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Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire | 
 enlarge | Author: Alex Von Tunzelmann
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 791934
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.0359
ASIN: B001FB62H8
Publication Date: August 7, 2007
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Product Description
An extraordinary story of romance, history, and divided loyalties—set against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century The stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, liberated 400 million people from the British Empire. With the loss of India, its greatest colony, Britain ceased to be a superpower, and its king ceased to sign himself Rex Imperator.
This defining moment of world history had been brought about by a handful of people. Among them were Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery Indian prime minister; Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan; Mohandas Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation; and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous but unlikely couple who had been dispatched to get Britain out of India. Within hours of the midnight chimes, their dreams of freedom and democracy would turn to chaos, bloodshed, and war.
Behind the scenes, a secret personal drama was also unfolding, as Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru began a passionate love affair. Their romance developed alongside Cold War conspiracies, the beginning of a terrible conflict in Kashmir, and an epic sweep of events that saw one million people killed and ten million dispossessed.
Steeped in the private papers and reflections of the participants, Indian Summer reveals, in vivid, exhilarating detail, how the actions of a few extraordinary people changed the lives of millions and determined the fate of nations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Edwina's summer than India's summer; but good August 16, 2007
T. R. Santhanakrishnan (Chennai, Tamil Nadu India)
46 out of 52 found this review helpful
Alex von Tunzelmann, student of history at Oxford and editor of OSU's Cherwell newspaper in 1998, passes this book as "the secret history of the end of an empire".
"Life and times of Mountbattens in India" would have been a more apt title. The book contains no secret and is not about the end of the empire in entirety.
The book places too much importance on the roles of three individuals: Mountbatten, his wife Edwina and Nehru. The long struggle, mostly non violent, to evict an alien rule by a wide and deep political leadership (some meriting reverence for decades after their death) has been trivialized to a vane member of British royal family sent to unwind the empire; his flirting wife and an equally flirting visionary who led India during and after the transition.
However, one must compliment Alex von Tunzelmann for the sheer objectivity she brings into describing the events in the last days of the Raj.
Alex starts with a funny perspective: There were two countries in 1577. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swathe of the earth; and the other was an underdeveloped semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its masses. Guess what! The first is India and the second is England. In 1857 it was the other way about! Now you know what alien rule does to the ruler and the ruled!
However, a country divided by religion, divided by tribe, divided by caste; a society whose equilibrium derives from repulsion and exclusiveness is, as Karl Marx rightly observed, predestined to be a prey of conquest.
Did Britain rule India in discharge of "the white man's burden"? Not really. The Prince of Wales, visiting India in 1921, found the princely states far better than British India! Quite a royal endorsement against the inept colonial rule that kept the GDP stagnating for over 70 years at the time of this observation!
Is the British attitude toward India patronizingly affectionate as reflected by Edwina's kindly love for Nehru? Not really. Winston Churchill astonished everyone in a dinner party by suggesting that he would have "Gandhi bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and let the Viceroy sit on the back of a giant elephant and trample the Mahatma into the dirt"! This reflects the kind of thinking that political leadership in India had to face! (Oh yes, I found one opinion I share with Churchill: Gandhi is a Mahatma!)
Did Mountbatten handle his role reasonably well? Mostly no; occasionally yes.
(a) In mid July 1947, while negotiations about partition, defence, finance, future of princely states and the future of 400 million people raged around him, Viceroy Mountbatten was "busy fussing about flags" seeking Union Jack in the upper canton of the flags of India and Pakistan!
(b) Ten days before independence, in the midst of the violence in Punjab, Mountbatten bothered Nehru with a list of dates upon which the Union Jack might continue to be flown in India after independence!
(c) However, he deserves some praise. In less than one year, Patel and Mountbatten achieved a larger and more closely integrated India than what had been achieved in 130 years of Mauryan rule, 180 years of Mughal empire or 90 years of British Raj.
Alex steers clear of bias in her book to an admirable extent.
One reason why, I would recommend a reading of her chapter on Kashmir.
 Inevitability, Passion and Haste September 6, 2007
I. Martinez-Ybor (Miami, FL USA)
36 out of 38 found this review helpful
It was clear that Britain could not afford empire. The Jewel had to go. Unfortunately, what held it in place was Britain. And Britain didn't have that much of a clue as to how/where to split it up. Thus, diffidence dictated that it be done as close to ethnic/religious lines as possible, and the state of the British economy, as hastily as possible. Indeed they could have borrowed words from Louis XV ".... apres mois, le deluge." Let the natives sort out their mess. No one more diffident to see it through than Lord Mountbatten. But, did it have to be so bloody messy? It seems that Mountbatten's personal haste brought about all that criminal waste. But who knows the extent to which it would have been less so a year later.
This is history from the top down, which probably is at it should be given the events it chronicles. It focuses squarely on the Mountbattens, the Nehrus, Gandhi and Jinnah. The British Parliament may have decided, but these people pulled the triggers that gave us India, a precariously and maladroitly drawn Pakistan (which later begat Bangladesh), and a festering Kashmir (of course, part of India today, but remember the Sikhs?)which to this day hovers perilously between two atomic powers.
