I'M A LIBERAL HINDU...

but don't expect me to defend Aurangzeb, says Amish Tripathi, who takes yet another historical fiction route to travel, this time, down south, to the Cholas

- SHUBHANGI SHAH

The combination of politics, history and literature is never uninteresting, which can also be said about the books by bestselling author Amish Tripathi. Known for making mythology cool and accessible with his Shiva trilogy and Ram Chandra series, and bringing ignored historical figures to the spotlight, such as with his Legend of Suheldev, Amish is back with his latest: The Chola Tigers: Avengers of Somnath. His work, although focusing on mythology and history, exhibits a contemporary flavour, and he now shifts the focus down south, to the great Cholas of Tamil Nadu.

Excerpts from an interview:

Q/ The Chola Tigers opens with the destruction of the Somnath Temple in Gujarat by Mahmud of Ghazni—an event that also forms the backdrop of your earlier work, Legend of Suheldev. What draws you repeatedly to this moment in history, which occurred in 1026 AD?

A/If you see north India, practically no ancient temples remain. You will find ruins, unlike in the south where you do find temples. Similarly, you find no ancient universities in the north, as all of them—from Takshashila to Vikramshila—were destroyed.

Q/ This was the result of thousands of years of brutal invasions.

A/American historian Will Durant described the “Islamic conquest of India” as “probably the bloodiest story in history”. And we call them the Delhi sultans and the Mughals, but they were Turks from Central Asia.

In fact, the Central Asian tribes invaded regions across the Eurasian peninsula, as a result of which practically every ancient culture in these regions died. You find no ancient cultures alive there. Where are the Zoroastrians from Persia (present-day Iran) living? It is here, in India.

But India survived!