Freedom at Midnight

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I would love to report that at the time the books subtitle 'How Britain Gave Away an Empire' caused me to raise a questioning eyebrow but it didn't and I am deeply ashamed that it didn't. The subtitle alone makes it difficult for me to rate this book as more then one star but what you must understand is that this book was in no small part the last and greatest of Lord Louis Mountbatten's monuments to his tireless self promotion. He managed to lose his ship, and 130 men, during the evacuation of Crete but emerged the hero in the propaganda film made of the event 'In Which We Serve' where Noel Coward played him. The obvious racial undertone gets a new height when the authors bring forth idiotic and almost dead Aryan invasion theory to explain why Punjabis are a "marshal" race, as opposed to the "small and dark Bengalis" who are "mere Asiatics." I am sure that it has nothing to do with that Bengal is where most of the protest movements started from. Because anything good that comes out of India, well it has to be influenced by the higher race, even in ancient times.

The book is just a manuscript to put forth Britain as the wise and better, quoting Rudyard Kipling, who says that Indians better be ruled by Britishers, and heavily quoting Churchill, who has been depicted as a "guy too important to be in a book on India". Maddox, Garry. 17 May 2017. " How Prince Charles steered filmmaker Gurinder Chadha to make Viceroy's House." The Sydney Morning Herald. It was written in 1975. All of the main players were dead with the exception of Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy.

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Cruelty and dimension; a land of past accomplishment and present concern, whose future was compromised by problems more taxing than those confronting any other assembly of humans on earth. Yet, for all that, for all her ills, their India was also one of the supreme and enduring symbols protruding above the cultural horizons of mankind. The significance of the new edition lies in engaging the minds of two generations born into a free country, to enable them to empathetically understand the aspirations and goals that united our leaders then towards the common cause of freedom. The significance lies in invoking the re-awakening of the Indian spirit. Surely it is time for the over 1 billion people in India to ask themselves honestly what their contribution has been thus far towards realizing an India free from poverty, illiteracy and inequality. The authors interviewed many who were there during the events, including a focus on Lord Mountbatten of Burma. [2] They subsequently wrote a book based in particular upon their research on the British officer, titled Mountbatten and the Partition of India, containing interviews with Mountbatten, and a selection of papers that were in his possession. [3] Response [ edit ] As partition approaches, various groups take extreme measures to ethnically cleanse their area. There are bad guys on every side. Criminal gangs also find it useful to scare their competition out of the territory. Warning—very graphic! The India represented by those men and women would be a nation of 275 million Hindus (70 million of them, a population almost twice the size of France, Untouchables); 50 million Moslems; seven million Christians; six million Sikhs; 100,000 Parsis; and 24,000 Jews, whose forebears had fled the destruction of Solomon’s Temple during the Babylonian exile.

Dominique Lapierre was born in Châtelaillon-Plage, Charente-Maritime, France. At the age of thirteen, he travelled to America with his father who was a diplomat (Consul General of France). He attended the Jesuit school in New Orleans and became a paper boy for the "New Orleans Item". He developed interests in travelling, writing and cars and later traveled across the United States as a young man.

In reality, it was a crime. In reality, the perpetrators have still not been punished. In reality, millions of women and children are yet to be avenged. 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. Perspective The perspective of this book is both fascinating and appalling. The author does not hesitate to criticise the Maharajas of India and Indian national leaders. However he also often paints Mountbattion in a favourable light. The one Englishman who thought only the good of India and guided her journey. Which is anything but true. Perhaps because Mountbatton is one of the main source of this book, he has attained a status of a man who made everything possible without making any mistakes.