Amish Tripathi: India’s Last 1,000 Years Were About Resistance, Not Defeat
Amish Tripathi’s The Chola Tigers, on Audible, blends history and imagination to narrate a saga of resilience, unity, and vengeance. In an exclusive conversation, the bestselling author shares why India’s true story is one of resistance and why unity is its most powerful legacy
Amish Tripathi doesn’t just write stories — he resurrects them. He digs into the forgotten corners of Indian history, dusts off episodes most of us never heard in school, and then brings them alive through characters that carry both fact and imagination. His latest Audible Original, The Chola Tigers, is another such tale — fierce, layered, and deeply Indian.
Set in the aftermath of Mahmud of Ghazni’s brutal raid on the Somnath temple, the story begins in a moment of despair. The Shiva Linga lies shattered, thousands are dead, and it seems as if the spirit of Bharat itself has been crushed. But Amish asks a different question: what if it wasn’t the end? What if it was the beginning of resistance?
“The Chola Tigers is historical fiction,” Amish begins. “Mahmud of Ghazni really did attack Somnath. Rajendra Chola really was one of the most powerful rulers of that time. Bhojdev Parmar of Malwa too was real. But the assassination squad? That’s my imagination. I wanted to create a story of how Indians across regions, across communities, came together to fight back.”
At its heart, the book is not simply about vengeance, but about resilience — about reimagining history through the lens of survival, not surrender. “The last thousand years are often told to us as a story of defeat,” he reflects. “But think about it — if we were only defeated, how are we still alive as a civilization? The same invaders who came here went to every other part of the world. And everywhere else, ancient cultures were wiped out. The Mayans, the Persians, the Celts, the Egyptians — they all surrendered. But we? We resisted. Continuously. For a thousand years. That makes us descendants of the toughest people on Earth.”
For Amish, that reframing is crucial. He believes India’s past has often been narrated through the eyes of invaders, and worse, through the colonial lens of divide and rule. “The British never called their own rule the Christian invasion. But Turkish rule was labelled the Islamic invasion. That was their strategy. Our ancestors never called it that — they called invaders Turushka, meaning Turks in Sanskrit. They saw it as foreigners versus Indians. Unfortunately, after independence, we carried forward this colonial narrative and internalised it as Hindu versus Muslim. That was never the way our ancestors looked at it. We need to reclaim that truth.”
That reclaiming lies at the centre of The Chola Tigers. More than the assassins or the emperors, it is about unity. Amish distills its message into one sharp lesson: “We Indians are argumentative — and that’s a strength. But the one thing we must never do is ally with a foreigner against a fellow Indian. That mistake cost us dearly at Panipat, at Plassey, in the Anglo-Maratha wars. It’s the one lesson we cannot afford to repeat.”
The novel, like much of Amish’s work, blurs the line between history and imagination. He acknowledges this openly. “Historical fiction has always existed — Mughal-e-Azam was historical fiction. Akbar and Jahangir were real, but Anarkali wasn’t. The facts are broadly there, but you fill in the rest with imagination. The real question is: what’s the intent? If you’re using historical fiction to unite, to inspire, then it’s a positive force. That’s what I try to do.”
If the story itself carries echoes of old kathas, the format it has taken — an Audible release — brings those echoes alive. Amish lights up when speaking about it. “Movies are passive. You see the director’s vision. But books and audiobooks are active — they demand imagination. What I love about Audible is that it isn’t just someone reading my book. It’s immersive. Performed. You hear music during war scenes, you hear voices change with characters. It’s close to how our kathakars once told stories — with rhythm, with energy, with a sense of atmosphere. In many ways, Audible is reviving that ancient tradition.”
He recalls growing up with storytelling performances like Ramleela in Varanasi or Harikatha in the South. “There would be one person, with a damru or a hawan hatha, who through words alone would create an entire world. That’s what Audible feels like to me. It’s not new to India. It’s actually a revival of what we once had.”
And then there’s the philosophy behind it all — that deeper current running under the fiction. In The Chola Tigers, it comes alive in a line inspired by his father’s language, Urdu: “The Kauravas may be 100, the Pandavas may be 5, but if an outsider attacks, we are 105.” That, Amish says, is what India needs to remember today.
Looking ahead, his plans remain as instinctive as his writing process. “I don’t really choose the next story — it chooses me. Lord Shiva decides. Sometimes it’s history, sometimes fantasy, sometimes even a modern-day crime thriller. The fifth book in the Ram Chandra series is on the horizon, as are a few films and maybe even a video game. But what pulls me first, that’s up to Him.”
With The Chola Tigers, Amish isn’t just retelling a story from the past. He’s reframing an entire millennium — not as a sequence of defeats, but as “the greatest resistance story ever told.” And through Audible, he’s found a medium that doesn’t just narrate that story, but makes you feel it, almost as if a kathakar is whispering it into your ears.
“We are not descendants of cowards or weaklings,” he says with quiet conviction. “We are descendants of those who fought, resisted, and kept India alive. That is our legacy. And that is what we must never forget.”