As the freakishly disciplined ranks of the barbaric foreigners advance against the backdrop of drums, singing in a strange tongue, the king of the Paurava tribe refuses to surrender. Despite his chariots getting stuck in mud, blood and the pouring icy rain, and his elephants being impaled upon twenty-foot long rods, his generals raise the cry “Vasudeva! Vasudeva! Vasudeva!” The attacking foreign tribe pauses, gasps and retaliates with their cry of “Heracles! Heracles! Heracles!” The foreign Yavanas’ victory in this battle of 326 BCE goes on to pave the future for a strange fusion of cultures and the creation of a new deity “Krishna Heracles”.
This graphic opening scene sets the tone for Echoes of India , a history podcast that, in its own description, is by Indians about Indians for Indians. The brainchild of Anirudh Kanisetti, a geostrategy researcher at the Takshashila Institution and pastime history enthusiast, the podcast is a multi-faceted narrative exploring 700 years of history from the invasion of Alexander to the Gupta Empire. With Kanisetti’s gripping voice-over supported by dramatic sound effects, the two-season-old IVM Podcasts production makes the listener’s imagination gallop through the landscapes of the bygone eras. The episode titles (The Greeks who became Indians, An Indian lady in Ancient Rome, curious already?) are the proverbial fuel to the fire of the listener’s curiosity.
In a chat with The Hindu , Kanisetti talks about how the podcast was born, what went into it, the audience it has attracted, where it will take us in the upcoming season and the book that is slated for release next year.
How did ‘Echoes of India’ happen?
My interest in history sprang from gaming: I used to play Age of Empires, Rome: Total War , and other games. From there I made the leap into India’s history as it was personal and relevant to who I am and where I come from. When I saw statues and jewellery in museums and when I looked at ruins, rituals, languages and active places of worship hundreds of years old, I wanted to know as much about them as I did about the campaigns of Alexander the Great, for which you can find so much great, accessible content in videos and games. So I started to read. And as I read more and more, it slowly began to dawn on me just how vast, complex, and poorly understood the subcontinent’s past actually is. Each modern state has the size and population of a small country, and through thousands of years, all these geopolitical regions have intertwined and interacted in a bewildering variety of historical trajectories.
I also became increasingly convinced that history shouldn’t be seen as something confined to books. I wanted to bring this idea to life and bring history out of books and into minds. I wanted to make it something people could imagine, appreciate, and talk about. The history of one of the world’s great geopolitical regions deserves this. And I knew there was a hunger for this knowledge, with the soaring popularity of the likes of Yuval Noah Harari, William Dalrymple, and Manu Pillai. People intuitively respond to a past that looks like the present. That’s how Echoes was born.
What made you choose the podcast platform for your narrative?
A podcast allows me to connect with my listener’s imagination in a way that a video can’t. I don’t need to give them an exact picture, but I can describe something and allow their minds to paint it for them. I was actually nudged into doing this as a challenge, but the potential of it really excited me once I started thinking about how to go about it. And it’s something that people have responded well to. A fellow podcaster told me they were chopping vegetables while listening to this, and almost cut themselves in shock! People have written to me praising the way Echoes depicts the Amaravati Stupa, the Kushan ruler Kanishka, the presence of Prabhavati Gupta. The audio provides the tools while it is their minds that create the images they see and are moved by.
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The narrative of your podcast is radical in the way that it brings to light untold connections between geopolitics and religion...
We can see in front of our very eyes, reported in the news, trending on Twitter, that religion, politics, language, art and war are intertwined. We can see how they influence, feed off and inspire each other. I wanted to bring this interdisciplinarity, a vision of a complicated but coherent reality similar to ours, to ancient history. So in Echoes , I try to build narratives that explore this idea: I’ll talk about religion one minute, art the next, politics after that, but situate them in a moment where we can clearly see them interwoven. For example, I use the wars of the Satavahanas and Shakas to discuss Sanskrit, Prakrit, trade, poetry and emotions in one 20-minute episode. And I think that experiment has in a way worked. But I’m constantly learning from listeners and commenters about how to make the narrative more coherent in the midst of all the madness.
How extensive has your research been and where all has it taken you, both in terms of text material and geographic locations?
I try to read as much as I possibly can about a period before deciding to put it into Echoes. And I honestly could never have done this without the amazing work that academics do and generously make available for free via platforms like Academia.edu . They’re awesome! And citation hopping opened up new worlds. I discovered that Gandhara had its own distinct Buddhist traditions and script, for example, by pure chance. Echoes is a conduit for their ideas and some of mine, fused with narrative in a way that, I hope, enthrals listeners.
Writing and researching for the script has taken me on journeys from collections of epigraphs to libraries to historical sites. On the few vacations I manage to squeeze into my schedule, I’ve toured around South India slowly rediscovering the immense history that these monuments house. I’ve put up all my sources on my website because I really want people to explore and engage with them and be awed and humbled by all that has happened in this country, and challenge some of my conclusions if they wish.
Who was your target audience during the making? And which is the listener group the podcast has captured?
I wanted to reach out to young Indians like me and get them thinking and talking about history. In terms of listeners, podcasting is overwhelmingly the province of the English-speaking urbanite, and the vast majority of big names in podcasting are abroad. But as Echoes has grown, so has its listener base. I’ve gotten emails from older Americans, members of the Indian diaspora, and from Singapore, Russia, Mexico, New Zealand - almost everywhere people listen to podcasts, really. I’ve honestly been very moved by the gratitude and love I’ve gotten from my listeners.
At the end of season 2 you mention that you are releasing a book in 2020. What can we look forward to in the book? Will it explore subjects not touched by the podcast?
Between 600-1100, the Deccan exploded onto the world stage. There was an evolution in agriculture, religion and architecture. The import market grew strong and the world economy became more interlinked. Complex monarchical states emerged, dominating huge expanses of the Indian Subcontinent and competing in brutal warfare.
Arguably the only way to do justice to the period is to really dive into the chaos with long-form writing. It gives me new narrative options and new creative challenges. And the Deccan, especially, is long overdue for this sort of treatment. It’s a fascinating region that learns from both North and South India. And its uniqueness needs to be understood on its own terms instead of serving as a periphery to the histories of the Gangetic Plains or the Kaveri Delta. So my book will be an R-rated history of the early medieval Deccan, to me the most interesting but least understood time and place in the subcontinent’s past.
What is season 3 of the podcast going to explore?
Season 3 of Echoes will be situated at the same time as the book, but have different centres. I want the two to be complementary and give people a multidimensional view of a world in flux. For example, while my book focuses on the Deccan’s interpretation of Shaivism, Echoes will dive into the emergence of Tantric religions, the spread of Vajrayana Buddhism, and the complex interactions between Bengal and Tibet.
What after ‘Echoes of India’?
Echoes is an attempt to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of a particular period of our past. But I’m working on new, standalone podcasts too — imagine diving into one particular aspect of our lived experience, like religion, and hearing it unfurl and evolve in painstaking detail over centuries. For me that’s super exciting!
(Echoes of India is available on ivmpodcasts.com and Spotify)
