10 Indian Biographies On Inspirational People

1.  Husain: Portrait of an Artist By Ila Pal

A biography of MF Husain written by someone who had both the access to and therefore the advantage of a ringside view to the mercurial artist for on the brink of 50 years need to be a touch quiet mostly anecdotal or a keyhole account of 1 of the best artists the planet has ever seen. Despite offering an immersive first-person account, much of which recounts conversations with Husain about the journey of his art, his understanding of India and therefore the manner during which he became the connection between traditional Indian art and the avant-garde movement that he was an integral a part of, Ila Pal’s Husain: Portrait of an Artist leaves you feeling that the mask Husain donned remains considerably in situ.

In the 1990s, Maqbool Fida Husain's name was synonymous with art, as far because the Indian public was concerned. He became the primary Indian artist whose works sold for over Rs 10 lakh — an unimaginable figure back within the day. His showmanship, very similar to his talent, was an inherent trait that reached new heights. This was the amount where Husain had a show called Shwetambari — White Is Superabundant which agitated some people to the extent that they even took to violence. Once he used 1500m of white long cloth piece, which was cascading, stretching, tightening, canopying, then let loose to the touch the ground and rise again. He also scattered 300 kilos of newspapers across the ground.

2.  Akhada: The Authorized Biography of Mahavir Singh Phogat By Saurabh Duggal

The lifetime of a pehelwan (wrestler) is in no way easy. Not everyone can devote their developing years to strenuous training, endless sacrifices, and bouts that feel longer than simply a couple of minutes. Geeta and Babita Phogat and other two sisters too, however, they learned early in their lives that this “cycle of wrestle-eat-sleep-repeat” would be unending for them.

The prime perpetrator behind this cycle, their father and coach Mahavir Singh Phogat, is that the central figure in Saurabh Duggal’s Akhada. The biography traces not only the Phogat sisters’ journey to wrestling stardom but also Mahavir’s life from an era when sports was just another route to secure a government job and wrestling was meant just for mard jaat (menfolk). But what really spurred Mahavir to coach his four daughters? Duggal’s book offers some key revelations about the person who is taken into account one among India’s greatest wrestling coaches.

Though one may think that Mahavir was curious about wrestling since the very beginning,, as Duggal writes, it had been kabaddi that was his “first love”. Wrestling only came to him when he was in school VIII. From his training days at Master Changdi Ram’s akhada in Delhi, working with the Haryana State Electricity Board and Border private security force, to trying his luck within the property business and politics, there are many things within the book that haven't been mentioned before within the public sphere. Another milestone that brings the reader on the brink of Mahavir’s thinking is that the day he actually made the “crucial decision to coach the youngsters in his family to win Olympic gold”.

3.  Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me By Roy Moxham

Whenever Moxham made his annual visit to India he would occupy her house in Delhi. Sharing such close space with Poonam and her family allowed Moxham to ascertain and share a side of Phoolan that the majority folks had never seen. He tells us how she was loathed to rent a household and loved to cook and clean the floors herself. Also, she was passionately keen on kids and spent any number of hours taking care of her sisters' children, but that very same family also tried to use her - wanting a share of her new-found wealth and prosperity. He also shows us what life was like for her when she joined politics, how she almost embraced Buddhism, and how, as she got wealthier, she simply gave stuff away to people. She barely tolerated the safety that was given to her and because the years glided by she used fewer and fewer bodyguards. Moxham is certain that had she had more security she wouldn't have lost her life prematurely.

When Moxham was asked why he wrote this memoir, "Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me", he claimed it had been to the line to the record straight on Phoolan. consistent with him, people's impressions of Phoolan are shaped mainly by Shekhar Kapur's movie "The Bandit Queen" (based on the book by Mala Sen). Now while the movie is sympathetic to Phoolan, there are scenes within the movie that she vehemently protested. One was the depiction of the brutal rape scene and therefore the other was how Kapur had the actress that plays Phoolan, paraded naked around the village well. Phoolan thought it had been cruel and insensitive to depict her that way. She made Moxham write to Channel 4 several times to prevent the movie from being released within the UK, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Moxham, true friend that he's, supported her dislike of the movie and will never bring himself to observe it, until he began to write down the memoir, that is.

