"Freedom at Midnight" by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

Above: "Freedom at Midnight" by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. 629 pages. I completed reading this book today.

For the first time in history, an empire voluntarily gave up its most important possession, its jewel in the crown. How this came about, as relayed in "Freedom at Midnight" makes for a wonderful and exciting read.

This book report follows my third reading of "Freedom at Midnight." This may be the only book I have read three times.

"Freedom at Midnight" is the story of the events surrounding Indian independence from the British Empire on 14 August 1947. The book starts with the appointment of Lord Mountbatten of Burma in February of 1947 as the last Viceroy of British Inda and ends with the assassination and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi in January of 1948. A fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen—but the price of freedom was high, as a nation erupted into riots and bloodshed, partition and war. The book records the events surrounding, effectively, the end of the British Empire and the birth of two nations, India and Pakistan.

The book is panoramic in scope and reads more like a thriller than dull historical narrative.

Here a book blurb:

“No subject, I thought, as I picked up Freedom at Midnight, could be of less interest to me than a story of how Independence came to India after three centuries of British rule. I opened the book and began to flip through the photographs: here was a picture of Gandhi dressed in his loincloth going to have tea with the King of England; there was a picture of a maharaja being measured against his weight in gold; and another of thousands of vultures devouring corpses in the street. I began to read, fascinated. Here was the whole chronicle illustrated with anecdotes and masterful character sketches of how the British had come to India, how they had ruled it and how, finally, compelled by the force of economics and history, they had been forced to leave it divided…… Collins and Lapierre are such good writers that their books are so interesting that they are impossible to put down.”—J.M. Sanchez, The Houston Chronicle

At the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, 400 million people were "liberated" from the British Empire. With the loss of India, its greatest colony, Britain ceased to be a superpower, and its king ceased to sign himself Rex Imperator. This major event in world history was brought about by a handful of people. Gandhi, 'Dickie' Mountbatten, Edwina Mountbatten, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel. All of the principal players had dreams of democracy and freedom for the new sub-continent countries, India and Pakistan. But, within hours of midnight, dawning on 15 August 1947, any dreams of democracy and freedom would turn to chaos, bloodshed and war. The book's descriptions of the sectarian violence along the post partition India/Pakistan border are written in raw, grueling, and poignant detail.

Mountbatten had been charged by UK Prime Minister Clement Atlee, leader of a Liberal post war government, to affect the disengagement of India from the British Empire. Post war Britain was bankrupt. Great Britain could no longer sustain the management of its vast, three-hundred-year-old empire. Moreover, led by Gandhi, since the 1930's India had mounted its own movement towards independence - Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance to British authority) - and that movement had gained considerable momentum by the end of World War II. Mountbatten was a "minor" royal, but, through his best friendship with future King Edward VII, he established himself as a major influence with the royal family and the UK government. Mountbatten engineered the meeting of future Queen Elizabeth to his nephew, a minor Greek prince of German heritage, Prince Philip. Mountbatten also had quite a distinguished career as a field commander in WWII in southeast Asia.

Edwina turns out to be a major player in the denouement of Indian/Pakistani independence. She, also, was a minor royal. But she had money where her husband had little. She, therefore, was an independent spirit. Dickie enjoyed Edwina's wealth, Edwina had status as a Viceroy's wife, and Nehru took counsel and assistance from both Viceroy and Vicereine who were intimately connected to the royal family and the British government.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah, president of Muslim League, was intransigent, sharp, smart, secular and resolute in his insistence on a separate Muslim state. Mountbatten, urged on by Gandhi and Nehru, did his best to dislodge Jinnah from his insistence on a partitioned India. But, digging in his heels, Jinnah got what he wanted. Jinnah died only six months after partition of a respiratory condition known early on by his personal physician to be terminal. There has been much speculation about how India could have achieved its independence sans partition had Jinnah's terminal condition been more widely known.

Gandhi was deeply opposed to partition, and fought valiantly, and often successfully, to tone down sectarian violence arising from the fight over partition, mainly by engaging in important fasts in Calcutta and New Delhi. The book has a comprehensive account of Gandhi's assassination by a Hindu nationalist who did not appreciate Gandhi's attempts to avoid partition.

