All language subtitles for The Story of India 6of6 Freedom

WOOD: There are times
in the life of a civilisation

when history seems to burst
with possibilities.

That's India in the 2 1 st century.

This is the tale
of the British occupation of India,

the winning of freedom
and the establishment of democracy,

and with them all the possibilities
of a hitherto undreamed of future.

What do you want to be
when you grow up and leave the school?

When I grow up
I will be a commercial pilot.

Commercial pilot?

-Doctor.
-WOOD: A doctor.

I want to be a captain in the navy.

-A captain in the navy?
-Yes.

Archaeologist!

-An archaeologist?
-Yeah!

-Fantastic.
-I want to be a movie director.

(LAUGHING) A movie director! Fantastic.

The next chapter in the story of India.

The coast of South India.

In the 1 8th century,
the British thought this

the richest place in the world.

And here a chain of events began

that would lead to a small island
5,000 miles away

coming to rule a vast empire in India,

and in the process,
giving birth to the modern world.

The tale of India's last invader,
the British, is a chain of accidents.

As so often in history,

events that need never have happened
in the way that they did,

except perhaps for some destiny
written deep in India's own past.

Here in Tanjore
in the late 1 8th century,

the armies
of the British East India Company

imposed their rule on a civilisation
that had come down from ancient times,

still with own distinctive vision
of the world.

At that time, while the Moghuls
still ruled in the north,

South India was divided
between many princely states,

but history was on the move.

The 1 8th century rajas of Tanjore,
men like Serfoji,

were importing European knowledge.

And in their library here,
along with 50,000 Indian manuscripts,

are books in English, French,
Italian and Latin.

MAN: They are both on palm leaf
and paper. 25,000 in paper...

Even without the British,

India would still have taken
the path to modernity.

WOOD: Wow, fantastic.

So he was interested in

-combining Indian and European?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's fascinating.

Samuel Johnson's dictionary.

(CHUCKLING)
Samuel Johnson's dictionary. Fantastic.

The first great dictionary
of the English language,

and here it is in the court
of 1 8th century Tanjore.

The very moment of the British
taking over in India, this kind of,

almost like a renaissance culture
is taking place.

This library, when you think about it,

is as old as
the Bodleian Library in Oxford,

older by far than any library
in the United States.

And maybe that's the hallmark
of all great civilisations,

that they have the ability
to conserve their own genius,

but to bring in the discoveries
of other civilisations

and incorporate them, and India has
always had the ability to do that,

just as it does today.

So these are medical textbooks
from Europe?

365 medical books,

collected from London,
printed in London and Edinburgh.

The present raja told me
more about his ancestor, Serfoji.

He had a very deep
interest in medicine also.

You can see here...
Even it's fascinating to know

that he has imported
a human skeleton from London.

He want his doctors to be taught
about the anatomy.

He was beyond times.

He knew what's going around the world.

He was into...
He's a polyglot and polymath.

-So...
-He spoke English, I gather?

He spoke several languages.

So all this time, Tanjore was under the
rule of the British, is that correct?

Yeah. Actually, what happened,
he had to...

He was forced to undergo
a treaty with the British

from 1 798 onwards,

he was relieved of his powers
from maintaining his territory.

These events were all part
of the global confrontation

between the British and the French
in the 1 8th century.

With Mogul power shrinking
in North India,

the south became
the theatre of war for the Europeans.

The same year General Wolfe
lay dying in Quebec,

the British and the French were fighting
along the Coromandel Coast,

and the Tamils
found themselves in the line of fire.

The key to the nascent British Empire
was the new fort of Madras.

WOMAN: This was
the beginning of the Empire because

this is here where they first decided
that they'll have a fort of their own.

A place, a trading station of their own.

When the British first came
and landed only at Surat,

and when they were not able to compete

either with the Dutch or the Portuguese
on the western coast,

they shifted towards the east.

They came to Pulicat,
from Pulicat they shifted to Armagon.

From Armagon they came to Madras.

And this is where they found
what they wanted.

Right. So what were they trading
first of all here in South India?

They were trading here
only muslin cloth.

Muslin cloth? At that time
this was a peaceful exchange?

Yeah, that time it was peaceful.
By about 1 650, 1 660,

the Dutch, the Danish,
the Portuguese, all of them

become subservient to the powers
of the British and the French.

