All language subtitles for The.Story.of.India.E06.Freedom.720p.10bit.BluRay.x265-budgetbits

You see that when you...

MICHAEL WOOD: There are times
in the life of a civilization

when history seems
to burst with possibilities.

That's India
in the 21st century.

This is the tale
of 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?

BOY: When I grow up, I'll be
a commercial pilot.

WOOD: A commercial pilot!

BOY: Doctor.
WOOD: A doctor.

I want to be
a captain in the navy.

WOOD: A captain in the navy.
BOY: Yeah.

Archaeologist.

WOOD: An archaeologist!
Fantastic!

I want to be
a movie director

A movie director!
Fantastic.

WOOD: The Modern Age
is the next chapter

in the story of India.

The coast of South India.

It was here in the 18th century
that a series of events began

that would lead
to a small island

off the shore
of Europe, Britain,

coming to rule a vast empire
5,000 miles away 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 18th century,

the armies
of a private multinational,

the British East India Company,

imposed their rule
on a civilization

that had come down
from ancient times,

still with its own distinctive
vision of the world.

[Bells ringing]

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

South India was divided

between many independent
princely states,

but history was
on the move.

The 18th century
rajas of Tanjore,

men like Serfoji, were
importing European knowledge,

and in their library here

along with 50,0000
Indian manuscripts

are books in English,
French, Italian, and Latin.

SERFOJI: They're both
on palm leaf and paper.

There are 25,000...

WOOD:
Even without the British,

India would still have taken
the path to modernity.

Wow. isn't
that fantastic?

So he was interested
in combining

Indian and European?

That's fascinating.

SERFQOJI: Samuel Johnson's
dictionary.

WOOD: Ha ha ha!

Samuel Johnson's
dictionary.

Fantastic.

The first great dictionary
of the English language,

and here itis
in the court

of 18th 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 civilizations,

that they have the ability
to conserve their own genius

but to bring in the discoveries

of other civilizations
and incorporate them,

and India has always had
the ability to do that,

just as it does today.

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 wants his doctors to be
taught about the anatomy.

He was into polyglot
and polymath.

WOOD: He spoke English,
I gather?

SERFOJI: 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

and from 1798 onwards,
so he was relieved

of his powers
from maintaining his territory.

WOOD: With Moghul power
in the north on the wane,

India now found itself part
of the global confrontation

between the European powers,

and the South became
a theater of war

between the armies
of the British

and the French.

And it was the ordinary people

who were caught
in the crossfire.

The key to the nascent
British empire

was the new fort of Madras.

WOMAN: By about 1650, 1660,
the Dutch, the Danish,

the Portuguese,
all of them, you know,

sort of become subservient
to the powers

of the British
and the French.

WOOD: So these are European
powers competing

for empire
internationally,

but here in south India,
this becomes

a focus
for their rivalries.

SATHYABAMA: Every time there
is some sort of a difference

of opinion
or altercation in Europe

between the French
and the English,

that--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 18th century,
you get actually

a very horrifying impression
of armies of British

and French crisscrossing
the Tamil land.

Terrible massacres
are taking place

of the kind that
we see today

in, you know, Darfur
or Iraq almost.

I mean, thousands
of Tamils were killed.

It must have been
a terrible time in the south.

SATHYABAMA:
It must have been.

the first form
of uprising starts

only in this part
of the country.

WOOD: The first uprising
against the British.

SATHYABAMA:
Against the British.

Of course it's all local.

It is not--you know,
it's nothing organized.

I wouldn't call it
a fight for freedom,

but I am just--
they are rebelling

against certain norms which have
been forced upon them.

WOOD: The British victory
in South India came in 1799

at the battle
of Seringapatam,

where an East India Company
army overwhelmed

the Muslim sultan of Mysore.

And there's a modern
twist to this story.

These were not national armies

but the first
global corporations

fighting for the spoils
of India,

and the prize was huge.

In London,
the East India Company archives

in the British library
show that the war was not

just about power but profit.

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, 1799
after the great battles

in South India
at Seringapatam.

Company revenues:
£8.5 million.

