Cholas At War | Kamini Dandapani and Anirudh Kanisetti in conversation with William Dalrymple

Cholas At War | Kamini Dandapani and Anirudh Kanisetti in conversation with William Dalrymple | Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Series Jaipur Literature Festival 2024
Presented by The Week
The Chola empire reigned over the southern reaches of the peninsula, covering the Krishna-Godavari delta in northern Andhra Pradesh and extending their influence towards South East Asia at the height of its power. They unified peninsular India south of the Tungabhadra River and maintained this territorial unity for three centuries, from 907 to 1215. An expert panel comes together to evaluate the key figures who played a crucial role in establishing Chola supremacy and the cultural, political, economic, and social paradigms that facilitated this expansion.
Kamini Dandapani was born and raised in the once sleepy city that was once Madras and now lives in the city that never sleeps, New York. She has had extensive training in Carnatic vocal music, Western Classical piano, and Bharatanatyam. She endured a long stint in the corporate world, which included Chase Manhattan and McKinsey & Company, after which she returned to her true loves, music and writing. Her first book is Rajaraja Chola-King of Kings.
Anirudh Kanisetti is the award-winning author of Lords of the Deccan, a new history of medieval South India. He received the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2023 and the Tata Literature Best Nonfiction Book of the Year award in 2022. He writes the weekly Thinking Medieval column for ThePrint. Kanisetti was featured in THE WEEK’s 40 Under 40 list for India’s most promising creatives, as well as Open magazine’s Open Minds 2022 Soft Power list. His research has received grants from the Princeton Center for Digital Humanities and the India Foundation for the Arts. His writings and work have been featured in The Hindu, The New Indian Express, LiveMint, and other prestigious publications. Kanisetti was formerly Editor at the Museum of Art and Photography and Associate Fellow at the Takshashila Institution. He hosts three popular and critically acclaimed podcasts - Echoes of India, Yuddha and The Altar of Time.
William Dalrymple is the author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, Duff Cooper Prize-winning The Last Mughal, and the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King. His book, The Anarchy, was shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington medal, the Tata Book of the Year, and the Historical Writers Association Award, and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations. Dalrymple has held visiting lectureships at Princeton, Brown, and Oxford, where he is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls. He was presented with the President’s Medal by the British Academy and was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for 2020 by Prospect Magazine. He is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
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[@shanthipaddy]

Such a pleasure to listen to Kamini and Anirudh. They go beyond repeating narratives from the past, and hold their own to share their learnings from diving into historical evidences

[@thepaintedsky.training]

Great talk, terrible video. How difficult is it to project the slides on screen? It's been done from the time of the Cholas!😅

[@JohnSmith-eh2ct]

Anirudh's talk here is dramatic, intelligent and poetic as always, it has only improved from his podcasting days, but he always had a grudge against the Cholas. He always denigrates them, but ends up talking so much about them as well. Here in this talk, he casually doubted Rajendra's claim about the conquest of Ganga and how difficult it is logistically for small populations of that time to go on a faraway conquest, Indian kings have claimed even greater conquests and have been proved right, so there is no evidence to prove Rajendra was wrong. Anirudh himself explains that Gangaikonda Cholapuram was a personification of Mount Meru and the waters from ganga was used to symbolically recreate the puranas, then why was he doubting Rajendra in the first place? Just because the Cholas left a treasure trove of information about themselves, unlike other dynasties, it has become easier for everyone to cast aspersions against the great dynasty

[@benimadhavmohanty7426]

Great talk on cholas.

[@austincoutinho9498]

Anirudh presents such a balanced take on the Cholas. It was annoying that Dalrymple kept bringing up Sanjeev Sanyal. Sanyal is not even an authority on economics despite being an economist, let alone history. An utter nincompoop.

[@RaitaNag]

Someone should write in english about pylikeshi. Kadambas Rashtrakootas Pandyas etc

[@raghuls1515]

Anirudh just go to school again

[@anthonypk7281]

Kanisetti is imaginative, and light footed. He would make a good story teller, in the manner of the bollywood historical narratives.

[@jessievarghese9935]

Wow so balanced and brilliant.

[@jsprfamily6927]

Anirudh seems to be BS-ing quite a bit here. His claims need fact-checking as he appears to have a pre-conceived notion about Tamil and Kannada kings and is twisting facts to make Tamil kings look bad. He lost me when he said Polaris star is not visible from Tamil Nadu! Makes me question everything else he presents so confidently, could all be stuff he is just making them up as he speaks.

[@historylessons893]

Kanisetti is one of the worst historians in India. He hardly has studied any primary sources. It is ridiculous that a guy like that is speaking in front of an audience.

[@nijoyjohn4366]

Right wingers gets so irritated with Anirudh😂

[@dwirajesh]

Who clipped ur intellectual wings

[@vasanthchandrasekaran3218]

Anirudh is consistently anti chola !!! he slowly bleeding into innuendo and trying to be more than a historical and being political! great talent getting wasted!

[@karthickgeminy1]

*Anirudh is a big bullshitter, never trust him.. He can twist and fabricate history as he wants.. I have seen his BS in print and i dismantled his lies in that video, since then I never trust him.*

[@Shahi-bangalah_1352]

What did you dismantle?

[@nirvanabliss73]

Can you pls elaborate and enlighten us on this ......

[@si8lk]

She may be better speaking in Tamil. He is a bit full of himself besides being a bit political for a historian. ahem!

[@nirvanabliss73]

can you pls explain how he is political.....

[@MainHyderabadi]

He makes snide remarks on the current politics of the land.

[@nirvanabliss73]

@@MainHyderabadi I listened to his remarks, I did not think them snide, why can't a historian comment on current affairs n politics?

[@si8lk]

@@nirvanabliss73 they can. they are free to do what they want. but as a consumer of history I don't expect politics in a history class. but, then that is how most people are nowadays. they mix their personal opinion with their professions. sad!

[@nirvanabliss73]

@@si8lk So you are effectively saying that if some historian says that the communist historians did harm to the writing of Indian history, then you are opposed to it Since that would be mixing politics and personal opinions with history. I dont quite agree with that

[@anthonypk7281]

you don't just talk to archeologists to make up your mind about Chola activities. I think something more should be done to get a better, clearer view of the Cholas.