From the Book - First American edition.
The Buddha : waking India up
Mahavira : soldier of non-violence
Panini : catching the ocean in a cow's hoofprint
Kautilya : the ring of power
Ashoka : power as persuasion
Charaka : on not violating good judgment
Aryabhata : the boat of intellect
Adi Shankara : a god without qualities
Rajaraja Chola : cosmos, temple, and territory
Basava : a voice in the air
Amir Khusrau : the parrot of India
Guru Nanak : the discipline of deeds
Krishnadevaraya : "kingship is strange"
Mirabai : I go the other way
Akbar : the world and the bridge
Malik Ambar : the dark-fated one
Dara Shikoh : the meeting-place of the two oceans
Nainsukh : owner transfixed by goose
William Jones : enlightenment Mughal
Rammohun Roy : "humanity in general"
Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi : bad-ass queen
Jyotirao Phule : the open well
Deen Daya : courtier with a camera
Birsa Munda : "have you been to Chalkad?"
Jamsetji Tata : making India
Vivekananda : bring all together
Annie Besant : an Indian tom-tom
Chidambaram Pillai : Swadeshi steam
Srinivasa Ramanujan : the elbow of genius
Visvesvaraya : extracting moonbeams from cucumbers
Periyar : sniper of sacred cows
Iqbal : death for falcons
Amrita Sher-Gil : this is me
Subhas Chandra Bose : a touch of the abnormal
Gandhi : "in the palm of our hands"
Jinnah : the chess player
Manto : the unsentimentalist
Ambedkar : building palaces on dung heaps
Raj Kapoor : the politics of love
Sheikh Abdullah : chains of gold
V.K. Krishna Menon : somber porcupine
Subbulakshmi : opening rosebuds
Indira Gandhi : the center of everything
Satyajit Ray : India without elephants
Charan Singh : a common cause
M.F. Husain : "Hindustan is free"