Another reason Moxham wanted to write down this book is that it is the only account of the previous MP's life after her release from jail in 1994. The book is predicated on the extensive correspondence between the 2, albeit Devi didn't know English. The correspondence led to an unlikely friendship that lasted till the time Phoolan Devi was assassinated in 2001.

What am I able to say about Moxham's writing? Well, it's basic to mention the very least, but this is often an entertaining read and you'll tell, right from the get-go that his interest in Phoolan's welfare is kindly and honest. When he's not visiting her in India he is traveling the country, usually little towns and villages within the North, and his descriptions of those little towns made for welcome reading. More importantly, reading about Phoolan's life drives us to ask: would she become a bandit had she not been an uneducated woman, during a backward village with so few choices? I feel the solution is NO!!! She was spirited, charismatic, but poor and uneducated. to form matters worse she was born into the incorrect caste and within the wrong gender. of these factors conspired to form her whom she became. Her story is actually worth reading.

4. Vivekananda: A Biography By Swami Nilkanthananda 

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was a young Hindu monk. His presence and speech at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 enthralled those attending. He was lauded for his visionary and lyrical embrace of the validity and unity of all religions. He went on to introduce Hinduism and therefore the practices and principles of yoga to the West. His ideals of a universal religion and therefore the worship of the living God still reverberate within the hearts and minds of all those that espouse the spiritual practice of hospitality during a pluralistic world.

In the preface, Parachin offers ten quotations by Swami Vivekananda to whet our interest during this extraordinary spiritual teacher. Here is that the one we liked best: "Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — consider it, the dream of it, survive that concept. Let the mind, muscles, nerves, every part of our body to be filled with that concept, and just leave every other idea alone. this is often the thanks to success, that's the way great spiritual giants are produced."

Vivekananda studied for 2 years under the guidance and spiritual direction of Sri Ramakrishna and when this pathfinding teacher died, he took over because of the leader of his disciples. After years as a wandering monk, Vivekananda visited Vedic centers in India and later established centers in NY and California. Although he died at the first age of 39, Swami Vivekananda popularized Vedic terms and ideas like karma, meditation, chakra, reincarnation, self-realization, enlightenment, and guru. Parachin notices him as "the towering figure from the East for helping the West develop an excellent interfaith appreciation.

5.  Nani A. Palkhivala: A Life By M.V. Kamath

God’s gift to India" is what C. Rajagopalachari called this extraordinary man. Nani A. Palkhivala’s versatility and extraordinary achievements are recorded in innumerable books both by Palkhivala himself also as by his many admirers. But so far there has been no plan to present a comprehensive biography of the jurist’s entire lifetime of 82 years.

No one but a genius could have achieved such eminence from the type of disadvantages Palkhivala suffered. He didn't have family wealth or connections in society. His grandfather ran a closed corporation of building palanquins or palkis (hence the family name). then shut down, his father tried his hand at fixing another business that didn't take the family too far. In childhood, young Nani suffered from a clumsy stammer. The writer’s cramps forced him to require the assistance of a writer for his exam papers. He had no connections to enter the highly competitive Bombay bar at that time. within the youth of his profession, he worked part-time at the Bombay Race Course as a totalizer. As Palkhivala said in later years, he had the maximum amount chance of becoming a successful advocate or orator as a victim of MS had of becoming an Olympic athlete.

The well-known journalist and writer M.V. Kamath’s biography of Palkhivala are built on first-hand accounts of his life from acquaintances, associates, friends, admirers, and relations. a serious a part of the book may be a reproduction of Palkhivala’s speeches, writings, correspondence, and written submissions in court in important cases argued by Palkhivala accessed from the Tata archives at Pune. The result's a connected, well-documented account of the lifetime of a gifted individual with powerful mental faculties who by grit, determination, and relentless ambition overcame adversity and rose to the heights of fame. Palkhivala’s vehement criticism of the government’s economic and taxation policies during the times of socialism are reproduced here and vindicated today.