Now, these are European powers
competing for empire internationally,

but here in South India this becomes
a focus for their rivalries.

Every time there is some sort of
a difference of opinion

or altercation in Europe
between the French and the English,

what shall we say,
that is very clearly reflected

in the South India also.

WOOD: It was a time of war

as European armies trekked
back and forth across South India.

In the towns of the old Cholan heartland
the dead lay unburied in the streets.

The great Tamil temple enclosures
were turned into forts and prison camps,

as columns of famine-stricken refugees
fled the fighting.

When you read British accounts
of these wars in the late 1 8th century,

you get, actually,
a very horrifying impression

of armies of British and French
criss-crossing the Tamil land.

Terrible massacres are taking place
of the kind that we see today

-in Darfur or Iraq almost.
-Yes, yes.

I mean, thousands of Tamils were killed.

It must have been a terrible time
in the south.

It must have been.
The first form of uprising

starts only in this part of the country.

The first uprising against the British.

Against the British.
Of course, it's all local.

It is not, you know,
it's nothing organised.

I won't call it a fight for freedom,
but they are rebelling

against certain norms
which have been forced upon them.

The British victory in South India
came in 1 799

at the Battle of Seringapatam,

where an East India Company army
overwhelmed the Muslim Sultan of Mysore.

And back in London
in the British Library,

the archive of the East India Company
reveals the secret story

in the letters of the British commander,
Richard Wellesley,

the Governor General of India.

Here even written in cipher.

Here's the crucial part.

''Seringapatam I shall retain
in full sovereignty for the company,

''being a tower of strength
from which we may at any time

''strike Hindustan to its centre.''

And he adds, ''I shall not
at present enlarge upon the advantages

''which are likely to be derived
to the British interests from this,

''for they are too obvious
to require any detailed explanation.''

But for the company, the war
was not just about power but profit.

And also in the archive here,
the profit and loss,

the balance sheets
of the East India Company.

This was what it was all about.

The crucial turning point
in the finances of the company,

1 799, after the great battles
in South India at Seringapatam.

Company revenues,
eight and a half million pounds.

Four years later, 1 803,
thirteen and a half million pounds.

That's getting on for
three quarters of a billion pounds

in modern spending money.

Previous invaders of India
had come by land through the Khyber Pass

but the British came by sea,
establishing bases around the coast.

And in Bengal, the British had extorted
the right to raise taxes

from the enfeebled Moghuls.

And here in Calcutta, they began
to develop a classic colonial economy.

Sailing into Calcutta
in the 1 8th century

you were entering
the hub of an operation

which spread its power and influence
across half the world.

Opium being processed here in warehouses
to be sailed off to China.

Textiles being processed to go into
northern India and across to Europe.

A network that controlled

hundreds of thousands of skilled
workers, weavers, dyers and washers.

The forerunner of
those modern multinationals,

who, backed by state power,
make their billions

and wield power of life and death
over great swathes of the world.

In later times, the British
liked to say, disingenuously,

that they'd gained their empire
in a fit of absent-mindedness.

But there was nothing absent-minded

about the ruthless way
they pursued the imperative of profit.

And in the late 1 8th century,

driven by the Industrial Revolution
back in Britain,

Bengal became a mainstay
of British imperialism.

The magnificent
1 8th century cemetery in Calcutta

tells another side of the story.

Many of the British here,
some of them all too short-lived,

fell in love with India.

A third of all the British men
who came to work for the company

married Indian women and left money
and property to their beloved bibis.

Why are you going to the trouble

of conserving something
from the British past?

Because it is our moral duty,
not only just to revive its own glory,

but to provide, too,
so that people can come here,

and have a look and enjoy.

BANDOPADHYAY: How can you
ignore it? It is a part of history.

-WOOD: Relevant to India today?
-Yeah, relevant to India, you can see.

The British also gave us
a complete map of India.

The Britishers gave you
a complete map of India?

Map of India. United, a complete map.

Prior to the Britishers,
what happened, actually,

India was divided into several
small countries, different like that.

-They are all united.
-So, do you think

without the British, India may never
have been united as India?

Yeah, that is true 1 00%.
I fully agree with you.

(LAUGHING) Really?

You're making me feel better

-about being an imperialist!
-No, it's absolutely correct.

