Muhammad Bin Tughlaq - Anuja Chandramouli

Date of Reading: 20/06/2019

Author: Anuja Chandramouli

Subtitle: Tale of a Tyrant

Publisher: Penguin Ebury Press

Publication Date: May 10, 2019

Source: ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review

My Rating: 4.5/5

About the book:

Muhammad was a good man who did terrible things and a tyrant of a Sultan who tried to do good. 

When his father dies, Prince Jauna Khan succeeds to the throne of Delhi as Muhammad bin Tughlaq. His reign will prove to be epic and bloody, but unsurpassed in splendour, innovation and defeat. 

A formidable strategist and remarkable scholar, the Sultan will go down in history for his brutality as well as his brilliance, unfairly remembered only as a cruel tyrant who might have been raving mad. His high-flown aspirations and grandiose ambitions may have met with crushing failure, but even so, Tughlaq was a great hero of the fourteenth century, albeit a tragic and fatally flawed one.

In this fictional retelling, Anuja Chandramouli, one of India's best mythology writers, reimagines Muhammad bin Tughlaq's life and times in incredible detail to bring to life the man behind the monarch.

Review:

         I took a lot of time to finish this particular historical fiction, partly due to the awfully small letters characteristic of Penguin and also because this is a book which, as per Baconian dictums, should be chewed and digested. Meanwhile, I took it wherever I went -- meetings, academic gatherings -- and unsurprisingly it drew a lot of attention. 'Are you implying that the agendas we are discussing are of Tughlaquian in nature?' One teased the presence of the book. Well, that aptly summarises what Tughlaq means to Indians -- a mad monarch with crazy projects. And we are forgetting, quite conveniently it seems, that most of his crazy plans are practised nowadays including that of paper money.

      If a writer's function is to remind, inspire and correct, then Anuja Chandramouli has completed that task to perfection. Here is the best defence to a monarch who is largely misunderstood due to his innovative schemes. It is said that a wise man goes with the people, a foolish man against them and a great man brings the people to his way. Looking it in that way, it seems there is only a thin line that separates the foolish and the great. Though Muhammad will surely be categorised with the former (he could never stand the foolish whims of his people), his ideas are nothing short of great. 
       In a way, Chandramouli's cleverly crafted work is a eulogy to a monarch who was too modern for his times and who never cared what history speaks of him. We close the book with a heavy heart mourning for a great man whose intentions never really came to fruition.

Meet the author:

Anuja Chandramouli is a bestselling Indian author and New Age Indian Classicist. Her highly acclaimed debut novel, Arjuna: Saga of a Pandava Warrior-Prince, was named by Amazon India as one of the top 5 books in the Indian Writing category for the year 2013. Kamadeva: The God of Desire and Shakti: The Divine Feminine are her other bestsellers. Currently, all three books are being translated into Hindi, Marathi, Gujarathi and Bengali, a real achievement for one so young. 

Her epic fantasies called Yama’s Lieutenant and its sequel has received an overwhelming response. Her books on Kartikeya, Padmavati and Prithviraj Chauhan have been very successful. Her latest book is Ganga: The Constant Goddess. 

An accomplished orator, she regularly conducts workshops on Creative Writing, Story Telling and Mythology in schools, colleges and various other platforms. Her motivational speeches have also been well received. According to Chandramouli, her work with youngsters in the rural belt helping them improve their Spoken English and Writing skills has been wonderfully satisfying and enriching. 

This happily married, mother of two little girls, lives in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu. She is a student of classical dance and Yoga. 

Email: anujamouli@gmail.com