6.  The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan By Robert Kanigel

The Man Who Knew Infinity A lifetime of the Genius Ramanujan maybe magic, a tragic ugly-duckling fable that Robert Kanigel tells in "The Man Who Knew Infinity: A lifetime of the Genius Ramanujan." In it, a greatly gifted man is born to a culture that does not understand what the person is about. Still, his talent blossoms until news of it spread to the opposite side of the planet, where he's eventually summoned by the masters of his skill. the lads go among them and perform his magic. Skepticism gives thanks to wonder. But far away from home, the person grows lonely and ill. He returns to his birthplace, only to die.

The anomaly in question is in fact Srinivasa Ramanujan (pronounced rah-MAH-na-jun), the Indian clerk who in 1913 at the age of 25 wrote a 10-page letter to G. .H. Hardy, begging this eminent English mathematician to think about some ideas that Ramanujan had about numbers. The best-known anecdote about Ramanujan and Hardy stems from an event that happened six years later, long after Hardy, having recognized the genius of Ramanujan's letter, had arranged for him to return to England and study at Cambridge.

One day, Hardy paid a turn Ramanujan and commented with a typical brusqueness that the amount of the cab he had taken, 1729, was "rather a dull number," adding that he hoped it wasn't a nasty omen. "No, Hardy," Ramanujan replied without missing a beat. "It may be a very interesting number. it's the littlest number expressible because the sum of two cubes in two alternative ways ." (The two sums of cubes are 12 plus 1 and 10 plus 9 .) Such was Ramanujan's intimacy with numbers.

7.  The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh By Sanjay Baru

The power and importance of the principal secretary to the PM has always been hooked into the latter's political clout, aside from the officer's own standing within the government officials. because of the bureaucratic link between the PM and senior ministers and secretaries to government, the principal secretary commands authority and influences policy. Most principal secretaries are extremely capable men, well regarded by their peers and revered by their subordinates, like P.N. Haksar in Indira Gandhi's PMO, P.C. Alexander in Rajiv's, A.N. Varma in P.V. Narasimha Rao's, Satish Chandran in Gowda's, N.N. Vohra in Gujral's and Brajesh Mishra in Vajpayee's. However, every now then, a nondescript official of limited talent has also adorned that job.
Since Manmohan Singh's PMO also included a special adviser, a novelty created to accommodate M.K. Narayanan, a part of the NSA's turf, namely the world of internal security, was hived off to him.

J.N. 'Mani' Dixit was, doubtless, the dominant personality among the three (Narayanan, T.K.A. Nair, and Dixit). His stature ensured that T.K.A. Nair wasn't quite the 'principal' secretary that a lot of his predecessors had been. Of course, Nair's immediate predecessor, the larger-than-life Brajesh Mishra, was quite just a principal secretary. I once jokingly remarked to Dr. Singh that in Vajpayee's time the principal secretary functioned as if he were the PM, while in his case it had been being said that the PM functioned sort of a principal secretary. This was a discussion of Dr. Singh's attention toward details, his involvement within the nitty-gritty of every administration. His chairing of long and tedious meetings with officials, which Vajpayee rarely did. He ignored the remark, knowing well that it had been also a taunt, drawing attention to the very fact that Sonia was the party boss.

