India@75: Tales of sacrifice, pain, and courage from the freedom struggle come alive in these 10 books

On the eve of India’s 75th anniversary of Independence, it is important to look back at the fight fought by millions of Indians to attain freedom and the story of her growth in the last seven-and-a-half decades.

Important incidents in India’s history, people revered as freedom fighters, and leaders who led the masses to freedom from the darkness of the British Raj are remembered for their sacrifices that may not be fully told in a thousand books.

However, we have tried to list 10 such books to summarise the freedom struggle, its heroes, and the 75 years lived as a free country:

Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

Freedom at Midnight is perhaps the most comprehensive work that puts in many details the circumstances of India’s independence and the Partition starting from the appointment of Lord Mountbatten as the last viceroy and ending with the death and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi.

The book centers around major and minor figures and incidents relating to the process of independence, including Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s negotiations with the kings and princes of the several princely states, the division of assets between India and Pakistan from furniture to the smallest of cutleries that was rigorously documented at the time, the aftermath of partition and Mahatma Gandhi’s attempts and successes at keeping peace among different communities.

Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha

Historian Ramachandra Guha has profiled 19 Indians whose ideas had a defining impact on the formation and evolution of India as a republic. Guha has collected rare and compelling excerpts from their writings and speeches.

Profiles of luminaries such as Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rammohan Roy, Jotirao Phule, Tarabai Shinde, BR Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, C Rajagopalachari and Hamid Dalwai among others make for a compelling read for those who want to know the people behind the names who made India.

Their writings take us from the subcontinent’s first engagement with modernity in the 19th century, through the successive phases of the freedom movement, and through the decades after Independence. The topics they explore and analyse include religion, caste, gender, language, nationalism, colonialism, democracy, secularism and the economy-that is to say, all that is significant in the human condition.

India’s Struggle for Freedom by Bipan Chandra et al

India’s Struggle for Freedom by some of the most prominent modern historians is perhaps among the most reliable studies of the freedom struggle. This classic work begins with the abortive revolt against the British in 1857 and culminates in Indian Independence in 1947. Based on years of research as well as personal interviews with hundreds of freedom fighters, it presents a lucid and enduring view of the history of the period.

The book is often referred to by UPSC aspirants as source material for episodes of historic importance in India’s freedom struggle, including the revolt of 1857, the swadeshi movement of 1903-08, MK Gandhi’s early career and activism, the non-cooperation movement in 1920 and freedom and partition.

His Majesty's Opponent by Sugata Bose

Countless books have been written about the man, myth and legend who was Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. While some come close to deciphering the complex man behind the nationalist who played a pivotal role in India’s freedom struggle, most graze past the giant reality relying on the legends created around Bose.

In his biography, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire, Bose's grand-nephew and Harvard professor Sugata Bose writes that Netaji was too complex to fit into any simple box.

One of the most definitive and comprehensive biographies of Bose analyses the revolutionary freedom fighter's life and legacy, tracing the intellectual impact of his years in Calcutta and Cambridge, the ideas and relationships that influenced him during his time in exile and his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics.

The book clears through the clutter and presents readers with the man behind the legend through previously unpublished family archives.

Collection of partition stories by Saadat Hasan Manto

Saadat Hasan Manto was one author who penned the horrors of Partition on paper in a form without precedence and no match since. His stories like Kali Salwar, Toba Tek Singh, Thanda Gosht, Buu, and Khol Do among several others are essential reads to understand the reality of perhaps the darkest time in India and Pakistan’s collective history.

Manto leaves an indelible mark on the reader’s conscience with his unapologetic direct approach to the subjects that lived in every person who was part of the Partition. His characters and the pathos of his stories were as real as the horrors that unravelled on both sides of the border.

The day that is mostly associated with freedom from British Raj has an underlying history of pain, loss, death and unimaginable human tragedies. Manto’s stories are a reminder of the price people had to pay to become ‘free’ on their own land.

Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

It is rare in the modern world for a work of fiction to become a legend and be treated as a historical fact. Such is the story of Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh. Singh lived through the horrors of the partition to tell the tale of Mano Majra, a fictional village on the border of India and Pakistan.

Unlike several other writings of the time on the subject, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan digs deeper into the human dimension of the tragedies that unfolded. In the relatively thin book, Khushwant Singh has examined the various groups of people in the village from a cultural and social point of view of the time.

While most works of the time look at the politics of religion and socio-economic divide, Train to Pakistan provides the reader with a more individualistic understanding of the event.

India Divided by Rajendra Prasad

India Divided by India’s first President gives a detailed and authoritative account of the partition. With insights into the many causes and effects of the partition in India into Hindu and Muslim sections, India Divided deals with the two-nation theory, the causes of the communal triangle, the many different schemes of partition, the resources of the state of Pakistan, the alternatives to Pakistan and the All-India Muslim League Resolution on Pakistan.

The division of India into two nations has been a complex subject and remains so to this day. The book gives an exhaustive account by the author who was an integral part of the freedom struggle.

An Era of Darkness by Shashi Tharoor

Before understanding the importance of India’s independence and truly valuing it, it is important to look at the reasons why India needed independence.

Long before India started fighting for freedom and eventually achieved it, the reason for the struggle, British Raj, had already spread its reign of darkness across the land. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s An Era of Darkness looks at the nearly 300 years of British rule on India through a microscopic lens in an unforgiving narrative.

Tharoor reveals with acuity and impeccable research how disastrous British rule was for India. Besides examining the many ways in which the colonisers exploited India, ranging from the drain of national resources to Britain, the destruction of the Indian textile, steel-making and shipping industries, and the negative transformation of agriculture, the book demolishes the arguments of Western and Indian apologists for Empire on the supposed benefits of British rule, including democracy and political freedom, the rule of law, and the railways.

An Era of Darkness corrects many misconceptions about one of the darkest periods in India’s history.

India Unbound by Gurcharan Das

India Unbound: From Independence to Global Information Age by Gurcharan Das is an account of India's economic journey after its independence in 1947.

Das has traced India’s economic trajectory from his birth in 1942 until 1999 through three different timelines: Spring of Hope (1942–65), The Lost Generation (1966–91) & Rebirth of Dream (1991–99).

In an interesting mixture of memoir, economic analysis, social commentary, political opinion and managerial outlook, Das puts forth a book both conversational and knowledgeable to the least interested of readers and binds them to it.

India Unbound is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Defining and exploring the new mindset of the nation, the book is the perfect introduction to contemporary India.

Without Fear by Kuldip Nayar

One of the several books written by journalist-author Kuldip Nayar dwelled upon the life and trials of India’s fiery freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. Nayar writes of Bhagat Singh at a time when India’s freedom struggle was beginning to flag and Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent, passive resistance to partial liberation was beginning to test the patience of the people.

In Without Fear, Nayar takes a close look at the man behind the martyr: his beliefs, his intellectual leanings, his dreams and his despair. The book throws light at some of the closest persons to Bhagat Singh and why they behaved the way they behaved, including the betrayal of Hans Raj Vohra.

The book puts in perspective Bhagat Singh’s use of violence, so strongly condemned by Gandhi and many others as being extremist. It makes for an essential read for those who have been inspired, at some or other point in their lives, by the image of the young man in a tilted hat.

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