Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre was recommended to me by zackq and KO (who has his own thoughts here). It is a highly readable book with a great writing style.
The major fault of the book lies with the authors’ reliance on Mountbatten. One of their major sources is a personal interview with Mountbatten. In addition, they got some of Mountbattens personal papers about the events of his viceroyalty in India. In my opinion, the authors seem to be smitten with Mountbatten. Every mention of him has something really nice to say. His charm, persuasiveness, greatness, administrative and military genius are praised over and over again. No skepticism is applied to Mountbatten’s account. Since I am not a Mountbatten fan, this turned me off quite a bit.
Freedom at Midnight starts when Mountbatten was appointed Viceroy of India in March 1947 and ends with Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948. Thus it is an account of the last year of British India. If you don’t know anything about the Indian independence movement, you might be better off reading a more comprehensive account. There is, however, a lot that happened in 1947 and “Freedom at Midnight” covers it in good detail, taking almost 500 pages to do so.
One of the side-effects of the authors’ Mountbatten-worship is that most of the major figures, like Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah, are seen mostly through Mountbatten’s eyes. One result of this is the extremely negative portrayal of Jinnah. I don’t usually have much of a problem with his negative portrayal since that is quite common in history books not written by Pakistanis. But “Freedom at Midnight” tries a negative adjective for Jinnah every time he’s mentioned. I know Jinnah was a determined fellow who was arrogant and vain as well, but still the authors lost me there. I do agree with this statement though:
Jinnah himself celebrated the day [of independence] by assuming full powers for his supposedly ceremonial office. In the year of life remaining to him, the London-trained lawyer who for years had not ceased to proclaim his faith in the constitutional process would govern his new nation as a dictator.
This, in my view, was one of the problems with Pakistani democracy since its founding. Contrast Jinnah’s behavior with Nehru. Nehru became Prime Minister of India and set up a parliamentary government. In the end, Nehru probably had as much dictatorial power as Jinnah but the foundation of parliamentary democracy had been set up in India while Pakistan became a land of dictators.
The authors also do not seem well-versed in Indian history before the British. For example, they mention that Islam came to India “after the cohorts of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane had battered their way down the Khyber Pass to weaken the Hindus’ hold on the Gangetic plain.” I guess they are confusing Muslims and Mughals. It was during the slave dynasty and then the Khaljis that the battles with the Mongols took place. Oh and Tamerlane himself was Muslim (not that it matters) and defeated Mahmud Tughluq in 1398.
The imperialist attitude of the British is captured well by the authors.
Their rule was paternalistic, that of the old public-school master disciplining an unruly band of boys, forcing on them the education that he was sure was good for them. With an occasional exception they were able and incorruptible, determined to administer India in its own best interests —- but it was always they who decided what those interests were.
This description of the Viceroy’s travel reminded me of Pakistan’s President-General.
Whenever the viceroy’s white-and-gold train moved across the vast spaces of India, guards were posted every one hundred yards along its route twenty-four hours in advance of its arrival.
Mountbatten impulsively decided the date of partition (Aug 15, 1947) at a press conference. No prior thought or discussions on this. And this is a guy who, according to the authors, had provided the Congress and Muslim League leaders with a 34-page document titled “The Administrative Consequences of Partition when partition had been agreed on because
He [Mountbatten] had forced these seven men to come to grips with a problem so imposing that it would leave them neither the time nor the energy for recrimination in the few weeks of coexistence left to them.
He had chosen the date because it was the anniversary of Japanese surrender. To top that impulsive decision, he decided not to reveal the Boundary Commission awards until a couple of days after independence. This created a lot of confusion in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal which were being partitioned.
I talked about dual loyalties in a previous post. Two instances in this book provide some food for thought.
- When the tribal irregular forces from Pakistan invaded the state of Kashmir (which was sort of independent at the time) on Ocober 24, 1947, this news was relayed to the British commander-in-chief of the Indian army, Lt. Gen. Sir Rob Lockhart, by the British general commanding the Pakistani army, Maj. Gen. Douglas Gracey. Do you think Gracey was being disloyal to the country he served, Pakistan? Why? Or why not?
- Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, then a major in the army (later foreign minister of Pakistan), opted to leave for Pakistan from his home in Rampur. He led a battalion of the Pakistani army in the war in Kashmir in 1947-8. His younger brother, Younis Khan, had decided to remain in his ancestral Rampur. He too was an army officer. And he too fought in Kashmir. But on the Indian side. What did these two guys think of loyalty? What do you think?
Any thoughts on the matter?
The authors do portray Jinnah in a not-very-nice light, but as you said that’s the norm. I do not thing they were overly enamoured of Mountbatten, as they do portray him as a weak ruler after all. Understandably, the British don’t like Jinnah as he spoiled all their plans of leaving a now ‘somewhat cultured and developed’ India behind – instead Jinnah singlehandly caused a royal mess.
Both Nehru and Jinnah had pretty much absolute power, sadly Jinnah accepted it as his birthright while Nehru while grabbing it with both hands did at least set up a whole democratic structure which did have real power. Sure in practice he was power incarnate in India, but theoretically he wasn’t.
Musharraf is going one better than Mountbatten now: When he is travelling in Karachi, all roads are cleared well in advance and cars removed. (including on alternate routes). I assume similar measures are also taken in other cities to some extent.
It’s strange why Pakistani’s are generally so defensive of Jinnah – after all we go to great lengths to censor and distort his speeches and thoughts in our history books, along with completely forgetting and worse, altering, all his hopes and aspirations for Pakistan.
Large parts of the population know completely different Jinnah’s – it’s funny in a very tragic kind of way.
Whatever Jinnah was, he passed away over 55 years back. What good have the critics of Jinnah done to Pakistan or, let us say humanity ?
Circumstances/environment of Jinnah and Nehru had no similarity. Mountbatten and Nehru were friends (through Mrs Mountbatten) both were anemies of Muslims while Jinnah was a leader of Muslims. Nehru and his collegues kept Mountbatten as GG of India and kept him happy by all odd means to get befits from the British government (one being that wealth and other assets which came to the share of Pakistan were not given to Pakistan due to good office of Mountbatten and have not been given so far). Jinnah couldn’t do the same. It wasn’t logical either to have one person as GG of both India and Pakistan. The idea that Pakistan had dictatorship from the first day is not a truth. The assmbly of Pakistan as elected by Muslims during 1945-46 had been in place. However, that assembly was not allowed to work after the death of Liaquat Ali in October, 1951 when Ghulam Muhammad (a Mirzai) took over as GG of Pakistan. Then came Maj Gen ® Sikandar Mirza and followed by Ayub Khan who brought proper dictatorship.
Well i think Freedom at midnight is a well writ book. No doubt it is a bit slanted but all history books are. I read the book when i was supposed to; that is after being fed on and on for 10 years with Pakistani version of everything. You see all syllabi are somewhat slanted. This helps in incorporating an ideology in the minds of the young readers. and by the time they grow up they can read differing views and decide for themselves what is true and what is not. but this comment doesn’t justify the extent of distortion that our history books present. If we want to read unbiased books we must resort to Stanley Wolpert. What an excellent writer he is. I think he should write one on sub continent history apart from the biographies that he has done so well.
KO: the British don’t like Jinnah as he spoiled all their plans.
I think it’s more than that. I haven’t read anyone thinking of Jinnah as a likeable fellow. He was quite arrogant and aloof in a way. A good leader in some ways, but not the flesh-pressing, charismatic type.
IAB: You are right that we can’t blame all we have wrought in Pakistan on Jinnah. However, the lack of democratic decision-making by Jinnah is part of our history. In Jinnah’s defence, the Muslim League was democratic at all, especially much less than Congress. So it was more an institutional problem than a personal one of Jinnah.
And I have no idea what Ghulam Muhammad’s religion/set has to do with his acts as Governor-General.
Moiz: Ah, the Pakistani syllabus! Strange, strange world!
Perhaps the authors would have portrayed Jinnah lower than this had they studied the damage caused by Jinnah to Muslim world as a whole.It is really a matter of sad affairs that Pakistani people regard Barrister Jinnah as their hero as he and his accomplice demanded creation of pakistan on the sole ground of uncertainty about the safety and welfare of muslims in a country having Hindu majority.At the same time they forget that safety and welfare of Muslims is in the hands of Allah and thereby these so called leaders exhibitted that they
were not true muslims .