And that map was
not only physical but mental,

an idea of India.

For it was the British who began
the recovery of the ancient Indian past.

Orientalists like James Prinsep
and William Jones

learned India's languages.

''I love India more than my
own country, ''said Warren Hastings.

They founded the Asiatic Society here,
conscious that India was a far older

and richer civilisation than their own.

And as one of them said,
''Wealth is not the only

''or the most valuable commodity India
has to offer Britain

''and the world. ''

MAN: The early orientalists
who came to India,

they wanted to know what was
happening in this new place.

William Jones, Hestrie Colebrook
and a whole host of others,

they took India seriously.

So they went,
sat with the Brahmin pundits

and tried to understand
Sanskritic texts and so on.

PANDIAN: People are, you know,
nostalgically looking back

to a world which they have lost.

To look for the lost world in the East.

-And they found it in India?
-They found it in India.

WOOD: Some East India Company officers

were accused of thinking more
of Hinduism than Christianity

and more of the Koran than the Bible.

There's even a tomb in Park Street
Cemetery covered with Hindu deities.

It's the tomb of
one of the most interesting characters

from British India,

Major General Charles Stuart.

His love of things Indian earned him
the nickname ''Hindoo'' Stuart.

He was here for 50 years,

used to go down to the Ganges
to bathe every day,

wore Indian clothes off-duty
and even worshipped Hindu gods.

Perhaps his most characteristic
attempt at cross-cultural dialogue

was to try to persuade
the British ladies of Calcutta,

the memsahibs,
to throw off their whalebone corsets

and their iron dress hoops
and wear the sari.

''The sari, '' wrote Stuart,
''is the most alluring dress in the world

''and the women of Hindustan
enchanting in their beauty. ''

In his book,
The Vindication of the Hindoos,

Stuart spoke of the greatness
of Indian civilisation

and the need for the British
to understand it.

''Hinduism, ''said Stuart,

''little needs the ameliorating hand
of Christianity to render its votaries

''a correct and moral people
in a civilised society. ''

''On the contrary, ''he said,
''the glorious scriptures of the Hindus

''were written when our own ancestors
were savages in the forests. ''

The British were particularly attracted

to the mixed Hindu-Muslim
culture in the Ganges Plain,

a legacy of the days
of the great Moghuls like Akbar

who had tried to bring
the two communities together.

WOOD: Oh, wow! They're so...

Oh, look at this.
So what are these documents?

(SPEAKING HINDI)

WOOD: This is for Hanuman Ghari?

-Yes, yes.
-And this is the seal of the nawab?

These are the documents
for Muslim nawabs of Ayodhya

giving their resources
to building a Hindu temple.

In the Middle Ages,
relations between Hindus and Muslims

had often been marred by
the intolerant attitudes

of some Muslim rulers.

But accommodation under the later
Moghuls gave birth to the most seductive

and charismatic of all
Indian civilisations

in Lucknow under the Muslim nawabs.

And that time is still fondly remembered
in the old aristocratic houses.

-Ah, so the family portraits.
-Yes.

So, this is magnificent.
Who is this here?

This is my great-grandfather,

Amirudaula Raja, Sir.

-Raja but Sir.
-Sir, yes.

-So he was knighted by...
-Knighted by Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria! Fantastic.

This is me.

WOOD: With a beautiful ceremonial crown.
KHAN: Rubies, emeralds, diamonds.

People talk about
the culture of Lucknow,

especially the 1 8th-century period,
don't they,

as being an extraordinary period
in Indian history.

Why is that?

-What does that mean?
-That is...

Right.

So, at that time
the two cultures here intermingled?

Intermingled.

That high culture
of Urdu literature and poetry

has left its legacy across
North India and Pakistan.

And in the food, too,
which has spread across the whole world.

''The fast results in more eating.''
That's great.

Verdict on the biryani then, everybody?

-WOMAN: He won.
-(LAUGHING) We won.

But everything would be changed
by the great rebellion of 1 857.

The signs had been there
the previous 30 years.

The British more intolerant

under the growing influence
of evangelical Christian missionaries.

A decree replacing Persian with English

as the language
of administration and education.

The mutiny began over the use of cow
and pig fat to grease cartridges,

deeply offensive to both
Hindu and Muslim.

It was a stupid mistake born of
disrespect towards the native culture.

