: Iqbal Singh, Rammohun Roy: A Biographical Inquiry into the Making of Modern India, vol. 1 (London, 1958), p. 23.

  “I have never ceased”: Rammohun Roy, Translation of the Ishopanishad, One of the Chapters of the Yajur-Ved, According to the Commentary of the Celebrated Shankar-Acharya: Establishing the Unity and Incomprehensibility of the Supreme Being; And That His Worship Alone Can Lead to Eternal Beatitude (Calcutta, 1816), in Kalidas Nag and Debajyoti Burman, eds., The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Calcutta, 1995), part 2, p. 52.

  “After having bathed”: Fanny Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, ed. Indira Ghose and Sara Mills (Manchester, UK, 2001), p. 80.

  “Forbid it, British Power!”: William Ward, A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos: Including a Minute Description of Their Manners and Customs, and Translations from their Principal Works (Serampore, 1817); cited in Lynn Zastoupil, Rammohun Roy and the Making of Victorian Britain, p. 63.

  “A more remarkable man”: “Death of Rammohun Roy,” The Times, Sept. 30, 1833, p. 3.

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

  “An accumulation of adequate causes”: Benjamin Disraeli, Speech to the House of Commons, July 27, 1857, reproduced in T. C. Hansard, ed., The Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series, vol. 147 (July 20, 1857–Aug. 28, 1857) (London, 1857), p. 475.

  “The Indian Mutiny has produced”: General Hugh Rose, June 23, 1858, Rose Papers, vol. 41. Add MSS 42812, Nov. 1857–Oct. 1859, Oriental and India Office Collection, British Library, cited in Joyce Lebra-Chapman, The Rani of Jhansi: A Study in Female Heroism in India (Honolulu, c. 1986), pp. 113–14.

  “This Jezebel Ranee”: Thomas Lowe, Central India During the Rebellion of 1857 and 1858 (London, 1860), p. 261; cited in Antonia Fraser, Boadicea’s Chariot: The Warrior Queens (London, 1988), p. 292.

  “she sometimes appeared”: Vishnu Bhatt, in Vishnu Bhatt Godshe Versaikar, 1857: The Real Story of the Great Uprising, trans. Mrinal Pande (New Delhi, 2011), p. 85.

  “Does it entitle them”: Cited in Lebra-Chapman, The Rani of Jhansi, p. 37.

  “We fight for independence”: There is no historical source for this, despite its being quoted regularly by many writers.

  24. Jyotirao Phule: The Open Well

  “Without education, wisdom was lost”: Gail Omvedt, Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of AntiCaste Intellectuals (New Delhi, 2008), pp. 175–76.

  “What boldness and what loyalty”: Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, “Marathi Pustake,” Nibandhamala, 2 vols. (Pune, 1993), 1:453; cited in Dominic Vendell, “Jotirao Phule’s Satyasodh and the Problem of Subaltern Consciousness,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 1 (2014): 52–66 (p. 52, his translation).

  “At places one finds”: Jyotirao Phule, Cultivator’s Whipcord (Shetkaryacha Asud), 1883, in G. P. Deshpande, ed., Selected Writings of Jotirao Phule (New Delhi, 2002), p. 160; cited in Ramachandra Guha, ed., Makers of Modern India (Cambridge, MA, 2011), p. 84.

  “With an earnest desire”: Jotirao Govindrao Phule, Collected Works of Mahatma Jotirao Phule, vol. 1, Slavery—In the Civilised British Government Under the Cloak of Brahmanism (Bombay, 1991), p. xxvii.

  25. Deen Dayal: Courtier with a Camera

  “imps” with “screeching clarinets”: Cited in Matthias Schulz, “Diary Rediscovered: Franz Ferdinand’s Journey Around the World,” Der Spiegel, Feb. 25, 2013; trans. by Paul Cohen for Spiegel Online International, March 1, 2013; available at www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/diary-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-details-1892-journey-around-world-a-886196.html.

  “a form of conspicuous consumption”: Lewis Gann, “Western and Japanese Colonialism,” in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, ed. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, NJ, 1984); cited in Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (London, 2014), p. 62.

  “So pleased was his Highness”: The Deccan Budget, July 6, 1894; cited in a personal communication from Deborah Hutton.

  26. Birsa Munda: “Have You Been to Chalkad?”

  “When the oppressor”: In “The Kols, the Insurrection of 1862 and the Land Tenure Act of 1869,” Calcutta Review 49 (1869): 109–58; cited in K. S. Singh, Birsa Munda and his Movement (1872–1901): A Study of a Millenarian Movement in Chotanagpur (Calcutt
a, 1983; new ed., 2002), p. 4.

  “laughing and restless”: Cited in Singh, Birsa Munda and his Movement (1872–1901), p. 39.

  “Deep in the wild forest”: Ibid., p. 314.

  “Deep amidst forest”: Ibid., p. 311.

  “The beloved son”: Ibid.

  “with the one object”: Cited in Alpa Shah, “Religion and the Secular Left: Subaltern Studies, Birsa Munda and Maoists,” Anthropology of This Century 9 (Jan. 2014); available at http://aotcpress.com/articles/religion-secular-left-subaltern-studies-birsa-munda-maoists/.

  “mere act of”: Cited in Shah, “Religion and the Secular Left: Subaltern Studies, Birsa Munda and Maoists.”

  “Under the garb of”: Ibid.

  “At about 9 p.m.”: Cited in Surendra Prasad Sinha, Life and Times of Birsa Bhagwan (Ranchi, Bihar Tribal Research Institute, 1964), p. 89.

  27. Jamsetji Tata: Making India

  “You don’t know what character”: Cited in R. M. Lala, The Creation of Wealth: The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century (Bombay, 1981), p. 22.

  “I am sorry to say”: Calvin W. Smith, letter dated April 25, 1865, Calvin W. Smith Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; cited in Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014), p. 272.

  “What advances a nation”: Cited in Lala, The Creation of Wealth, p. 37.

  “never looked to self-interest”: Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Late Mr. Tata,” Indian Opinion, May 20, 1905, trans. from Gujarati, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 4 (Ahmedabad, 1960), p. 442; cited in Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India (New Delhi, 2013), p. 180.

  28. Vivekananda: Bring All Together

  “the contribution from the”: Narendra Modi, cited in “Modi Cautions Against Commodifying Yoga,” in The Hindu, June 21, 2015.

  “An orator by Divine right”: Nov. 15, 1894, Letters of Swami Vivekananda (Kolkata, 2013), p. 58.

  “a personal inspiration”: Narendra Modi (@narendramodi), tweet on Jan. 12, 2015; available at https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/554449411065929729.

  “because it never conquered”: “The Work Before Us,” The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 7th ed. (Kolkata, 2013), 3:299.