I read an article written by an ex-Aligarian (ex student of Aligarh Muslim University-India) wherein the author wrote the following sentence:
” Perhaps if there had been no Aligarh there would have been no Pakistan.”
The above view of the ld.Author is totally contradictory to the vision of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who established the Aligarh College only for the sole purpose of Muslims becoming equally placed with the Hindu majority. Religion and politics were never mixed even after the death of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in as much as in 1920 when the British decided to celebrate the peace after the first world war ,it were the trustees of the Aligarh College who supported the peace celebration inviting the criticism and passing of a resolution condemning their action by the 2nd Ulema Conference held in Delhi in Nov 1920 on the queston of Khilafat Movement, where Mahatma Gandhi was the only non-muslim participant.It is again a matter of debate that the then Ulemas became a tool in the hands of Gandhji who wanted to exhibit the mass support he commanded especially when the extremist congressmen were gainging much popularity than Gandhji after the Jalianwala Bagh massacre.Gandhiji picked up the idea of encashing the Khilafat issue to gain Muslim support and he moved a resolution in the Congress Session on the matter of Khilafat.It was passed by cen percent votes except for the lone opposition vote casted by none other than Barrister Jinnah who dared Gandhiji from the dais that it was wrong to mix the politics and religion and no resolutions of religious nature be passed in the political forum. The success achieved by Gandhiji, tempted Jinnah the pork eater and drunkard to highlight religion in politics, and in the process Jinnah acting as puppet in the hands of Hindu Mahasabha had weakend the Muslim strengh in India. Just imagine how Muslims would have dominated the Indian Politics had there been no division of muslims.It is absurd even to imagine remotedly that the pakistan army or the Pakistan’s I S I have any love or religious affilation to Indian Muslims and to some extent even to Pakistan’s muslims .The aim of pakistan army and I S I is to see that their importance is maitained at any cost and they eat more than half of pakistan’s budget by fooling that India is foe no.1 and is a threat to them- depriving the common pakistani of their bread and butter. The nation founded by a pork eater and a drunkard having married to a non muslim with the support of the people with shaky belief in Allah has become a heaven of worldly pleasure-far away from the Islamic teachings-to rich pakistanis .What is Pakistan today-money of miagrants, american aid, arab aid and drug money.It has nothing to survive if these four factors are removed from the pakistan.Compare the progress made by India.The founders of Pakistan while reasoning for the partition say that they would loose their identity if they stay in India since their culture and Hindu culture were different. The combined muslims were divided in three parts one remained in India,one formed the then east pakistan and the third one formed Pakistan.Just before Pakistan celebrate its silver junilee of creation, it got divided into two nations Pakistan and Bangla Desh.It needs no proof to state that the culture of Bengali Muslims and the Punjabi & Sindh Muslims are totally different . The Pakistani now allege that it was India which divided them willfully forgetting that it was their own stand that two different cultures can not remain together.The present position of Indian Muslims is far far superior than the Pakistani and Bangla Deshi Muslims.At least no Indian muslim kill another muslims as is happening in pakistan.The Pakistan try to highlight that Indian Muslims are suffrering in the hands of Hindus.If Pakistan really wants that Indian Muslims should not suffer then it should look after itself and should stop sending the ISI trained people to India to commit terrorist acts.The Indian Muslims have a strong belief in Allah and Insha Allah a day is not far when India will be a super power- more powerful than America and other countries.And had there been no pakistan, the muslims from the United India would have become the world dominating factor. Alas the few muslim intellectuals having shaky faith in Allah and who were coward to face the Hindu phobia -forgetting to seek Allah’s help for their safety and welfare chose to create Pakistan and there by ruined the muslims in general.
May Allah help the Pakistan Army and the I S I in particular not to resist the peace efforts between India and Pakistan and the probable reunification of Great India.
Hanif: Perhaps the authors would have portrayed Jinnah lower than this had they studied the damage caused by Jinnah to Muslim world as a whole.
What are you talking about?
they forget that safety and welfare of Muslims is in the hands of Allah and thereby these so called leaders exhibitted that they were not true muslims.
