Brilliantly reported and written, this 1975 nonfiction book tells the story of the year India became an independent nation and the new nation of Pakistan was created. It covers all of 1947 and about a month of 1948, ending with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.Gandhi is, of course, a central character. Not having ever seen the movie and not having ever read a book about Gandhi, I learned a lot about him. He was certainly one of the giants of the 20th century.Among the other central characters are Lord Louis and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, the reluctant last viceroy and last vicereine of India. Prime Minister Clement Atlee prevailed upon Mountbatten to superintend the end of Great Britain's reign in India, and Mountbatten's cousin the king added his support. As badly as things turned out, it's hard to imagine anyone filling the role nearly as well as Mountbatten did. It speaks of the respect he won in a short time that he was asked to stay on as governor general of India. And although that was a largely ceremonial title, the government's leaders asked him to secretly take on almost dictatorial powers when the crisis came.Edwina Mountbatten was as hard-working and courageous as her husband, and she was more of a people person. (Lord Mountbatten could be a bit of a bully.) As the authors put it, "She could preside over a formal banquet in a diamond tiara one night and minister with skill and compassion to cholera victims in a fetid slum the next morning."It's hard to imagine a new government starting out with greater difficulty than India did in the summer and fall of 1947. In the first six weeks of independence, half as many people died violent deaths in India and Pakistan as the number of all the Americans who died in all of World War II. And the savagery that accompanied the deaths was horrifying -- Moslems at the hands of Hindus and Sikhs; Hindus and Sikhs at the hands of Moslems. The chapter that describes that period, "Our People Have Gone Mad," is the most depressing chapter I can remember reading in any book.The detail of the reporting in "Freedom at Midnight" is astonishing. The writing is superb.Here's an especially evocative excerpt, from Page 206, with Jawarharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi traveling together as independence neared and they felt the weight of all India on their shoulders:"Eyes straight ahead, his usually expressive face a mask, Nehru rode for a long time in silence, pondering, perhaps, what future the sights they had witnessed portended for the India he would soon be called upon to govern. Then, slowly, tenderly, as though to expiate with his gentle touch the pain he had caused him, he began to massage the callused feet of the sleeping man to whom he had devoted so much of his life."At sunset, Gandhi awoke. From each side of their speeding car, the broad fields of sugar cane, wheat, paddy, flat as a man's hand, ran down to a horizon so distant that it might seem the edge of the world. A fine haze stood above the vast plain filtering through its screen the last roseate glow of the sinking sun. It was the cow-dust hour, an hour as ancient, as unforgettable as India itself. From a thousand, tens of thousands of mud-brick huts speckling the great Punjab plain it came, the smoke of India's mealtime fires. Everywhere, squatting on their haunches, faded saris clutched to their shoulders, bangles clanking on their bare arms, the women tended those fires, fussing over the chapaties and channa they were cooking, stoking them with the found flat patties of dried dung that fueled them, the last of the many gifts of India's sacred cows. The mantle of Indian night, the smoke from those numberless cow-dung fires drifting through the evening sky, permeating it with the distinctive pungent smell that was the body odor of Mother India."
