At midnight on 14 August 1947, Britain finally granted independence to the peoples of India, without a single shot being fired in anger. Bathed in the rosy glow of retrospect, the birth of modern India and Pakistan has come to be regarded 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 a benevolent colonial power or was freedom wrested from the British by Indian nationalists after more than a quarter of a century of bitter struggle? "The Proudest Day" examines whether the winning of freedom in India was a triumph or a tragedy.
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