May be you would like to keep the door of your house open all the time then?
The book “FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT” really gives all the details of Indian fredom stuggle and happenings just after freedom. In particular the Migration of people form India to Pakistan and vise- versa is excelent chapter which has visuvalised the facts in such a way that one will shed teras while reading this chapter. I have read this book twice completely and impressd a lot. It is sad that India got devided because of selfishness of leaders like Jhinna and Nehru. Both of them wanted power and just for that reason wanted the divison of the great country-India. Had the country been not devided, India would have been a superpower in the world by now. It is all politics which is deviding Hindus & Muslims. In India at many palces Hindus & Muslims live like brothers and as one family. Some times to gain political advantage at some places and at some critical political situations, politicians create distrubance which is very unfortunate. It is also a fact that Britishers have devided India into two to weeken both of them. Even now if Pakistan stops proxy war through terrorism and vise-versa efforts can be made to unify India & Pakistan, ofcourse countries like USA & UK will not allow this and any move in this direction will result in stoppage of aid to Pakistan and India. It is time for the people of India and Pakistan to think seriously about it and elect such governements which will put their efforts in unifying India and Pakistan to form one country that is Great India which will become a SUPERPOWER in the world.
Rajshekar: While I am not a nationalist and so have nothing against India and Pakistan (or any other countries) uniting, I think you are simplifying a great deal and ignoring a lot of historical and current issues.
I am being Administartion student in a private university read this outstanding book,
History cannot falsifies the great efforts of Jinnah, The sole person who get the country wihout any wars, The sole person who get the country on tables. I wish all the readers to read and evaluate certain things from the history. Every person has equal rights to comment but should do it in right way.
The writtre is very biosed to jinnah.He is a great fan of MaountBatin and Congress leadership so he is unable to produce historical events as they accured.
i would like to comment on the two questions asked in the discussion earlier.
1. The Generals just didnt want wanton bloodshed, and they were acting in the interest of the India they knew and loved ( i.e. the undivided India)
2. The annswer regarding who’s loyal to the country and who’s disloyal / traitor etc. depends upon the which side you see the matter from. I feel that both the brothers acted according to their will and stayed loyal to whichever cause/ side they were, leaving aside any other bonds and relations, even their blood relations. That I would say is equally praiseworthy for both the brothers and demands great pesonal courage and mental maturity.
Vipin:
Zack: hi..
1 Their loyalties should have been to their respective new countries.Agreed. But dont forget that they were citizens of another country loyal first to the crown. And it was (only to some extent) that “love” for the undivided India that they knew, which might have lead to the actions….. what’s your say???
2 Let’s hope people around us get to see such kind of “divided loyalty” questions with an open and unbiased mind……
Vipin: I don’t disagree much. My intent was to provoke some thought about the questions of loyalty, rather than provide easy answers.
Liberty or Death
Liberty or Death by Patrick French is one of the few books on Indian independence that is not anti-Jinnah. Its portrayal of Jinnah and Mountbatten is realistic. I recommend it to anyone interested in the partition of India and Pakistan.
It’s been a while, but I remember being struck by how anti-Jinnah FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT was. It really goes out of its way at times to take pot shots at him (e.g., claiming Gandhi knew more ayats of the Quran than he, the anecdote about him not realizing Ramazan was underway) while engaging in the standard hagiography of Gandhi. Instead of noting how his religious leanings were kindred to Western sensibilities—he was a secularist and a modernist, for God’s sake!—these Western authors almost attack him like mullahs, painting him as little more than a hypocryte, a Tartuffe.
Of course, in this we have a macrocosm of tenditious, pro-Indian Western discussions of the history of Pakistan in general. In “scholarly” discussions, Pakistan like its founder is consistently subjected to a degree of scepticism and thinly veiled hostiltity that India rarely encounters, much less must defend itself against.
Pakistan was created due to a conspiracy by the British. Jinnah was merely a British puppet who was originally in favour of home rule (not independence) and Jinnah saw that he could not get a prominent place in Congress ruled India. The original date for independence was 1948. It was pushed to 1947 so that a country based on religion could be created and accepted by the United nations. Once that was done with support from all muslim nations, then the British moved to create Israel based on same theory as the creation of Pakistan. Let’s demand that we have access to papers from that era.