Four years later, 1803:
£13.5 million.

That's getting on
for 3 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 18th 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.

In later times,
the British liked to say,

disingenuously,
that they 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 18th century,

driven by the Industrial
Revolution back in Britain,

Bengal became a mainstay
of British imperialism.

The British left
their mark all over Calcutta.

The great 18th century
cemetery here in Park Street

is still lovingly maintained.

But perhaps the greatest
legacy of the British

was to give Indians
a new idea of India itself.

The Britishers gave us
a complete map of India.

WOOD: The Britishers gave you
a complete map of India?

BANDOPADHYAY: United.
They showed a complete map.

Prior to Britishers
what happened actually,

India was divided into
several small countries,

different like that.

They are all united.

WOOD: So do you think
that without the British

India may never have
been united as India?

BANDOPADHYAY: Yeah. That is true
100%. I fully agree with you.

WOOD: Ha ha ha! Really?

You're making me feel better
about being an imperialist!

BANDOPADHYAY:
It's absolutely correct.

WOOD: 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

civilization 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,
H.T. Colebrooke

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.

People had been, you know,
nostalgically looking back

to a world
which they have lost.

To look for the lost
world in the East.

WOOD: And they found
it in India?

PANDIAN:
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 memsaabs,

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 civilization

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 civilized society."

"On the contrary," he said,

"the glorious scriptures
of the Hindoos 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 the Moghuls

like Akbar, who had
tried to bring

the two communities together.

Ah, wow.
they're so...

Oh, look at this.

So what are
these documents?

[Wood speaks
foreign language]

[Man speaks
foreign language]

This is
for Hanumangarhi?

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 civilizations

in Lucknow under
the Muslim Nawabs.

and that time is still
fondly remembered

in the old
aristocratic houses.

Ah, so family portraits.

So this is magnificent.
Who is this here?

MAN: This is
my great grandfather,

Amiltolla Raja, sir.

WOOD: Raja--but sir.

So he was knighted by...

KHAN: Knighted
by Queen Victoria.

WOOD:
Queen Victoria herself!

Fantastic.

KHAN: This is me.
WOOD: Ha ha!

With a beautiful
ceremonial crown.

KHAN: Rubies, emeralds,
diamonds.

WOOD: People talk about
the culture of Lucknow

in the--especially the 18th
century period, don't they,

as being an extraordinary period
in Indian history.

Why is that?

What does that mean?

Right. Right.

So at that time, the 2 cultures
here intermingled?

KHAN: Intermingled.

WOOD: That rich culture
of Urdu literature and poetry

has left its legacy across
India, Pakistan, and the world.

in food, too.

And in that intermingling
of Hindu and Muslim

was a possible pointer
to the future,

had the British rulers
been more sensitive.

Verdict on the biryani,
then, everybody?

MAN: A-1.
WOOD: A-1.

But everything
would be changed

by the Great Rebellion of 1857.

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 British.

MAN: This was the mosque
from where

in the leadership of
Maulana Fazl-e Haq Khairabidi

around 350 A'immanh,
of the mosque, Islamic scholars,

gave the fatwa
of jihad

against the British
rulers in India.

WOOD: Hindu and Muslim
joined together.

BUKHARI: All communities
came together,

and I think it was
the golden period of India.

All the communities,
without the--

any differences, they were
Indians at that time.

They were following
their religions,

but they were fighting
for 1 cause,

to get the freedom
of India.

WOOD: Through the sweltering
summer of 1857,

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.

MAN: They are denigrating

traditional forms
of performance,

they are 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 1857 is that

certainly in Delhi
in the documents

we've been studying here
over the last 3 years,

is that the expression
of resistance in Delhi

is done
in religious terms.

The British are
the people who destroy

all religions.

WOMAN: What has happened
to our guns?

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 temple.

Then blow them up.

Our country
above our religion.

Ohh!

FAROOQI: There is a violence
that bursts forth, you know,

in a turbulent wave,

which totally takes
the English by surprise.

DALRYMPLE: No prisoners
are taken.

