The Proudest Day-India's Long Road To Independence

Anthony Read And David Fisher

ISBN 10: 0224039563 / ISBN 13: 9780224039567

Edité par Jonathan Cape, London, UK, 1997

A propos de cet article

Good Condition hard cover 565 pages.

N° de réf. du vendeur 038075

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Proudest Day-India's Long Road To Independence
• Éditeur: Jonathan Cape, London, UK
• Date de parution: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0224039563
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780224039567
• Reliure: Hardcover
• État de l'article: Good
• État de la jaquette: Good

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

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.

Présentation de l'éditeur

In 1835, Lord Macaulay, in his Minute on Indian Education, had prophesied that the eventual self-rule of India would be "the proudest day in British history." And yet when independence came on the stroke of midnight of August 14, 1947, events unfolded with a violence that shocked the world: entire trainloads of Muslim and Hindu refugees were slaughtered on their flight to safety -- not by the British, but by each other. Macaulay's dream had become a flawed and bloody reality. The Proudest Day is a riveting account of the end of the Raj, the most romantic of all the great empires. Anthony Read and David Fisher tell the whole epic story in compelling and colorful detail from its beginnings more than a century earlier; their powerful narrative takes a fresh look at many of the events and personalities involved, especially the three charismatic giants --Gandhi, 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.