Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jun 21, 2016 - History - 352 pages
At midnight on 14 August 1947, Britain’s 350-year-old Indian Empire was broken into three pieces. The greatest mass migration in history began, as Muslims fled north and Hindus fled south, and Britain’s role as an imperial power came to an end.

Patrick French’s vivid and surprising account of the chaotic final years of colonial rule in India has been acclaimed as the definitive book on this subject. Journeying across India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, he brings to life a cast of characters including spies, idealists freedom fighters, and politicians from Churchill to Gandhi. The result is a compelling story of deal-making, missed opportunities, hope, and tragedy.
 

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
INTRODUCTION
PARTI The Quest for Freedom
Two Men from Gujarat
The Force of Truth
Routes to Freedom
The March to the
A Half Nude Gent
The Struggle for Power
Do or
Blackmail and Terror
Living in a Golden
Dilli Chalo
A Mass Battle for Freedom
A Large Piece of Green Baize
Leave Her to Her Fate

The Limits of Government

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About the author (2016)

Patrick French was born in England in 1966 and studied literature at Edinburgh University. He is the author of Younghusband; Liberty or Death; Tibet, Tibet; and The World Is What It Is, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize. French is the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award. He died in 2023.

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