Product Description

A famous major work on Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Mount Batten and Partition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79356 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-04
• Released on: 2001-05-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 629 pages

Time Magazine, New York
'The song of India...illuminated like scenes in a pageant.'

National Observer, Washington
'Magnificently enlightening and exciting.'

Daily Mail
'Thrilling...staggers the imagination.'

Customer Reviews

One of the most comprehensive and intimate looks at the forming of modern India.
I read this while living in India and found it to be the truest expression and understanding of India's complexities, intricate culture, and history. The book covers India's liberation from British rule from the appointment of Lord Mountbatten as viceroy through to the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi. With India itself as the protagonist, you sympathize with the great mother's birthing pains and cry with her as she loses thousands of her children during the massacres of the partitioning of Pakistan.


All of the important players (Mountbatten, Gandhi, Jinnah, Neru) as well as the ordinary citizens are presented so completely and fully.

Even if you are not an Indian enthusiast, this book is an intriguing read into one of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century.

Skillfully written, absorbing story
This book inspired Miguel Sousa Tavares own book,
Equador, apparently, but only conceptually (I didn't
read the latter.)

There's a new edition, from India VIKAS PUBLISHING HOUSE,
based in Jangpura, New Delhi, 1997. Found mine in used
book store, in mint condition.

Freedom at Midnight--prequel to the 21st century
This is an excellent book about nations, states, people, ethnic and religious tensions, and violence versus non-violence. Anyone seeking not only to understand modern India but indeed the post modern post colonial world must read this long and detailed book.

The insights reflect the over three years of research and incredible access that the authors had to both primary sources and participants in the process of dissolving Britain's Indian Empire.

The book starts with a violent prequel to Britain's decision to leave India. Two events collided--Britain, the exhausted and spent `victor' of World War II could no longer afford the Empire, and India, may of its men having fought and died for liberty elsewhere in the Commonwealth, wanted their own domestic freedom. Events, tensions and bloodshed started to spiral out of control until Churchill was forced to admit "It is with deep grief that I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all of its glories and services that it has rendered to mankind. Many have defended Britain against her foes, but none can defend her against herself." (p. 53) The challenge for the British, Indian and would be Pakistani leaders and planners was to fix a date and a process that would not be perfect, but would somehow be better than Gandhi's incantation to "leave India to God."

Mountbatten and Jinnah--the lead Brit and lead Pakistani--held a series of meetings that were crucial to the carving up of Empire. At the same time Mountbatten had to deal with Nehru and Gandhi on the other side of the equation--a prequel to `shuttle diplomacy' if ever there was one. Despite the fact the most prudent planers wanted no partition, Jinnah--secretly being consumed by a tuberculosis he knew would kill him soon--drove himself and everyone else to achieve the dream of a independent and separate Pakistan. Knowing that you will not long live to inherit the consequences provides a freedom of thought and action that is liberating in the present, but holds dire results for the later generations. (pp 102-111)

While everyone was trying not to let the emotions and dogs run loose and wild, more and more ethnic and religious incited violence continued to leave hundred and indeed thousands of dead in wide swaths across India (Kahuta, Peshawar, Punjab, Kashmir). Seeking to calm the tempers and stay the killings, instead the British were left with almost no choice but to draw an almost arbitrary set of map lines that guaranteed the violence would accelerate before it would abate. Mountbatten traveled tirelessly, his perceptive wife at his side, from refugee camps to destroyed towns and burnt bodies--and ever more frantically realized that he had to set a date soon and then drive everyone remorselessly to achieve it as perfect as it could be, not as perfect as it should be.

Ironically, it was the Armies--Pakistani, Indian and British--that had to be brought back into to instill discipline and restore some semblance of order, although in many cases they were simply too few, too late. As the Chapter 13 "our people have gone mad' displays in poignant writing, once the lid was off the pot, it simply began to boil over even faster. Gandhi, in the last great act of his life before being assassinated by a Hindu group of radicals, was able to instill some peace and order--but only in the isolated spots were he could personally be present. As the multitude of 20, 30 and 50 mile long columns of refugees wound their way past each other, the unspeakable was done over and over again. Trains were halted and all butchered. The scope was simply too vast even for Mountbatten and Gandhi.

In many ways, this book foretells of Africa, the Balkans and Iraq today in a great many painful parallels. It is a hard read, but read it you must if you want to try to understand how groups that have lived more or less at peace and in co-existence, can over a few short months and years, become bitterly polarized antagonists for generations to come.