But it provoked a terrifying uprising
by the sepoys,

the native troops
employed by the British.

This was the mosque from where,

in the leadership
of Maulana Fazl-e Haq Khairabadi,

around 350 alims,

ulemas, Islamic scholars, gave the fatwa

of jihad against
the British rulers in India.

-Hindu and Muslim joined together.
-Together.

All communities came together

and I think it was
the golden period of India.

All the communities,
without any differences,

they were Indians at that time.

They were following their religions
but they were fighting for one cause,

to get the freedom of India.

Through the sweltering summer of 1 857,

the edifice of British power tottered

in what the British called
the Indian Mutiny.

It was the greatest war of resistance
ever fought against a colonial power

in the whole age
of European imperialism.

And new discoveries
in the archives in Delhi

reveal the story from the rebels' side

and their anger at the attitude
of the new breed of British officials.

They are denigrating
traditional forms of performance,

they're denigrating traditional texts,
they're denigrating traditional poetry.

So there is a hectoring,
interrogating machine

that has been set in motion 20, 25 years
before the uprising happens.

Otherwise we just can't make sense
of the rage that bursts forth.

And what's interesting about 1 857

is that, certainly in Delhi, in
the documents we've been studying here

over the last three years,
is that the expression

of resistance in Delhi
is done in religious terms.

The British are the people
who destroy all religions.

What has happened to Aragon...

WOOD: The rebel leaders, like
the Rani of Jhansi, who died fighting

became national heroes.

To get at them,
I have to blow up the temples.

Then blow them up.
Our country above our religion.

There is a violence that bursts forth
in a turbulent wave,

which totally takes the English
by surprise.

-No prisoners are taken.
-They are completely shocked by

the kind of violence
that is manifested by the sepoys.

And the British respond
in kind and worse.

And they level whole cities. Delhi,
which is a city of 1 00,000 people,

which contains around 250,000 people
at the time the British attack it,

refugees and the sepoys and so on,

is left a completely empty ruin.

There is not a single human being
left in the city

by the time
the British are finished with it.

For the British,
the most evocative place in the story

was Lucknow, scene of the heroic defence
of their residency.

After the victory,journalists
picked their way over the ruins

using the new art of photography
to record the destruction.

Though some shots of the damage
and cruelty inflicted by the British

in their frenzy of revenge
were not published at the time.

In the immediate aftermath
of the great rebellion of 1 857-8,

European photographer, Felice Beato,

took an amazing top shot
of the whole city.

It's just laid out here before us,

the great Imambara with the minarets.

In the middle of the panorama
you can see

the mosque of Aurangzeb
by the river there,

painted white now.

A British cavalry regiment

camped just down there in the courtyard
with their tents,

their horses grazing. And, in fact,
you can just see their washing

by the side of the road
on a washing line.

Those look like long johns to me.

''We have power of life and death
in our hands, ''

wrote one British officer,
''and I assure you we spare not. ''

Writing for the New York Daily Tribune,

Karl Marx railed against
the failure of the British press

to cover British atrocities.

''The cruelty of the sepoys, ''he said,

''is only the reflex
of England's own conduct in India.

''The European troops
have become fiends. ''

DALRYMPLE: In real history,
things do not have sharp endings.

Normally periods flood into each other.

But 1 857 is a very clear
open-and-shut case.

1 857 the East India Company ends,
the Moghuls end.

The two principle forces
that have guided Indian history

for the past 300 years
come to an abrupt end.

And immediately,
you get the British Government

imposing direct rule from London.

Very soon after this, Disraeli goes
to Queen Victoria and says,

''Will you be Empress of India?''

This is the Grand Trunk Road
coming northwards from Kanpur.

We're looking for one of
the most extraordinary stories

in the aftermath of 1 857.

And the person who knows more about it
than anyone alive

is an Indian scholar who comes
from a village just up the road.

We've arranged to meet at a place
where there's a brick kiln and a temple,

and he'll be wearing
a red Himalayan shawl.

Brick kilns coming up over there.

WOOD: A red Himalayan hat.
I didn't hear him right.

(WOOD LAUGHING)

Welcome. Nice to meet you.

WOOD: Very nice to meet you.

This is Jeremy and Callum.
So we've made it, fantastic.

Now, look,
I will have to take you to Bareh.

