Old and on Their Own

On the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan comes this riveting account of the end of the Raj, the most romantic of all the great empires. 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." 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. On paper, it could be remembered as an orderly retreat, a model of organization and civilized behavior; Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, described his breathtaking gallop to divide and quit as a personal triumph. But how justified are those extravagant claims? Anthony Read and David Fisher put the events of 1947 into perspective, telling 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.