Monday, June 22, 2015

Freedom at Midnight: Eminently readable




Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre on New Delhi's Rajpath with the Rolls Royce car in which they travelled in India

FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Vikas Publishing House Private Limited, Delhi, 1976. Rs 45.

Guy de Maupassant once described history as "that excited and deceitful old woman". Another Frenchman, Dominique Lapierre, with an American collaborator, Larry Collins, has rejuvenated the venerable lady. In their work, :Freedom at Midnight,: history appears as a young voluptuous woman, although perhaps still excited and deceitful.

Lapierre, working for Paris Match, and Collins, reporting for Newsweek, came together in the gay city of Paris. It was the beginning of a great enterprise, destined to blossom into a multimillion dollar business in a short while. Their line of business is difficult to define. It is a three-way crossbreed of history, journalism and creative writing. Much as the pair would like their hybrid products to be accepted as works of history, the aristocracy of history is unlikely to welcome these half-castes with open arms.

The Collins-Lapierre undertaking's first product bore the title "Is Paris Burning?". It was followed by "Or I'll Dress You in Mourning". Then came "O Jerusalem". As the titles themselves suggest, their creators are imbued with a high sense of drama. The phenomenal success of the early works encouraged them to look out for new themes to tackle. Instinctively they sensed the dramatic possibilities of the events that swept the Indian subcontinent in the momentous forties. All the ingredients for a new masterpiece were present, readymade as it were: heroic characters, suspenseful moments, blood and thunder aplenty. Aided by a team of researchers, they began organizing the material. Once it was ready, they set down to distil it. And what a heady concoction they have produced!

The historian and the journalist share a common concern for facts and objectivity. The historian and the creative writer both attempt to create a world marked by order, logic and reason. The journalist and the creative writer both strive to produce material that can hold the reader's attention. If the crafts of the historian, the journalist and the creative writer have certain similar features, so have they certain dissimilar features. When the three are mixed, as in the works of Collins and Lapierre, controversy is inevitable.   

Since Collins and Lapierre have staked their claims as historians, the criticism levelled against their work in this regard needs to be examined. So sharp has been the attack on them by others who have written books of their own that one is reminded of the saying that "history is something that never happened, written by a man who wasn't there".

There are two types of historians: the eyewitness historian who participated in the events he narrates or at any rate watched them from close quarters and the technical historian who comes along much later and recaptures the events of the past. Strictly speaking, Collins and Lapierre do not fall into either category. They are creative historians attempting to combine the techniques of both: while drawing on eyewitness material (first, second and third -hand) they also try (to borrow the expression of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.) "to find interconnections and unities". If that makes their work suspect as history, it also adds to its charm.

While historians may consider Collins and Lapierre imposters, journalists have no reason to disown them. They spoke to about 500 Indians, Pakistanis and English men and women to get detailed accounts of the events they wished to write about. They travelled 250,000 kilometres. Within the subcontinent they covered no fewer than 10,000 kilometres. They delved into 6,000 pages of eyewitness accounts, listened to 800 hours of tapes, viewed 6,000 metres of film and scanned 1,000 photographs before producing the final manuscript. 

For journalists who did painstaking work for four years, they have committed innumerable errors. For instance, they mention William Hawkins as having come to India on the first voyage organized by the English East India Company. (He was on the third.) They say Jawaharlal Nehru was born in Srinagar. (He was born in Allahabad.) They describe Maniben Patel as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's only child. (She was one of his two children, the other being former Swatantra leader Dahyabhai Patel.) They characterize Tamil as a language that is written up and down. (It is written from left to right, like English and French.) Mistakes of this kind are legion. While they reveal carelessness, they do not affect the course of the narrative materially.

Indian critics have charged the authors with distorting facts. In considering this charge, it must be remembered that truth often has many versions. It is quite possible for different persons to give different versions of the same event in all honesty. We cannot also overlook the fact that the critics themselves are not disinterested parties. In relation to the Collins-Lapierre work, Indians (including their sources) fall into three categories: (1) those who have participated in the events they narrate; (2) those who imagine they participated in them; and (3) those who wish they had participated in them. While most persons in the first category are dead, many in the other two are alive and kicking. It is, therefore, natural that the authors should get a few kicks for their errors of commission and omission, some of them genuine, some not.

Collins and Lapierre are not the first to take upon themselves the task of telling the story of the triumph and tragedy of Indian nationalism. They differ from their predecessors chiefly in their freedom from the illusion that they had shaped the course of events. Happily they make no claims for themselves or for anyone else -- not even for their hero and Prince Charming, Louis Mountbatten. Indeed, the picture that emerges from their gripping narrative is  one of great forces shaping the course men rather than of great men shaping the course of events.

Creative writers cannot do without heroes -- and villains. Collins and Lapierre found so many of the former that they could pick and choose. Eventually they settled for two heroes rather than one: Mountbatten and Mohandas Gandhi. Others, like Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, were assigned supporting roles. Mohammad Ali Jinnah filled the bill as the villain.

They have glorified Gandhi in almost the same terms as we in India do. However, they have not seen Jinnah the way the Pakistanis do. As they put it, "The only thing Moslem about Mohammad Ali Jinnah was his parents' religion. He drank, ate pork, religiously shaved his beard each morning and just as religiously avoided the mosque each Friday. God and Koran had no place in Jinnah's vision of the world." Jinnah's transition from an ardent advocate of nationalism and secularism to the champion of Muslim nationhood is not delineated convincingly. The reported ban on the book in Pakistan is easy to understand since Jinnah is cast in the role of an Iago.

The authors' literary technique is noteworthy. The narrative is interspersed with innumerable anecdotes, some significant, some trivial, but all delightful. They are the spice which gives this literary fare its unique flavour.

Collins and Lapierre apparently wrote the book keeping in mind the cinematic possibilities. It reads very much like the scenario of a movie of epic proportions. It is bound to yield a film which is as great, as controversial and as successful as the book itself.

To those familiar with the events surrounding India's emergence into freedom the book offers precious little by way of new facts. What is new about it is the way the facts are presented and interpreted. On devoting a good deal of time to get a first-hand account from the surviving members of the Gandhi murder conspiracy, the authors have illuminated an area from which Indian writers have shied away. It is, however, open to question whether the unearthing of information like the alleged homosexual relationship between V.D. Savarkar and Nathuram Godse makes any worthwhile addition to our understanding of their motivations. Lapierre's explanation is that  they wanted to give an insight into the psychology of the assassins. Granting that such information can serve a useful purpose, the question still remains whether they exercised their judgment properly in relying upon the solitary testimony of Gopal Godse for their account of Nathuram's sex life. Was he his brother's keeper?

Howsoever much Collins and Lapierre may be criticized in India, they have rendered a service to India by focussing international attention on a decisive moment of its history. Despite the errors and distortions, the overall image of India that emerges from this book is a favourable one, and that should go some way to assuage the feelings of those who denounce it for seemingly patriotic reasons.

Whatever its faults, "Freedom at Midnight" is eminently readable. The reader can sit back and enjoy it thoroughly even when he knows nothing of the psychological make-up of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre and their sexual habits,

B.R.P. BHASKAR

This review appeared in the April 1976 issue of Indian Press,
published by the Indian and Eastern Newspaper Society.
              
               

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