The Raja is insistent.

You can't have a picture
with only the collaborators.

(LAUGHING)

You must have a real, real rebel.
Thank you very much.

People still think about it
as collaborators, do they?

I am not, you know.

-One hundred and fifty years?
-I don't feel guilty about it.

-Come.
-Okay.

(TRUCK HONKING)

Don't get run over.
We haven't done the interview yet!

Sriram is the historian
of the Indian National Congress,

the freedom movement
that arose out of the struggles of 1 857.

That's the ancestral house.

-Your house?
-Yes.

Oh, wow.

But like everyone in India,
he has his own stake in the story.

His ancestors sided with the British,
believing in their order, their future.

This is gonna... Unstoppable, isn't he?

-WOOD: This is the fort?
-Yes.

-So this fort was your ancestors' fort?
-Yes.

So are you officially still a raja?

(LAUGHING) Oh, no. Rajas over now.

Rajas are over?

An hour or so out into the countryside,

we reached Bareh.

The descendants of the collaborator
and the resister and the oppressor.

Wow, that's impressive, isn't it?

What was this here?

-The ladies' apartment.
-The ladies' apartment?

Fantastic, isn't it?

And this is what they were fighting for.

That's India which you
can call eternal, the unchanging.

So what happened here in 1 857?

You were the rebels?

-First War of Independence...
-Yes.

...they call it now, don't they?

-These were the local rebel commanders?
-Yes.

-Oh, of Jhansi?
-Yes, yes.

She was the heroine,
the Joan of Arc of the resistance.

Yeah?

Nana's coming! Nana's coming!

It was Nana who attacked Lucknow.

So these were the greatest
of the rebel leaders.

So your family were committed
to fighting against the British?

-Yes.
-Yeah.

And what happened here?

And here in Bareh,

in the baking summer heat
of the Jumna plain,

a long way into my journey
in search of the story of India,

I felt enveloped by
the greatness of Indian history,

by those terrible events 1 50 years ago

that seemed to have
only happened yesterday.

The two of you represent two

-different Indian views...
-Two different aspects of...

...of all these great events,
these great events.

I am not ashamed of the fact

that my ancestors cooperated
with the British.

Situated as they were
and being educated,

they knew the might
and the resources of the British.

WOOD: Your view is different.

It was a matter of honour.
We have nothing to lose, we fight.

WOOD: Your father
was a rebel with Gandhi?

-WOOD: He joined Gandhi.
-Yes.

Right, right.

So the freedom struggle's
rooted in your family?

And to see how the freedom struggle
came out of the mutiny,

you need first to come back
to the district capital, Etawah.

Because here lived
one of the key figures

in the beginning
of the freedom movement.

And believe it or not,
he was a British civil servant.

He built this school.

AO Hume fought here against the rebels

but then began to speak out
for Indian self-determination.

He believed in the power
of imperialism to do good,

I suppose you could put it that way?

He was rather a kind of an,

what should I say,
a cultural imperialist.

Hume helped start
the independence movement

by bringing together
the best young Indians

to form the Indian National Congress.

That's him in the middle.

His is one of the great
untold Indian stories.

In fact, Sriram thinks that Hume
is almost as important as Gandhi.

It was Hume's personality,
his organising skill

and his devotion to the cause of India.

It was their duty as trustees
of the Indian Empire

to prepare the people of this country

to take the destiny of their country
in their own hands.

So that's what Hume thought
the British should work towards?

This is what the British
should work towards.

And when they are ready
for self-government,

to hand over their trust to them
and to retire from this country,

because if they retire
after doing this much,

they would have done two things.

First, you have trained a people
in self-government,

and second, to have ensured
that their own commerce

and culture would continue.

The first meeting of the Congress,
Bombay, 1 885.

In the centre, the only white man,
Hume, the rebel in the Raj.

The Indian people now had a voice.

In the 1 880s,
they also gained a free press

when the British
lifted their restrictions

and a flood of hundreds
of papers hit the stands,

mainly vernacular ones
which the British couldn't control.

The British period would be brief,
a blip in the story of India.

But the Raj would see the birth
of the idea of India as one nation,

unified as much by the idea as by
the railways, maps and communications.

Right, so we're going to the offices

of one of the oldest Indian newspapers,
The Pioneer,

started in Allahabad
more than 1 40 years ago.

