Her maternal aunt was Mitra Bir, educationalist, who was sentenced to twelve years in jail at the age of 22, and later went on to open schools for girls at Madgaon (Margao), Verem, Kakora and other locations in Goa, as also centres for adult and vocational education for women, before her death in 1978. Mitra was married to the late Madhav Bir, member of the Goa legislative assembly and Gandhian. Kanekar's maternal uncle, the late M. V. Kakodkar was also active in the campaign to open temples to all in Goa the 1960s. This leads to a "search for the Buddha and a struggle over the past". In Kanekar's words: "What really was the Buddha's message? Ascetic renunciation? Universal salvation? Passive disengagement? Tolerance—even of intolerance? If his message was a critique of violence, how did it come to be championed by the most successfully violent autocrats of ancient India? These are questions that begin to surface among the Buddha's followers, fearfully and then angrily, to be viciously debated even as Dhamma rises to glorious imperial patronage, a patronage that will sustain it for over a millennium and reach it to half the world's populace." Kanekar calls hers "a story about the Buddha and his disciples, among them an ordinary monk, one of the questioners, and an extraordinary king, who seemed to have all the answers". She says it is also about how the movement called Dhamma was born, spread, changed lives and got changed itself. In her book, Upali's chronicle—a deglorified, fictional account of the life of Buddha—alternates with that of Upali's own life during the reign of Emperor Ashoka and including both these parallel narratives with a wealth of historical detail and philosophical debate. Indian national newspaper "The Hindu" said: "... the book draws from Indian history to such good effect that one can't help wondering if things actually did happen this way. Another interesting aspect of the book is the dismantling of each legend associated with the Buddha. Life in the Magadhan Empire is also portrayed with an eye to historical accuracy. Quotes from Ashokan edicts... which we know of as history but couldn't really relate to... now come alive with a new imagery..." "Outlook" magazine from New Delhi wrote: "Amita Kanekar's novel about Emperor Ashoka and the Buddhist monk Upali... successfully captures the stress and strains of monastic life, and brings alive the centuries following the death of the Buddha. when his teachings were taking the form of a canonical corpus...