Freedom at midnight is written by the authors of foreign origin and the substantive issue in it may be some where down the line biase and confuse to show the right cause of partion. Muslim wants a separate nation as they think that in a majoritarion hindu dominated nation there interest and development is not safe and secure. And it is natural to think so as prior to 1931 there was no design of jinha to establish a seperate nation base on religion but on the inception of provential goverence 1937 , it was seen that the muslim were not given proper represention to hindu dominated society. some where the hello of gandhi were deviated due to extreamist view of certain leaders but in long run the truth is came victorious and the figure of Gandhi became larger than life. it is certianly right that political freedom was fought against the democratic and cultured nation and instead this if same movement is to be fought against Adolf Hitler and Musolin the picture of freedom movement would have been different. This book is helping to give a vivid charter of freedom struggle and facilitating to understand the activities go down in between 1947 to 1948.This freedom is a history of who has seen many up and down since its existance and it was a ethos and inner strength of the people who come forward to make struggle against the Britisher on the one call of Gandhi ji. No doubt Gandhi Ji were the leader but it was a vast force and strength of Public who make it success. The remarkable and historic speech of Nehru ji [ Tryst with destiny] at mid night of 15 August1947 was the culmination of desirs and asperation long charished by the We the people of India.
I just finished reading Freedom at Midnight. First let me say it was one of the best books I have read in a long time. I read it out of interest to learn more about the history of India and Pakistan. I do agree with several of the posts that suggest the authors were enamored with Mountbatten. Could he have possibly been as perfect as they suggest? It almost reads as an autobiography of the man.
I was also somewhat dissappointed in the overuse of anecdotes is the book. I guess it reflects the journalism background of the authors.
I can not help but think about the history of India and Pakistan as it relates to the current situation in Iraq and the possible future of the situation there. Some have suggested the splitting of Iraq into 3 individual section based on sectarian beliefs. If this happened, would we expect the type of massacres, etc. that resulted from the Hindu/Moslem population dispersion that was in place in India when the country was divided?
Gahndi was incredible. I am sure he wold look at the industrial development of India as completely inconsistent with his beliefs. The power he had over the people of India was dictated by his actions. He clearly “walked the talk”, unlike most “spiritual” leaders over the ages. A comparison to Christ cannot be ignored. The difference being time. If we did not know that in fact he did the things we read about, we would have to be “believers”.
History as written since the declassification of transfer of power papers records a different Jinnah then the caricature all of you have described above.
Jinnah was held by his opponents including Gandhi and Nehru to be incorruptible and honest.
What they did not admit was that partition was essentially a Hindu choice as argued so well by Joy Chatterji.
As for Jinnah not being able to ingrain democracy, my view is that he just did not get the chance that Nehru did.
As for Pakistanis being defensive about Jinnah… If indians call a racist like gandhi mahatma and market him to the world, we have the right to honor our father of the nation
Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity Jinnah’s politics by Ian Bryant wells is a good read.
So is secular and nationalist jinnah by ajeet javed.
Sole spokesman by ayesha jalal
And H M Seervai’s partition of india legend and reality.
The world has begun to wake up to Jinnah and reject garbage like freedom at midnight for what it is: senationalised journalese horseshit.
@RAJSHEKAR RAO
EGO got it divided
EGO will never allow it to unite
but a one day will come and
GOD will decide, then
there won’t be any EGO nor boundaries.
Muslims were fed since the mid 19th century, a flawed and totally misleading concept of two nation theory. Nation is not made by any religion, its the state or precisely the language they speak which makes a nation. Exceptions exist where a nation and a religion are totally confined within one place like israel and jews. But otherwise, both are different. Britishers ignited the hatred among both, hindus and muslims and appointed few men who would carry on this job efficiently. End result, we have two different countries that incorporate both the religions and have no problem living with eachother (generally speaking; of course extremists are always there to cause violence). Sub continent would have been far better place to live and perhaps the super power of the world if it was a single country. But genius mind of Britishers stripped us off our chances to rule the world.
India might still emerge as a powerful country in few decades to come but for Pakistan, its a never ending struggle, largely due to the religion extremism being widely practiced and condoned there.