The writer Rudyard Kipling,
who was born in India,

wrote forThe Pioneer,
which then opposed the freedom movement.

...Peshawar.
They had their own printing press?

MAN: Yeah, it was that linographic and
that metapress we had in those days.

So an international perspective here.

The Kabul Conference,

the British bothered about what the
Russians are doing in their backyard.

The British Raj was
one of the most ingenious

and adaptive Empires in history.

An immense patchwork embracing nearly
a quarter of the people of the planet

with 675 princely states,

two them the size
of large European countries.

An arrangement so extraordinary

that it's scarcely believable
that it existed on the ground.

But it did.

Oh, fantastic. Hello.

And this is the archive
of British India.

MAN: Yeah. This building
was constructed by the British people.

WOOD: Amazing.

So it contains
all the government records?

-Yes, this is all government records.
-Just look at this!

But imperialism is never benign.

MAN: We have 30 kilometres of records.

-Thirty kilometres?
-Yes, here in this building.

And in addition to this building,
then in the next building we have

another 40 kilometres of records.

WOOD: So 70 kilometres of documents.
MAN: Yes?

-In total we have 70 kilometres.
-My goodness me.

This is the social history of India,
isn't it?

WOOD: For such forms of knowledge
are never neutral.

WOMAN: By the middle of
the 1 9th century,

the nature of colonialism in India
is changing.

From a relatively benign,

what we call orientalist phase
of colonialism,

this is now an arrogant Britain,

the first country of the
Industrial Revolution ruling the world.

And then from the 1 850s,
the competition worldwide for colonies.

Other countries are coming up
and competing for colonies.

So, therefore, there's a great need
to have a very systematic

ordering of people's lives.

The information and everything
related to them.

And how did they set about it in terms
of defining the people of India?

Well, apart from just enumerating
the population,

I think the crucial issue
is how you enumerate,

what are the categories you employ?

And I think it's extremely important
to remember

that right from the beginning,
religion was the one dominant category

which entered all other categories.

This is the report which is preparing
for the first census of 1 881 ,

and the first item in this
is about religion.

And once you begin counting people
according to their religious origin,

then when politics comes in,

religion then becomes
a religious community.

At the turn of the century,
for example, in 1 909,

there was a big debate

that started that Hindus
were actually going to disappear

because, in fact, one of the census
commissioners of Bengal made a statement

that if the Muslims
continue to grow at this rate,

Hindus will disappear.

And then some Hindus took it up
and said, ''Hindu's a dying race.''

Similarly, the Muslims.
When they took their first delegation,

out of which the Muslim League
was formed,

and they went to see
the Viceroy, they said,

''We number so much,
we are outnumbered by the Hindus.

''If you are going to have
a representative system

''which is based on majorities
principle of election,

''we are never going to be there.''
Because ''we'' now means Muslims.

The implication of that seems to be

that by defining an Indian people
in this way,

the British set a path

for the way that Indians would construe
their path to independence.

Absolutely right. And we are still
living with that legacy,

we're struggling with it,
we fall victim to it,

we resist it, but it is still with us.

WOOD: Subjects of the greatest empire
the world had ever seen,

the Indian people were drawn into
Britain's world conflicts.

In the First World War,
Indians fought for the King Emperor

in the trenches of Flanders
and the deserts of Iraq.

But when the war was over,
the freedom movement,

led by the Congress Party
and the Muslim League,

who now represented a Muslim electorate,
were expecting a payoff.

More than two million Indians
had fought in the war

on behalf of the British,
thousands had been killed.

But still there was
a loyalty to Britain,

despite a strong home-rule movement.

But the British rewarded that loyalty

by imposing the wartime sedition laws
in peacetime.

No trial, no lawyer, no appeal.

Only months after the end of the war,

a peaceful demonstration took place
in the Punjab

in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar.

The callous ineptitude
of the British General Dyer

would make Amritsar a notorious name
in the history of Britain and India.

OFFICER: Take aim!

-Fire!
-Fire!

Take your time!

They come here from this passage,

this was the only entry or exit.

They put the guns here,
open fire on the public.

-WOOD: So there was no warning?
-No warning.

-How big was the crowd?
-About 20,000 people had gathered there.

Twenty thousand!