Oh goody, yet another book written through colonial tinted glasses.It's a well written, easy reading book so I can see why it's so popular, and if it was labelled fictional, I'd give it four stars, for fictional it is, speaking of a world where the British Raj and it's leaders brought civilization to the masses, but the masses turned the wise Brits away even though they were led by that holiest of holy cows, Lord Mountbatten - and this turning away caused mass bloodshed in the process. It's almost a biblical story, and no wonder so many people still think fondly of empire, they probably read books like this one.The target audience for the book seems to be people who want to be able to understand just enough of the British Raj to absolve the Raj of any guilt and blame Jinnah and others for much of the ills of partition.The authors struggle with the very basic idea of why some brown people wanted independence, especially when the British were so benevolent and wise, and give up and just talk about it like it was just something which was happening, no hard feelings really, except against Jinnah.The book ignores practically all Indian writings, and even famous British writers like Adam Smith or Florence Nightingale who were harping on about the British needlessly killing millions in famines every few years in British India. Famines, bigger than the holocaust - skip that, lets concentrate and talk about Mountbattens shiny medals and his big big parties! And oh, look, Mountbatten has a Rolls Royce! And he's the grandson of some queen or the other!So on one side we have Mountbatten, working hard, inviting a few brown men to luncheons every now and then, working so hard, with hardly any help, just a few thousand servants, not much at all, and on on the other we have those spoilt little boys, Gandhi and Jinnah, needlessly talking about freedom and what not. It was enough to put Mountbatten of his tea, but poor little Mountbatten suffered through it all, why one year he met Jinnah twice! And after each visit he had to go recover in the hill stations of Simla because Jinnah was such an unpleasant little man, asking uncomfortable questions. Forget the questions, did you know Jinnah was a stiff man who had this very uncomfortable stare?What were those uncomfortable questions? If you only read this book you won't know, for the authors were obviously very aware that Mountbatten descendents themselves would be reading this book, and they didn't want to make them uncomfortable with annoying little questions.Some reviews point out that this book is well researched - I'm sure it is, but only in that section of the British Imperial Archives which has been scrubbed of voices which are in any way critical of British rule, or attempt to look at it honestly.Little things like India having to bear the staggering high military cost of Empire don't exist in the authors fictionalized world. Heck the authors go all the other way, and say that the British lost money during the Raj, and it was literally out of the goodness of their white hearts that the British ruled India. History is a story - and the problem with this book is not that it's a story - the problem is that it's a glib view which completely omits and washes British hands of what they did during their occupation and departure from India.
What do You think about Freedom At Midnight (2001)?
I'm leaving for India and this book was recommended to me for it's historical accuracy. I knew nothing about India, except for the movie Gandhi and some misty misconceptions from my misspent youth. Now the animosity and tension between India and Pakistan, Hindu and Muslim becomes clearer. The reading is hard going right now (events just after the partition of India and Pakistan) as the authors describe the horrific events. Muslims intercepted trainloads full of Hindus fleeing Pakistan and massacred the passengers. The trains arrived in Indian stations with compartments full of dead and maimed passengers, blood flowing from compartments. Equal atrocities were experienced by the Muslims. How did I not know any of this?
—Cathy
This book gives out a rare mix of emotions.... pride, happiness, horror, pity, shame, compassion, reverence, admiration...It has everything. A must read for people who want to know how did we reach here....I read the following paragraph with such an emotion that my eyes were filled with tears at the end.For all the readers from Pakistan and India: "A roar of untrammeled happiness burst from half a million throats as the folds of the flag rose above the heads of the crowd. In the joy of that sublime second, India forgot the battle of Plassey, the vengeance of 1857, the massacre of Amritsar. Forgotten for an instant were, the humiliations of martial law, the lathi-swinging police charges, the executions of her independence martyrs. Three difficult centuries were set aside to allow her to savor unfettered the delight of that moment"
—Manu
The saga of the Indian subcontinent’s independence from Britain and the creation of the states of India and Pakistan told through a collection of interrelated stories about major events and important figures that influenced the independence movementA case of interesting history writing that doesn’t present events in the dry, matter-of-fact chronological order (although the semblance of chronology have to be and is maintained in the narrative) as we find in usual history books. This makes it an accessible book for new readers.All qualities counted, however, there is a big problem with the perspective. This book comes off as portraying the functioning and benevolent British Raj that sadly and unfortunately had to go due to extenuating circumstances. The consensus among historians puts much blame on the short-sightedness of the last British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, and the fake urgency he created (for his personal reasons) to “get over with it” by prematurely taking the decision to partition the country. This urgency to finish the job as quickly as possible led to decisions that ripped apart the social fabric of the country, echoes of which are still heard in contemporary Indo-Pak relations.This book in the most part is written by using Mountbatten’s archives and his direct interviews. Not surprising, then, that he comes across as a helpless and powerless spectator who could do nothing in the face of consummate madness, rioting, killing, raping, and plundering that swept the Indian society on the eve of Partition/independence and continued into many months. Lord Mountbatten is almost absolved of making a terrible blunder whose consequences his administration was unprepared to deal with, even though he himself later admitted to the historian Stanley Wolpert, confessing, “I fucked it up”.Mahatma Gandhi gets good coverage as he deserves. He was the only major politician to see through the horrors of Partition and the bloodshed it would unleash. No one listened to his warnings; Jinnah turned a deaf ear, Nehru-Patel duo were eager to see British go and rule an independent country; but all of them were in for a rude shock when rioting and killing on a large scale ensued as soon as Partition and independence were formally announced.--Originally posted 30/12/14
—Jibran
