Till the recent TV series on her, Ahilyabai Holkar was a name confined to history textbooks in school. This remarkable 18th-century woman built many traveller’s inns, temples, ghats and wells. But there is a lot more to her. In her territories of Malwa and Nemar, even 220 years after her death, she is still considered to be a ‘mother’. At our Online Talk #MotherOfMalwa, Dr Sugandha Johar tells the story of Ahilyabai’s journey from a young widow to an able administrator respected by her contemporaries and revered by her subjects. Along the way, we will also learn about some of her remarkable constructions. | Talk link will be shared a couple of hours before the event | About the speaker | Dr Sugandha Johar had a flourishing career in taxation, banking and finance, before she did her Ph D in archaeology. After migrating to Australia, she returned to finance to be a licenced personal finance consultant. Later, while travelling the world with her husband, she worked as a web journalist with Al Jazeera and also ran her own organisation taking workshops on interpersonal skills.