At least 400 people were killed
that day and 1,500 injured.

Did you have family members
present that day?

My grandfather, Dr SC Mukherjee,
he was present on that happening,

but luckily escaped.

And since then
we are looking after this here.

On such moments, history can turn.

The Amritsar massacre gave
an irresistible impetuous

to the freedom movement.

The main players were
all British-educated lawyers.

The canny Mohandas KGandhi,

the brilliant Mohammed Jinnah
of the Muslim League

and Jawaharlal Nehru,
the austere star of Congress.

Together, they were to plan
one of history's greatest revolutions,

driven by the ancient Indian idea
of non-violence.

They were great times
and rare times and unique times,

I always think.

And I'm glad that I lived
almost through all these times.

Aged 95,
PD Tandon has died since we met.

He was an old Nehru family friend,
a freedom fighter in the 1 930s and '40s.

So you had a sense of being
present when history was being made.

For 1 4 months? When was this?

1 942?

You knew Nehru from the early days.

Was it apparent even then
that he was a man marked by destiny?

(BOTH LAUGHING)

-Very confident and sure of himself.
-Yes, that is right.

You must have got to know
Gandhi well, also.

Oh, yes, I knew him, too.

What kind of impression
did he make on you?

Many people speak of
his magic spell on people.

Tell us what you thought.

Today the Anand Bhavan,
the Nehru family house in Allahabad,

is a shrine to India's
struggle for freedom.

They're worshipping Gandhi,
they're worshipping Nehru.

Nehru, they were the greatest,
greatest people of our country.

WOOD: So Gandhiji is not forgotten?

Never! Never!

WOMAN: People do not realise

how difficult it was to get freedom.

Those who were not born,
those who have not seen,

don't know what was freedom struggle.

British rule, that it was
a very disciplined rule,

they accept this thing. But, you know,

bondage, nobody likes.

Everybody likes to be free.

Nehru and Gandhi and
their colleagues were engaged

in the greatest liberation struggle
that had ever taken place in history.

The question for them
was which way would India go?

What India did they imagine?
What was India?

If the path forward was going to be
democracy, then how was that

to be squared with the inequities
of the caste system?

With the oppressions
of the hereditary landlords

in the feudal cow belt?

With the inequality of women?

And how would a single, united India

encompass all
its diverse religious traditions

whose voices were becoming
more and more insistent?

By 1 940,Jinnah had come
to believe that Hindu and Muslim

were two separate nations
that cannot live together.

And talk began of partition.

The British attitude towards
the partition of India

was slightly ambivalent.

On the one hand,
they had created this unity

where there was none.

They gloried in the fact
that they had created a united India.

And they also knew
that if India became divided,

all sorts of defence problems
would arise.

And they were also very conscious

of the great divide between
the Hindus and the Muslims.

WOOD: Here in the Viceroys lodge
in Simla in 1 946,

the British tried too late
to broker a loose federation

comprising groups of
Hindu and Muslim states

under a central government.

But the coalition
collapsed in mistrust from both sides

and Jinnah finally pushed for
a separate state for Muslims, Pakistan.

Jinnah had moved
towards the idea of Pakistan.

What he used to say,
''After we have divided,

''then we can come together,
then we can cooperate.''

This is what Mohandas said,
''This is divorce before marriage.''

So finally in the summer of 1 94 7,

the British washed their hands
of the problem.

And with great pride,
and yet profound disappointment,

Nehru accepted India's destiny.

NEHRU: Long years ago
we made a tryst with destiny,

and now the time comes
when we shall redeem our pledge,

not wholly or in full measure,
but very substantially.

At the stroke of the midnight hour,
when the world sleeps,

India will awake to life and freedom.

WOOD: But a partitioned India,
with Muslim Pakistan itself divided

by 2,000 miles from east to west.

On the two sides of India,
in the Punjab and Bengal,

the dividing line
between Muslim and Hindu

had been drawn up
by a British civil servant in six weeks

using information gathered
from the censuses.

The line ran through fields
and communities,

across railways, roads
and irrigation schemes.

It went through villages,
and even through individual houses,

and it cut through the deepest layers
of the history of the subcontinent.

Hello. Very nice to meet you.
I am Michael.

So how old is Mr Swaran?

(SPEAKING HINDI)

-Eighty-two.
-Eighty-two!

