The Proudest Day: India's Long Road to Independence

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 07/01/1999
ISBN: 9780393318982
Pages: 608
Weight: 1.59lbs
Size: 9.31h x 6.21w x 1.04d

Review Citations: Ingram Advance 07/01/1999 pg. 46