This is a most valuable and amusing book about a critical juncture in the history of the modern world, or perhaps one should say, the dissolution of the Old. Alex von Tunzelmann (an attractive young woman, not a Teuton scribe) has navigated treacherous historical waters with clarity, restraint, and even humor. Her text is a delight to read, even when a light touch is called upon, it is never glib but one born from deeply informed judgment. Particularly warm and engaging is the view of Edwina Mountbatten, for me a somewhat melancholy figure. There was just so much she couldn't do. She was quite a lady; learning about her is worth the price of admission. Highly recommended.
British India Remembered August 15, 2007
Mr. Leong Wai Hong (Malaysia)
18 out of 23 found this review helpful
It is appropriate that I finished reading this book at the stroke of midnight 14 August 2007. This first book by the author is a wonderful retelling of the events and personalities ( Gandhi,Nehru, Jinnah,Dickie ,Edwina, Patel) leading to the independence of India and the Partition to India and Pakistan. The book's strength is the retelling of the close relationship between Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten.According to the book Edwina was born to immense wealth. Her maternal grandfather left her assets of 3 million pounds ( equivalent to 100 million pounds today ). She inherited even more from her father's side.
Edwina forged a close relationship with Nehru while serving as Vicereine of India. She died in bed in Sabah in 1960 a batch of letters by her bedside and a few letters strewn across her bed- she must have been reading them when she died. All the letters were from Nehru. Edwina was buried at sea from HMS Wakeful, escorted by an Indian frigate the Trishul, sent by Nehru to cast a wreath of marigolds into the waves after Edwina's coffin. Nehru died 4 years later in 1964. ( see pages 60, 351& 352 of book)
According to Judith Brown's Nehru- A Political Life 2003 at page 366 footnote 46, the best life of Edwina is Janet Morgan's Edwina Mountbatten- A Life of Her Own. 1991.
Fascinating August 11, 2007
Harriet Klausner
16 out of 28 found this review helpful
The aftermath of WW II reverberated around the globe at midnight on August 15, 1947, when the British Empire for practical purposes ended. Although some colonies remained in the fold, the crown jewel India was freed. Four hundred million people gained their liberty, but perhaps one million died in the ensuing fighting to carve out segments of the subcontinent and many more millions were exiled as ethnic cleansing took hold from Kashmir to Pakistan to India to the Sikh region.
The key players on the world stage were English diplomat Louis Mountbatten, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Islamic League leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the ever presence of the mythical Mohandas Gandhi. Alex von Tunzelmann provides the epic picture, but uses that as background to enable readers to get inside and personal with those critical leaders who history books paint heroically, but the author places them under a microscope revealing their flaws as well as their more known strengths. Whereas Gandhi served as a moral example to emulate, he allowed no grays or compromise as the Moslems and Sikhs learn first hand. Whereas Jinnah helped create East and West Pakistan as a viable but geographically split nation, he wanted nothing to do with the British or the Hindi so he also ignored the poverty of what would later become independent Bangladesh. Mountbatten thought he was a great diplomat but his issues were flag designs while people died on the streets and his much more capable spouse had a tryst with Nehru, Ghandi's son-in-law and moral heir apparent. Historical readers will enjoy this deep look at "The Secret History of the End of an Empire" as those placed on pedestals find their statues somewhat crumbling under Ms. Von Tunzelmann's somewhat titillating review.
Harriet Klausner
A surprising bestseller about the end of an era November 14, 2007
Kali (United Kingdom)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I attended a book signing event on the 13th November 2007 in Brighton were the author talked about the complexities of writing such an epic in which she looked at the dynamics that bought about the fall of an Empire and the most unlikely love story ever not to be reported by the press, that of Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru, India's first Prime Minister.
The book is surprisingly good, I have to confess I didn't have high hopes when I purchased it but the subject is of such interest to me I was willing to take a chance and buy it and I am glad I did.
Ms Von Tunzleman has a written a book that has obviously been researched extensively, both here in the UK and also in India and her candid no nonsense approach to all the subjects she touches, such as Hindu and Muslim hostilities, Mahatma Gandhi's strange predilections that made people both love and hate him, to the fate of the dispossessed, the love story between Nehru and Edwina makes it very interesting to read to the point that you can't put it down.
For a historian Ms Von Tunzleman has made this book very accessible to the ordinary reader, she goes into great detail but she is never boring as she explains how India became a British Empire and how when it finally crumbled into dust, it did so, so swiftly that no one, least of all the British were prepared for the backlash that was to follow.
A superb book with many photos of an era that depicts two nations in transition, India the Jewel in the Crown striking out on its own and Great Britain, suddenly realising that its days as the greatest Empire in the world have come to an end, not so much a tragedy as the inevitability of change in a world flinging of the chains of colonial paternalism.
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