At midnight on 14 August 1947, Britain finally granted independence to the peoples of India, without a single shot being fired in anger. Bathed in the rosy glow of retrospect, the birth of modern India and Pakistan has come to be regarded in the west as a great achievement, "the proudest day in Britain's history", as predicted by Lord Macauley in 1835. But how justified is the romantic popular image? Was Indian independence a noble gesture by a benevolent colonial power or was freedom wrested from the British by Indian nationalists after more than a quarter of a century of bitter struggle? "The Proudest Day" examines whether the winning of freedom in India was a triumph or a tragedy.
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The Proudest Day is an account of the end of the Raj, the most romantic of all the great empires. Anthony Read and David Fisher put the events of 1947 into perspective, telling the whole story in detail from its beginnings more than a century earlier. Their narrative takes a look at many of the events and personalities involved, especially the three charismatic giants - Ghandi, Nehru, and Jinnah - who dominated the final, increasingly bitter thirty years. Meanwhile, a succession of British politicians and viceroys veered wildly between liberalism and repression until the Raj became a powder keg, wanting only a match.
Anthony Read is the author of many books, most recently The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle. He lives in England.
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