Hindol Sengupta is an award-winning author and has written eight books. He's been published in the United States, UK and India, among other countries. In 2018, he won the prestigious Wilbur Award instituted by The Religion Communicators Council of America for
Being Hindu: Understanding a Peaceful Path in a Violent World, the first book on Hinduism to do so. He was also awarded the PSF Prize for public service in India in 2015. His book
Recasting India: How Entrepreneurship is Revolutionizing the World's Largest Democracy was shortlisted in 2015 for the Hayek Prize given by the Manhattan Institute in memory of economist and Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek. Sengupta is a World Economic Forum Young Global leader and a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University. He has been a journalist at the Indian editions of
Fortune magazine, Bloomberg TV, CNBC and CNN. He is the founder of the global solutions journalism platform Grin.
There is perhaps no political figure in modern history who did more to secure and protect the Indian nation than Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. But, ironically, seventy years after Patel brought together piece by piece the map of India by fusing the princely states with British India to create a new democratic, independent nation, little is understood or appreciated about Patel's enormous contribution to the making of India. Caricatured in political debate, all the nuances of Patel's difficult life and the daring choices he made are often lost, or worse, used as mere polemic. If Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual core of India's freedom struggle and Jawaharlal Nehru its romantic idealism, it was Sardar Patel who brought in the vital pragmatism which held together the national movement and the first ideas of independent India. A naturally stoic man, Patel, unlike Gandhi or Nehru, wrote no personal history. He famously argued that its was better to create history than write it. This is why even his deepest misgivings and quarrels have been easily buried. But every warning that Patel left for India - from the dangers of allowing groups to create private militias to his thoughtful criticism on India's approach to Kashmir, Pakistan and China - are all dangerously relevant today. It is impossible to read about Patel, who died in 1950, and not feel that had he lived on, India might have been a different country. It is also impossible to ignore Patel and understand not only what the idea of India is but also what it could have been, and might be in the future.
The Man Who Saved India is a sweeping, magisterial retelling of Sardar Patel's story. With fiercely detailed and pugnacious anecdotes, multiple award-winning, best-selling writer Hindol Sengupta brings alive Patel's determined life of struggle and his furious commitment to keep India safe. This book brings alive all the arguments, quarrels and clashes between some of the most determined people in Indian history and their battle to carve out an independent nation. Through ravages of a failing body broken by decades of abuse in and outside prison, Patel stands out in this book as the man who, even on his death bed, worked to save India. Hindol Sengupta's The Man Who Saved India is destined to define Patel's legacy for future generations.
Sardar Patel was the silent one of the trinity along with Gandhi and Nehru who dedicated his life. In the struggle for an independent India. His lasting legacy is a United India rather than the land which throughout history has-been split in rival warring kingdoms. Hindol Sengupta has given us the story of Sardar's life for the new generations of India so that they could understand and admire a unique personality. Read this book and discover India's history in the first half the last century. And reclaim your legacy."It is dangerous to put dreamers in power. Sardar Patel's pragmatism was the perfect antidote to Nehru's idealism in the early years of Independence. If only Patel had lived longer, India would have been spared the excesses of the License Raj and the Kashmir problem. This is one of the messages of this lively, highly readable book."The Man who Saved India is a must read for every Indian as well as every person interested in learning the true history of India.The Man Who Saved India is an excellent deep dive into the life and struggles of one of the tallest leaders in Indian history. Hindol Sengupta written a fascinating book full of insights on things that are rarely discussed - for instance, Patel's economic ideas or his key role as the man who raised critical funds for the Congress Party. This captivating book breaks many myths and throws new light on one of the most important figures in Indian history.A very engaging biography of Sardar Patel, the man and his times, by one of India's best young writersThe genre of popular history and biography has been experiencing a golden age and Hindol Sengupta's fluent biography of Sardar Vallabhai Patel joins a list of distinguished titles alongside Michael Axworthy's Sword of Persia, Nadir Shah and Roger Crowley's Constantinople, The Last Great Siege, 1453. Very welcome indeed that an eminently accessible account of the life and achievements of one of India's true great sons is now available to a new generation of readers.Rich with detail and illuminating insight, Hindol Sengupta's The Man Who Saved India brings alive Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's indomitable spirit and tenacity in the face of constant challenges that would crush a weaker man. Few people immediately think of Patel when they think of men responsible for the shape and form of modern India. This is a great injustice, for, as Hindol explains with a wealth of anecdote and context, it was Patel who defined the very contours of the India we know today. This book is a must read.Hindol writes popular, unpopular history. Another brilliant book, this time putting the untold story of one of India's greatest political leaders in front of today's readers in a way which makes it accessible and unputdownable. His work of putting together Sardar Patel's life story is strikingly accurate yet stunningly engrossing.'This is one of those rare, great books which every Indian should read. After all, it is also about Vallabhbhai Patel, the man who created the modern state of India out of myriad fragments. Drawing upon a well-researched base of facts and writings, Sengupta emerges as a masterful storyteller who has weaved together a very coherent and absorbing story. The complex relationships among the leaders of the Indian freedom struggle are captured in all their subtle shades and colourful complexity. The end result is, for the reader, a more holistic understanding of Indian history, a much-needed filling up of certain gaps in our knowledge of the past, and a refreshingly enriched perspective on the architects of modern India'