Fascinating in the book are the stories of how the maharajas, heads of independent Indian states not formally controlled by the British, but under the British security umbrella, were subsumed into the new India and Pakistan. "Herding these sheep" was the operational head of the Indian Congress Party, and Gandhi confidant, Vallabhbhai Patel. Descriptions in the book of maharajah behavior, from tiger hunts to Rolls Royce collections, to harem excesses are fascinating. There is the account of how the weak-willed Hindu maharajah of majority Muslim Kashmir, opted to include his kingdom in majority Hindu India and not in culturally contiguous Pakistan, this leading to war and conflict between the two newly independent countries. The Kashmir problem remains a painful open sore between India and Pakistan to this day.

Just last year (2024), TIMDT and Mwah (sic) visited the statue of Vallabhbhai Patel, The Statue of Unity, in rural Gujarat. It is the largest statue in the world, four times as big as The Statue of Liberty in the US.

Above: Statue of Unity, Kevadia, Gujarat, India. Tallest statue in the world. Subject: Vallabhbhai Patel (file image).

Hindu nationalism is a rising force in India today as nationalist and populist movements around the world also gain strength. Post partition, some one hundred million Muslims remained in the new India. Indian Muslims now number 170 million. At the Indian village level, sectarian problems remain largely under control. Below the surface, however, driven largely by Hindu nationalists who are affiliated with India's ruling political party, the BJP, sectarian stress is building. Churchill believed the Indians could never pull off ruling themselves. Considering the growing possibility of renewed sectarian strife in India, Churchill's belief in India's inability to self-rule, cannot be dismissed, even 75 years after partition.

Above: Leatherbound copy of "Freedom at Midnight" purchased at Rambagh Palace Hotel in Jaipur, Rajasthan in 2016.

TIMDT and Mwah have stayed in New Delhi's Imperial Hotel on several occasions. It was at the Imperial Hotel where Jinnah's famous meeting with the Muslim League occurred on 9 June 1947. Fifty Muslim militants, to the right of Jinnah's already seeming intransigent push for a Muslim state, stormed the hotel in an attempt to assassinate Jinnah. They were unsuccessful and Jinnah carried on his meeting with seeming aplomb. I was sobered being present in the Imperial where major world events transpired seventy years previously. And I realized that the sectarian tensions that drove Jinnah to insist on a separate state at the time of independence, had not disappeared in the new India given the large Muslim population that did not cross over to Pakistan in 1947.

There is also a marble table preserved in the Imperial Hotel's "1911 Restaurant," where Gandhi dined with Dickie and Edwina. The Imperial Hotel has many more ghosts than cited here. It is a must stay place for anyone interested in India's transition from the Raj to independence.

The interplay between these six individuals (Mountbatten, Edwina Mountbatten, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Vallabhbhai Patel) links the events of the book together. Churchill is also in the background of the narrative. He was out of power when Britain decided to cut loose India. But the head butting between him, when he was in power, and Gandhi, was described in the book in a fair amount of detail. Notwithstanding his being out of power, Churchill was kept informed of the independence plan by Atlee and, notwithstanding his doubt about India's ability to self rule, nodded his assent to Dickie's plan for Indian independence.

The book has an eloquent, descriptive but compact prose style. Check out this paragraph describing the end of Gandhi's fast to forestall sectarian violence in Delhi post partition:

Three hours later while a festive Delhi celebrated the end of his fast, Gandhi absorbed his first meal, eight ounces of goats' milk and four oranges. When he had finished, he called for that primitive device which had embodied his message to his people, his spinning-wheel. No pleas from his doctors or his entourage could deter him. With the first strength returning to his body, his trembling fingers et the wheel in motion.

"Bread obtained without labour is stolen bread," he whispered. "I have now started to take food, therefore I must labour."

For the first time in history, an empire voluntarily gave up its most important possession, its jewel in the crown. How this came about, as relayed in "Freedom at Midnight" makes for a wonderful and exciting read.