While The World Slept..... Review on Freedom At Midnight - Dominique Lapierre

Introduction

As a student, history had never fascinated me. In fact it was one of my least favorite subjects of all time. Then as I grew up (Yes! I really did grow up I mean, not drinking Thums Up though), I found enough reasons to believe that history was nothing but “HIS- STORY” (it is my belief that most people who penned them should have been men, women are more creative and artistic aren’t they?) as in a story penned down by persons who had their own personal biases and motives to have written what ever they had written. My knowledge on this subject is clearly limited and often incorrect. I have harbored my own theories (often based on hearsay and of course on whatever little I had mugged up for my history tests) about India’s past, her struggle for freedom, and her leaders and of course the British who had ruled her for a long time. That’s probably a reason why when I picked up Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (LC & DL) it was done so with lots of reluctance, also because my options were limited. My first impressions too weren’t very encouraging.

The Book

The prologue that dealt entirely about The Gateway of India and the first chapter that started of describing a London that was paradoxical in the sense it was the capital of the most powerful empire on earth but also a city grappling with severe economic crisis, failed to provide the appetizing start that one is so used to with best sellers and who-dunn-its. But something told me this was going to be different.

The introduction of a reluctant-to-go-to-India Louis Mountbatten, did whet the appetite but also began to make me wonder if this is a book written with a bias towards the Last Viceroy of British India. But then before you can really start thinking too hard about that, the story starts unfolding in a seldom seen narrative style that swings back and forth in time. A few paragraphs that talk about Mountbatten’s discussions with Clement Atlee (the then British PM, year 1947) are immediately followed by the ones that take you back to the year 1599, where 24 merchants angered when the Dutch (who controlled the spice trade) raised the price of a pound of pepper (by five shillings), set up a consortium that was the pre-cursor to what would be the East India Trading Corporation. Probably if the price of pepper had not been raised, the British would have never ruled India.

The swinging back and forth is done with such ease and panache that it rarely affects the flow of the book (unlike some bollywood movies and their flashbacks). But then that’s not the only aspect different about the narration. In fact, it is a complex mixture first person accounts, excerpts from books, biographies, interviews, newspapers, confidential meeting minutes, graphic third party descriptions, quotes and quotations… and what not - All interwoven to produce a fine fabric that could put some of India’s skilled weavers to shame.

The second chapter is the where the net main character is introduced - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I have to accept at this point that the book did alter (even though not entirely) my perceptions/ opinions about this “Half –Naked – Fakir” as Winston Churchill chose to call him, once in the past. Pages after pages get turned (chapters 3 and 4) throwing light upon diverse issues like Gandhi’s efforts to bring calm to a communally sensitive Noakhali (now in Bangladesh), India’s Hindus and Muslims (why they were different), Aryan civilization, rise and fall of the Moghul Empire and settling down of Mountbattens in Delhi.

The 5th introduces three other players of significance. A sophisticated Jawaharlal Nehru, an adamant Mohammed Ali Jinnah and somewhat under-played Vallabhbahi Patel. Their interactions with the Viceroy (which incidentally, were the beginning of the formalization of the decision to divide India) are well described. The efforts of Gandhi and Mountbatten to avoid the partition were something that I had never been aware of.

From here on the book delves deeply into issues like the pre-conditions for partition, the life of times (read whims and fancies) of India’s Maharajahs (an entire chapter describing their eccentricities), Mountbatten’s instinctive announcement of a date for India’s independence, the issues related to dominion status, the politics of religion, the summoning of Cyril Radcliff to “vivisect” India and the build up of communal tension and uncertainty in the run up to India’s independence.

The birth of India and Pakistan, the slaughtering of human beings in the name of religion on either sides of the frontier and the large-scale migration of people across it makes absorbing yet disturbing reading. This part of the book comes through as a dispassionate effort replete with graphic descriptions. It also brings to fore the realization as to how fragile peace is, when weapons incited by communal passions attack it. The Kashmir issue, the blow by blow account of the plot to assassinate Gandhi, its key conspirators, the failed attempt are all the perfect build up to the heart wrenching but enthralling climax that deals with the assassination of “dejected sparrow” as Mountbatten fondly referred to the apostle of non-violence.

The epilogue and a couple of sections that follow it, record what happened after the assassination and how it affected India, Pakistan, its leaders and its people.

Opinion:

Divided into twenty insightful chapters, this book is probably the best book written about the role of Mountbatten, Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Patel in the last year of British rule in India and few months that followed the birth of India and Pakistan. It is by no means a chronicle of India’s struggle for independence. It does talk at times about various related and unrelated issues in detail at times and in passing at others. The pace slackens a bit at places, but then it more than makes up for that with the vast amount of information it provides the reader. The language is simple and straightforward. Wherever native tongue has been used, an attempt has been made to translate it to English.

The book succeeds in creating varying moods in the mind of the reader, ranging from awe to angst, from surprise to suspicion to outright disbelief. It shocked me at times with revelations about leaders and revolutionaries that I had heard about but never bothered to know much about.

A good book and it is highly recommended. But then I am still not sure if everything written in this book is the truth and nothing but the truth. It is not history, but then there are chances that it is Their (LC & DL) Story, with their unavoidable personal biases and motives…