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We are going to India in 2 weeks, and the book was an history lesson of India. Very well written and very interesting.
And somewhat repetitive. I'll keep this short: its a fascinating historical story and is worth telling and worth reading. But it's simply too long of a book. I'm well aware that India is a very populous country.no need to hammer it into my head continuously. Otherwise I found myself interested but had a hard time getting through it by the end.
The book is an excellent introduction to the partition of India. It appears biased, as Lord Mountbatten is a primary source, and receives little criticism. The book is easy to read, and has many brief personal stories to provide a sense of what the events were like for those participating (suffering) in the events. I did not give it five stars because I felt that there was not enough critical review of the actions by both British and India leaders that lead to horrible suffering by hundreds of thousands of people.
Excellent book about the events that led up to India's independence. Terrific and informative read for anyone eager to know about the history of a magnificent nation.
After three hundred and fifty years of engagement and almost 200 years of marriage, India asked for a divorce from the British Raj to become independent, although the divorce was tragic and costly for Britain. Ironically, full communal peace and unity was brought by the unfortunate assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, a peace which he was unable to achieve when he was alive. Although Nehru and Patel wanted to industrialize and urbanize India, I would argue that full scale industrialization would have been detrimental at the time. Gandhi wanted self-sufficient and self-sustaining villages based on farming, handicrafts and eco-friendly self-sufficiency. Gandhi knew that the weapon of non-violence would work on the British because of the British people's love for humanity, as similar tactics would not work with Fascists and Communists. In February 1947, the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten, Queen Victory's great-grandson, to be the last Viceroy of India.
Within six months, the divorce was finalized in the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah's "Promised Land". The leading architect of the non-violence independence movement was Mahatma Gandhi. "Freedom at Midnight", one of best selling books of acclaimed authors, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, tells us the thrillingly-detailed story of India's Independence and its partition. In the modern era, India needs to balance between Gandhi's ideas of self-sustaining villages and Nehru's ideas of advancement in science and technology to achieve the greatest level of success. It helped enormously to bring the chaotic situation under control. Mahatma Gandhi understood that the heart of India is its villages, where eighty percent of its people lived. I highly recommend this book to those who want to understand one of the most tragic events of the 20th century.
In September 1947, Pandit Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel asked for Lord Mountbatten's help to stop communal violence between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, which were badly affected by the partition and on the verge of anarchy. They agreed to give because they wanted to end-up their relationship on good terms. Full Scale industrialization leads to significant boosts and prosperity in the beginning, but leads to large economic fallouts due to it's reliance on foreign trade. At Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's request, Lord Mountbatten accepted the honor of becoming first Governor-General of independent India. Immediately, under the chair of Lord Mountbatten, the Emergency Committee was formed and effective actions were taken to improve the situation. When the pioneer Scottish economist Adam Smith wrote his book `The Wealth of Nations', about the benefits of the division of labor, he didn't imagine at that time that dividing labor would leave billions of poor people in poverty.
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