Famous people who grew up or lived in India
16 notable people grew up or lived in India. Each listing explores the home and neighbourhood, and how the place shaped the person they became.
Amitabh Bachchanfrom 1982
📍 Jalsa, Juhu, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400049, India
Amitabh Bachchan grew up in Allahabad, the son of the celebrated Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and the social activist Teji Bachchan. His father's poetry, readings and literary friends…
Ashoka the Great268 BC–232 BC
📍 Pataliputra Palace, Patna, Bihar, India
I ruled from Pataliputra — the great city on the Ganges that Chandragupta, my grandfather, had made the capital of the Maurya Empire. By my reign it was one of the largest cities in the…
Dalai Lama1960–2026
📍 Tsuglagkhang Complex, Temple Road, McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh 176219, India
Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, has lived in McLeod Ganj, above Dharamsala in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, since 1960, the year after he fled Tibet following the failed…
Emperor Shah Jahan1628–1658
📍 Agra Fort, Rakabganj, Agra, Uttar Pradesh 282003, India
I built the Taj Mahal for Mumtaz, who died giving me our fourteenth child. She had been my inseparable companion for nineteen years. The white dome took twenty-two years and twenty thousand…
Indira Gandhi1917–1984
📍 1 Safdarjung Road, New Delhi 110011, India
I was born Indira Priyadarshini Nehru on the 19th of November 1917 in Allahabad, the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Kaul. I grew up in the nationalist movement — my childhood was…
Jawaharlal Nehru1948–1964
📍 Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi 110011, India
When I became Prime Minister in 1947, the former British Commander-in-Chief's residence was assigned to me. I renamed it Teen Murti — for the Indian cavalry memorial at its gates — and…
Mahatma Gandhi1936–1948
📍 Sevagram, Wardha, Maharashtra 442102, India
I founded Sevagram — the village of service — in 1936 in the heart of India, in a poor agricultural district three hundred miles from Bombay. I was sixty-seven, my health was failing, and…
Mother Teresa1948–1997
📍 Missionaries of Charity, 54A Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road, Kolkata, India
I was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, in a house where my mother fed anyone who came to the door — no questions asked. I left for Calcutta at eighteen and never went back. The…
MS Dhoni1981–2000
📍 Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Mahendra Singh Dhoni was born in Ranchi, then in Bihar and now the capital of Jharkhand, in July 1981. His father, Pan Singh, had come from Uttarakhand to work as a junior pump operator for…
Priyanka Chopra1982–2000
📍 Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India
Priyanka Chopra was born in Jamshedpur in July 1982 to Ashok and Madhu Chopra, both doctors in the Indian Army, and her childhood followed their postings across India: Delhi, Chandigarh…
Rabindranath Tagore1861–1901
📍 64 Dwarkanath Tagore Lane, Jorasanko, Kolkata 700007, West Bengal, India
Jorasanko was never merely a house — it was a civilisation in miniature. My grandfather Dwarkanath had built it as a centre of Bengali Renaissance culture, and by the time I was born the…
Sachin Tendulkar1973–1995
📍 Sahitya Sahawas, Bandra East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400051, India
Sachin Tendulkar grew up in Sahitya Sahawas, a cooperative housing colony for writers and artists in Bandra East, Mumbai, living for many years on the fourth floor of a block called Usha…
Shah Rukh Khanfrom 2001
📍 Mannat, Bandstand, Bandra West, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400050, India
Shah Rukh Khan grew up in a middle-class family in Delhi, the son of a freedom fighter from Peshawar who ran a small business; he lost his father when he was fifteen and his mother a few…
Srinivasa Ramanujan1887–1919
📍 Erode, Tamil Nadu, India
I was born on the 22nd of December 1887 in Erode, but my family moved immediately to Kumbakonam in the Thanjavur district, where I grew up. My father worked as a clerk in a sari shop there…
Virat Kohli1988–2008
📍 West Delhi, Delhi, India
Virat Kohli was born in Delhi in November 1988 and spent his early years in Uttam Nagar, a crowded, busy middle-class neighbourhood in West Delhi. His father, Prem, was a criminal lawyer…
Vivien Leigh1913–1931
📍 Darjeeling, West Bengal 734101, India
I was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas, on the 5th of November 1913, the only child of a British cavalry officer. Darjeeling was a hill station …