The proudest day - Anthony Read

At midnight on 14 August 1947, Britain finally granted independence to the peoples of India. Throughout the world, the end of the colonial era was in sight. India was the first great domino to fall, setting off a train of events that was so spread across Asia and Africa, culminat-ing in the collapse of th Soviet empire. The story of the winning of freedom by the peoples of the Indian empire is one of the great sagas of the twentieth century. Bathed in the rosy glow of retrospect, the birth of modern India and Pakistan has come to be guarded 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 abenevolent colonial power or was freedom wrested from the British by indian nationalists after more than a quarter of a century of bitter struggle? Was the result a triumph or a tragedy? The Proudest Day sets the record straight.