"In recent times another harmful genre in this category is popular fiction such as Ashwin Sanghi's Chanakya Chant, Westland Publishes, 2011. The story of a re-born Kautilya in modern times on the internet for sale of the book highlights that "Can this wily pandit who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance bring about another miracle of a united India".
Such books are best avoided by serious students. However, it must be admitted that such stuff also becomes bestsellers for the tweeting Indian urban middle class fed on a diet only of commercial movies and hungry for such books which may be sold at airports. Serious scholars, who may like to embark on study of the Arthsastra need to avoid such books of fiction.
Even in similar light today, mainstream commercial Hindi pictures and TV soaps which have substituted theatre of the past portray historical themes unimaginatively and incorrectly are taken to be real by the polity at large, notwithstanding their total misrepresentation."
P.K. Gautam, One hundred years of Kautilya's Arthashastra.
quoted in ''Hijacking Hinduism and India'' [external link]