FAROOQI: They are completely
shocked by the kind

of violence that has
manifested by the Sepoys.

And the British respond in kind
and--and worse,

and they level
whole cities.

Delhi, which is a city
of 100,000 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.

WOOD: For the British,
the most evocative place

in the story was Lucknow,

scene of the heroic defense
of their residency.

After the victory,
journalists picked

their way over 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 1857-8,

a 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.

only periods that flood
into each other,

but 1857 is
a very clear

open-and-shut case.

1857, the East India Company
ends, the Moghuls end.

The 2 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?"

WOOD: Of course, history
is never black and white.

The war divided
North Indian society.

Some saw British rule
as progress,

a chance to break
with the old ways.

Others though were implacable

in their resistance,
as I discovered

when I met the descendents
of 2 Indian families

who were on opposite sides.

This is the Grand Trunk Road

coming northwards
from Kanpur.

We're looking for one
of the most extraordinary

stories in the aftermath
of 1857.

And the person who knows
more about it

than anyone alive is
an Indian scholar,

who comes form 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.

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

Ha ha ha!

Very nice to meet you.

Ha ha ha!

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.

You must have a real,
real rebel.

Thank you very much.

WOOD: People still
think about it

as collaborators,
do they?

MEHROTRA: I am not, you know--
WOOD: 150 years--

MEHROTRA: I can't feel guilty
about it.

Come. Have your friends
follow me.

[Car horn honks]

WOOD: Don't get run over.

We've 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 1857.

MAN:
That's the ancestral house.

WOOD: Your house?

MAN: Yes.
WOOD: 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.

Heh heh heh.
Unstoppable, isn't he?

WOOD: This is the fort?
MAN: Yes.

WOOD: So this fort was
your ancestors' fort?

MAN: Yes.

WOOD: So are you officially
still a Raja?

SINGH: Oh, no.
Rajas are over now.

WOOD: 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?

MEHROTA:
The ladies' apartment.

WOOD: The ladies' apartment?

Fantastic, isn't it?

And this is
what they were fighting for.

MEHROTA: That's India which you
can call the eternal,

the unchanging.

WOOD: So what happened
here in 18577

You were the rebels.

First the War
of Independence,

they call it now,
don't they?

These were the local
rebel commanders?

WOOD: Oh. The Rani of Jhansi?
SINGH: Yes, yes.

WOOD: She was the heroine,

the Joan of Arc
of the resistance.

"Nana's coming!
Nana's coming!"

It was Nana who
attacked Lucknow.

So these were
the greatest

of the rebel
leaders. yeah.

So your family were
committed to fighting

against the British?

SINGH: Yes.
WOOD: Yeah.

And what happened here?

WOOD:
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

150 years ago that seemed to
have only happened yesterday.

SINGH: Had their guns
on that side.

WOOD: Uh-huh.

The 2 of you may be--

represent 2 different
Indian views

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 different--
is different?

It was a matter
of honor,

"We have nothing
to lose, we fight."

Your father was
a rebel with Gandhi?

Yeah, yeah.
He joined Gandhi, yes.

So the freedom struggle
is 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.

A.O. 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, could you?

SINGH: He was rather a kind of
an--what should I say--

a cultural imperialist.

WOOD: 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.

MEHROTA: 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
the British--

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 will have
done 2 things.

First you have trained a people
in self-government,

and second, to have
ensured that their own

commerce and culture
would continue.

WOOD: The first meeting
of the congress, Bombay, 1885.

In the center,
the only white man, Hume,

the rebel in the Raj.

In the 1880s, 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 1 nation,

unified as much by the idea
as by the railways,

maps, and communications.

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,

an arrangement
so extraordinary that

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

but it did...

Hello.

And this is the Archive
of British India.

MAN: This building
was constructed

by the British people.

WOOD: Amazing.

So it contains all
the government records.

MAN: Yes, these are all
government records.

WOOD: Just look at this!

But imperialism
is never benign.

MAN: We have
30 kilometers

of lined-up
shelf space.

WOOD: 30 kilometers.

