麻豆社

An omnibus edition of Professor Sunil Khilnani's audio portraits of figures who have shaped Indian history over two thousand years. Today he explores three lives from the world of power, politics and kingship in late medieval India - and another figure, more humbly born, an artist whose paintings reflected in a unique, intimate way, the life of a north Indian prince.

He begins in the 16th century with the greatest ruler of the Mughal Empire. Akbar showed no mercy in his pursuit of power and secured his gains with an iron fist. And yet he seems to have grasped the diversity of beliefs and culture across the land he ruled and propagated his own system of religious faith known as Din-I-Lahi.

On the Deccan plateau of central southern India Akbar - and later his son Jahangir - met their match from an unexpected source: an Ethiopian warlord who had originally come to India as a slave. His name was Malik Ambar but Jahangir had another name for him: The Dark-Fated One.

Malik Ambar's guerrilla tactics would be adopted and refined half a century later - again in the hill country of Maharashtra - by Sunil Khilnani's next subject. Shivaji was a warrior king who's still finding new incarnations as a symbol of regional pride and identity - and most recently as an inspiration for would-be entrepreneurs.

Sunil Khilnani also profiles Nainsukh, the 18th century artist whose intimate and engaging portraits of a prince's life created a new vision for Indian art. This is the story of two men: one a painter with a unique talent to express humanity and individuality; the other a prince who unselfconsciously gave himself to the artist as subject.

Producer: Jeremy Grange.