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Incarnations: India in 50 Lives: Kautilya: The Circle of Power

Kautilya: The Circle of Power

14/05/2015

BBC Radio 4 - Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, Kautilya: The Circle of Power

The life and legacy of the political strategist Kautilya, known as the Indian Machiavelli.

Sunil Khilnani explores the life and legacy of Kautilya, a political strategist described as the Indian Machiavelli, whose treatise on statecraft is consulted even today.

Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life and legacy of Kautilya, whose treatise on political power dates back at least two thousand years. The Indian political strategist has been compared to Machiavelli. Some say he is more ruthless. Kautilya's text, written on dried palm leaves, lay forgotten for more than a millennium until it turned up at a library in Mysore at the turn of the twentieth century, providing inspiration for early Indian nationalists. "The discovery summarily exploded a Western cliché: that Indians were primarily ethereal, spiritual thinkers," observes Professor Khilnani. "Here was a strategic text--focused on worldly ends, advocating ruthless means to achieve power."
Producer: Mark Savage
With incidental music by the composer Talvin Singh.
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