MAN: yes, here
in this building,

and in addition
to this building,

then in the next
building,

we have another
40 kilometers

of lined-up
shelf space.

WOOD: So 70 kilometers
of documents.

MAN: Total we have
70 kilometers.

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

For such forms
of knowledge are never neutral.

WOMAN: By the middle
of the 19th 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 1850s,
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 peoples' lives,

the information and everything
relating to them.

And how did they set
about it in terms

of defining
the people of India?

MUKHERJEE: This is the report
which is preparing

for the first census
of 1881,

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 1909,

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 the 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.

MUKHERJEE:
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 or 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.

For more than 2 million
Indians who 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.

MAN: Aim!

Fire!

MAN: Fire!

Take your time!

MAN: 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?

MAN: No warning.

WOOD: How big
was the crowd?

MAN: About 20,000 people
had gathered there.

WOOD: 20,000!

[Gunfire continues]

WOOD: At least 400 people
were killed that day

and 1,500 injured.

Did you have family members
present that day?

My grandfather,
Dr. S.C. Mukherjee,

he was present on that happening
but luckily escaped,

and since then, we are
looking after this.

WOOD: 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 K. Gandhi:

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.

MAN: 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.

WOOD: Aged 95, P.D. Tandon
has died since we met.

He was an old Nehru
family friend,

a freedom fighter
in the 1930s and 1940s.

So you had a sense
of being present

when history
was being made.

For 14 months?
When was this?

19427

You knew Nehru
from the early days.

Was it apparent
even then that

he was a man marked
by destiny?

Ha ha ha!

Very confident
and sure of himself?

TANDON: Yes, that is right.

You must have got to
know Gandhi well, also.

Oh, yes,
I knew him, too.

WOOD: What kind of impression
did he make on you?

Many people speak of his
magic spell on people.

Tell us what
you thought.

WOOD: Today, the Anand Bhavan,

the Nehru family house
in Allahabad,

is a shrine to India's
struggle for freedom.

MAN: They're
worshipping Gandhi,

they're
worshipping Nehru.

They were
the greatest,

greatest people
of our country.

WOOD: So Gandhiji
is not forgotten?

MAN: Never!
WOOD: Never?

MAN: Never, never!

WOMAN: People do not
realize 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.

WOOD: They were engaged

in the greatest
liberation struggle

that had ever been in history,

but what India
did they hope for?

Nehru and Gandhi
wanted one secular India,

but Jinnah had come
to believe that

Hindu and Muslim were
"2 separate nations

"that cannot live together."

By 1940, the big 3 had
fallen apart,

and talk began of partition.

MEHROTA: 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 defense
problems would arise.

And they were also
very conscious

of the great divide between
the Hindus and the Muslims.

WOOD: Here
in the viceroy's lodge

in Simla in 1946,

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.

MEHROTA: 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
Maulana said.

"This is divorce
before marriage."

WOOD: So finally
in the summer of 1947,

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 2 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 6 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.

MAN: Hello, very
nice to meet you.

WOOD: I'm Michael.

So how old is Mr. Swaran?

[Man speaking
native language]

SINGH: 82.
WOOD: 827?

You are in fine form.
Ha ha ha!

WOOD:
To make matters worse,

the British kept
the line secret

till after independence
on the 15th 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?

SINGH: Pakistan.
WOOD: Yeah, yeah.

WOOD: Sikhs?
SINGH: Sikhs.

WOOD: 17 members of your family?
Yeah, yeah.

WOOD: In the summer of 1947,
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.

14 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 1947

after the murder
of 17 of his family.

Not me. Not me.
OK, shokria, shokria.

Yeah, OK. 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.

Were there cases where
friends helped friends?

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 3 wars,
nuclear bombs,

they're still
at loggerheads over Kashmir.

In 1971, 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 1947,

that surely will come.

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

is above all
the triumph of democracy.

MAN: To manage
the art of building

democratic and stable
political institutions

over 6 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 1947.

We've seen a transformation
of national level politics

where we've gone
from a dominant 1-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.

WOOD: 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 civilizations
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 civilizations,

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."

[Cheering]