Freedom at Midnight

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All pages of text are present, but they may include extensive notes and highlighting or be heavily stained. More recently Lapierre wrote CITY OF JOY (about Calcutta) and Larry Collins has written a number of thrillers published by HarperCollins (FALL FROM GRACE, MAZE and BLACK EAGLES). These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. The Story of Indian Independence is such a fascinating story, how the Indians fought the British courageously and got their Independence. The authors interviewed many who were there during the events, including a focus on Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

Their subject is the eclipse of the British Raj and the birth of an independent India and Pakistan; the violent transformation of that fabled India -- the land of maharajas with their palaces, vices, jewels and harems, their gold-caparisoned elephants and their glittering private armies; the India of Kipling's army, with its centuries of legendary heroism, its skirmishes along the Khyber Pass of the Northwest Frontier against the firecest warriors on the globe, the Pathans, its young British officers commanding troops of a dozen races and religions and castes; the India of tiger hunts and pigsticking, of polo and memsahibs, of dazzling balls and luxurious clubs; the India of astrologers and sadhus, holy men and strange customs; the India that was the heart and soul of an empire -- into the new India of Gandhi and Nehru, precursor of the Third World. This was, in essence, the dichotomy between the fathers of the two nations that formed after the Partition of British India. Very rarely comes a defining moment that changes history to the extent of being un-recognizable and very rarely comes a book that changes your life, perceptions and everything that you presumed to be true once and for all. The facts are: by the end of the World War 11 the whole Indian Raj principle was no longer tenable; the Gandhi charisma and the Nehru logic, the mobilization of an enormous population into satyagroha, or passive resistance, could no longer be controlled by the spent force of the Empire, and, in fact, the game was up. If you watch the movie Gandhi, and read this book, you have pretty much got the history of the time covered and a good understanding of the politics of the time.

The Moslem regiments in the areas which would fall to Pakistan offered similar banquets to their Sikh and Hindu comrades leaving for India. How Mountbatten have been appointed, the British Politics, all these kind of inside information about the crown made it easier to understand their mentality and the things that they were going through during the Independence.

The background work that took place before the independence in the British Empire was also told elaborately.

He gets an outside perspective of India, allowing him to criticise without having to feel obligated to justify any act or man.