You are in fine form.

(LAUGHING)

To make matters worse,
the British kept the line secret

till after independence
on the 1 5th of August,

and they were culpably negligent
in failing to provide troops

to protect the people in
the ethnic cleansing that followed

when Hindu, Sikh and Muslim
began to kill each other.

And the village was just over
the border in what is now Pakistan,

-is that right?
-In Pakistan.

Yeah, yeah.

-Sikhs.
-Sikhs, yes.

(SPEAKING HINDI)

WOOD: Seventeen members of your family?
Yeah, yeah.

In the summer of 1 94 7, that story
was repeated across the Punjab

as great floods of people fled in fear.

Hindus and Sikhs eastwards into India,
Muslims westwards into the new Pakistan.

Fourteen million people,
the largest migration in history,

and up to a million died.

We console ourselves
by talking of common human feeling,

but there are times in history
when there is no such thing.

But could the partition have
been avoided?

What if the Congress and the Muslim
League had made concessions

and accepted the federation?

Why did the British
have to rush independence?

Could the slaughter have been avoided
if they'd provided a few battalions

to protect the refugees?

And will India and Pakistan come back
together again as Jinnah hoped?

A few miles inside the Pakistani border
we found Swaran Singh's old village

still with its Hindu name.

This was the place he left as a boy
in terror in 1 94 7

after the murder of 1 7 of his family.

(SPEAKING HINDI)

Yeah, okay.
So we are in the right place.

And the old people here,
Muslims, had the same story.

Uprooted, fleeing for their lives
from India.

But here at the end they told a tale
with a glimmer of hope.

(SPEAKING HINDI)

Were there cases where friends
helped friends?

(SPEAKING PUNJABI)

TRANSLATOR: They still get letters.

No! Wow, what an amazing story.

History sometimes happens in a way

which is not willed
by the main participants.

Nehru and Gandhi saw themselves
as the great idealists,

but in the end,
failed to grasp the biggest prize.

Jinnah was a convinced
secular nationalist,

who only at the very end
took an independent Pakistan.

And as for the British,
they were tried and found wanting.

So that's how India and Pakistan
got freedom 60 years ago.

It's not been plain sailing since.

There's been three wars, nuclear bombs,

they're still at loggerheads
over Kashmir.

In 1 9 7 1, East Pakistan,
with India's help,

broke away and became Bangladesh.

And India and Pakistan
have not yet become the friends

after the divorce that Jinnah hoped.

But when the dust settles on 1 94 7,
that surely will come.

And as for India,
the tale of the last 60 years

is above all the triumph of democracy.

To manage the art of building democratic

and stable political institutions
over six decades in a country which

in the first 20 years after independence
was predicted to disintegrate.

And it's begun freeing
the creative energies of its people

which had been stifled by certain
political and economic choices

made after 1 94 7.

We've seen a transformation
of national level politics

where we've gone from
a dominant one-party state

to coalition governments.

We've seen a transformation
in the economy.

WOOD: And its economy is making India
a global giant in the new century.

Soon to become the world's
biggest population, by the 2030s,

it's predicted that India's GDP
will overtake the United States

and India will resume the position
it has had for much of history.

The world's biggest democracy
is looking once more to the future.

THAROOR: Indians are filled
with a sense of the possible.

There is a tremendous
degree of optimism about the future,

which I think is all the more
interesting for coming from a people

who, in so many other ways,
are anchored in the past.

We've come on a journey
of thousands of years

and thousand of miles.

A tale that began with the first
migration of human beings out of Africa

and ends at this point
with India as a global power.

Great civilisations over time
develop responses, habits,

cultural immune systems

that enable them to absorb
the shocks and wounds of history

and also to use the gifts of history.

Those are the habits
of successful civilisations.

And India has always done that,
always renewing its gene pool,

always being receptive to new ideas

and yet tenaciously holding on
to that essential vision,

that way of seeing
the world which is Indian.

''At the dawn of history, ''
Nehru said 60 years ago,

''India started on her unending quest
and trackless centuries

''are filled with her striving
and the grandeur of her success

''and her failures.

''Through good and ill fortune alike
she has never lost sight of that quest

''or forgotten the ideals
which gave her strength.

''And today
India discovers herself again.

''India, the ancient, the eternal
and the ever-new. ''