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NOV 22, 2024
nimishdubey
Nikkhil Advani;s Freedom at Midnight series has been grabbing a lot of attention on Sony LIV. And is also getting some extremely positive reviews. But heck, I am going to stick my neck out and say: read the book the show is based on, and give the show itself a miss.
My reason for this is simple - the book has way more depth and nuance than the series has (perhaps due to the constraints of the medium). Nehru was not as all over the place as the series portrays him and neither was Patel the semi superman he was made out to be. The truth is that Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, all had their strong and weak points and in the book, you see a fair number of both, without being coloured by screenplay or an actor's performance. In facr, that's my biggest problem with the series - the fact that an actor's performance can make or ruin a character.
This is not to say that the book was free of bias. Far from it. Collins and Lapierre gave us a very rosy portrayal of the Mountbattens and perhaps were a little too harsh with Patel (Mountbatten actually sees him as a bully) and Jinnah, but all said and done, they tried to balance matters out and delivered perhaps the most readable story of the final stages of India's battle for freedom. The best part is that they left the door open for the user to draw many conclusions - something the series does not do,. Yes, history purists might find the narration a little too dramatic, but Lapierre and Collins hold the readers' attention right through, and even sprinkle wit and humour in what is a generally grim narrative. The book shows you little known sides. - pleasant and otherwise - of popular figures, something the series fails to do (again, a constraint of the medium, we suspect.)
The most irritating part of the book is the authors' obsession with Mountbatten who is actually the main character of the book. However, what really makes the book special are its final chapters that cover the violence that exploded across the nation after partition - the sheer horror of the events has seldom been better captured in a non-ficiton work, You might already be seeing the series, or have seen it, but take it from me - read the book. It is very different from what you see on the screen. And immensely better.