8.  Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel A Biography By Kaushal Goyal

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is born to the Patidar Gurjar farmer family in Indian state Gujarat. His native place was Karamsad. Patel's date of birth was never officially recorded – Patel entered 31 October as his date of birth on his matriculation examination papers. They lived within the village of Karamsad, Bombay Presidency, where Jhaverbhai owned a homestead. Political leader Vithalbhai Patel were his elder brothers. Patel had a younger brother, Kashibhai, and a sister, Dahiba too. As a boy, Patel helped his father within the fields. When he was eighteen years old, Patel's marriage was arranged with Jhaverba, a woman of twelve or thirteen years old from a close-by village. 
According to custom, the young bride would still accept her parents until her husband started earning and will establish their household. Sardar Patel traveled to attend schools in Nadiad, Petlad, and Borsad and living self-sufficiently with other boys. He reputedly cultivated a stoic character. a well-liked anecdote recounts that he lanced his own painful boil without hesitation, whilst the barber charged with doing it trembled. When Patel passed his matriculation at the relatively late age of twenty-two, he was generally regarded by his elders as an unambitious man destined for a commonplace job. Patel himself, though, harbored an idea to review to become a lawyer, work and save funds, visit England, and become a barrister.
 Patel spent years faraway from his family, studying on his own with books borrowed from other lawyers, passing his examinations within two years. Fetching his wife Jhaverba from his parents' home, Patel found out his household in Godhra and was called to the bar. During the various years it took him to save lots of money, Patel – now an advocate – earned a reputation as a fierce and skilled lawyer. Patel had a daughter, Maniben, in 1904 and a son, Dahyabhai, in 1906. Patel also cared for a lover affected by the plague when it swept across Gujarat. When Patel himself decreased with the disease, he immediately sent his family to safety, left his home, and moved into an isolated house in Nadiad (by other accounts, Patel spent this point during a dilapidated temple); there, he recovered slowly.

9.  Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi By Katherine Frank

I shall always remember boarding an Air India plane at Heathrow 17 years ago to seek out the whole cabin crew in tears. that they had just heard that Gandhi was dead, and was inconsolable throughout the flight. once we landed in New Delhi, the plane was immediately surrounded by police. within the distance columns of smoke were climbing into the sky over the old city, where Hindu mobs were massacring Sikhs in reprisal for Indira's assassination. the subsequent day I sat with friends, watching the lying-in-state on television, with fans blowing cold air from great blocks of ice onto the body in order that it wouldn't decompose. Later there was Rajiv Gandhi, shimmering within the heat haze as he walked seven times around his mother's pyre. I can remember every detail of that week with absolute clarity: like such a lot else about India, it had been utterly indelible.

As Katherine Frank suggests during this that it's an excellent biography. the carnage that broke out after the assassination - quite 2,000 Sikhs were slaughtered in Delhi alone - was a depressing indication about that Indira Gandhi's great mission in life. which she had inherited from her father, had failed. For the Nehrus were dedicated to the notion of a secular state during which no creed or caste would dominate anyone else; where the religious card that had beggared and bloodied the country's history for a long time could not be played.
After many centuries of alien rule, first by the Mughals then by British, this was to be a democracy of unique and great distinction. Nehru spent himself endlessly during this cause, and his daughter gave her life for it. The story of Gandhi may be a chronicle of what, between them, they did achieve; and although it's now spat upon by their infinitely less worthy successors, that was no small thing.

10. Biography of Bhagat Singh By M.M. Juneja

A short but very detailed inspection of the life, values, and impact of the best Indian revolutionary, Bhagat Singh. I bought this book from the Jalian Wala Bhag memorial at Amritsar. To be honest, the choice was more of an emotional one instead of a real interest within the subject. for many folks, like me, Bhagat Singh could seem a touch overrated as his achievements appear little quite the killing of a British officer and therefore the throwing of a bomb during a British assembly. However, this book made me realize how biased our education system is and the way less I do know about the contributions of non-congress people within the struggle for independence.

I am about four-generation far away from the central events during this book, still, the author made me understand how the martyrdom of this 23-year-old awakened a whole nation to the grave injustice of British rule. Also, he was very successful in unraveling the various layers of Bhagat Singh: as a genius intellectual, socialist, romantic, atheist, and far more.
The only complaint that I even have about this book is that the author's repeated use of Hindi verses without a translation at critical points. I do not know why Hind authors don't understand this but once you sell an English book, the reader expects nothing but English in it. It doesn't help tons that the author, very magnanimously, used English letters to make these sentences: it's still Hindi.