Freedom at Midnight - A complex historical period in motion (Part1)

The last few months leading up to Indian independence - well, this was a highly complicated piece of history. 

At the onset, let me tell you a few things -

• I am a student of history, but I have never managed to "learn" history seriously. That means, I know the episodes, I have studied about them in school and high-school, but due to my science background, I never got an opportunity to zoom into the episodes.
• For sure, Indian independence movement has fascinated me over all my formative years and it still does. I am of the opinion that no matter how deep we go into this topic - especially the period starting early 1900 to 1947, or even until 1950 - we will never manage to get the insights and details into every incident that took place during that time.

With these known limitations on my mind, I started watching the elaborated series "Freedom at Midnight". The series is based on a book written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre and is a documentary and dramatization of events leading up to the sacred date of 15th August 1947, when India finally got its independence.

Why do I say that this was a complex period?

• The main leaders of the freedom movement were all centred around Gandhi. Gandhi was the focus and there were 5 extraordinary people in his close coterie. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Achrya Kripalani - these were not just names, these were giants of intellectualism, knowledge and political acumen. Now, having talent means also having towering personality and clash of ideas. They did have this, there were conflicts, time and again. How the conflicts were resolved is a matter of another post some day. But most essentially, even though they conflicted, they were never personally attacking each other. There was respect, sophistication and occasional humour alongside the ideological differences.

• The events were difficult to handle. A foreign rule coming to a closure, a divided society being pulled into multiple direction, a modus of operation which was constantly being doubted - these were bound to raise problems for the leadership and the common people. It did. Every single day was an event, every move of the prime parties was under scanner and every decision being taken was debated.

• Lastly, it was also the time that India was down to her knees, primarily on the economic front. There was almost no capital left in the country, except for, perhaps the human capital. That too, only in concentrated areas of the country. People were starving on the ground, had lost almost every saving and reeling under the fear of losing their last belongings. The human capital, in the form of knowledge, was the only tool to get her out of trouble. When we had many intellectuals, also from the civil society and from the commoners, it was bound to create ideas, sometimes at odds with one another. Followers of Babasaheb Ambedkar might not agree with those of Mahatma Gandhi. Even a philosopher like Rabindranath Tagore might not agree with the concept of passive resistance.

All these contradictions, inner conflicts and rumblings were greatly captured on the screen in this series. There were countless moments and scenarios that perfectly captured the nuanced differences between the stalwarts -

• Muhammad Ali Jinnah felt traumatized to leave his home in India.
• Pandit Nehru had a confrontation with Sardar Patel on the topic of handling of Kashmir issue.
• Maulana Azad was unwilling to agree to some proposals from Congress Party.

What I would have liked to witness would have been -

• References to Netaji Bose and his contribution during these turmoil period.
• Views of another stalwart like Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan (who was also fondly remembered as Frontier Gandhi) during the phase when decision about Partition was taken.
• How Lord Mountbatten would have felt stepping into his role, as a liberal, open-minded administrator, when most of his predecessors had grossly failed to understand the ethos of India.

[to be continued]