Freedom at Midnight

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That age had begun on a soft summer day in a little Spanish port in 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed off across the endless green seas to the edge of the world in search of India and found America by mistake. Four and a half centuries of human history bore the imprint of that discovery and its consequences: the economic, religious and physical exploitation of the nonwhite masses throughout the globe by the white, Western, Christian masses at its core. Aztec, Inca, Swahili, Egyptian, Iraqi, Hottentot, Algerian, Burmese, Philippine, Moroccan, Vietnamese-an unending stream of peoples, nations and civilizations in the course of 450 years had passed through the colonial experience; decimated, impoverished, educated, converted, culturally enriched or debased, economically exploited or stimulated, but finally, irrevocably altered by it. Ilonka and Kevin bring the rest of the Midnight Club to the secret floor. They find records of the original Midnight Club, which was founded by Julia in 1969, as well as evidence of cultists. Ilonka meets Shasta again. Sandra, who is religious, and Spencer, who has AIDS, get into an argument but reconcile after Sandra apologizes through a detective noir story she tells at Midnight Club. Spencer hears a voice calling to him through the intercom at Tristan's old room. Kevin goes to his girlfriend Katherine's senior prom. Ilonka realizes that "292.13" refers to the Dewey Decimal System, and uses it to search the Brightcliffe library for a book with the symbol on it. Anya sees the shadow again and collapses. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. His speech [2] went on to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi's efforts in the Independence Movement and called upon his countrymen to work together to The obvious racial undertone gets a new height when the authors bring forth idiotic and almost dead Aryan invasion theory to explain why Punjabis are a "marshal" race, as opposed to the "small and dark Bengalis" who are "mere Asiatics." I am sure that it has nothing to do with that Bengal is where most of the protest movements started from. Because anything good that comes out of India, well it has to be influenced by the higher race, even in ancient times.

The most astounding achievement of this book is that it rips out the aura of myths that have agglomerated around our political figures associated with the freedom movement, and humanizes each and every one of them, while being totally neutral, and being absolutely honest with the facts. Chandra is a far cry from the lively, youthful characters she has done, says the Premam heroine with the frizzy mop who had become a trendsetter with that one film. Since then, Anupama has gone on to become a busy actor in Telugu cinema with films such as Vunnadhi Okate Zindagi, Sathamanam Bhavati, Krishnarjuna Yuddham and so on. Right from her first film in Telugu, Srinivas’s A..Aa, Anupama has been dubbing for herself. This second anthem, however, has been written out of most of the widespread records of the speech (including the version that Nkrumah included in his 1961 book, I Speak of Freedom).

Why is 15 August celebrated as India's Independence Day?

Zorrilla, Mónica Marie (February 2021). "Netflix's 'The Midnight Club' Series Adaptation Sets Cast". Variety. Archived from the original on February 1, 2021 . Retrieved February 2, 2021. It is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century. It emphasizes India’s history of being ruled for years by foreign forces and beautifully captures the essence of the struggle for independencefrom the British Empire. Tryst with destiny – At the stroke of midnight hour… On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation, who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. As partition approaches, various groups take extreme measures to ethnically cleanse their area. There are bad guys on every side. Criminal gangs also find it useful to scare their competition out of the territory. Warning—very graphic! It is fitting, then, that, in the speech, Nkrumah named the people on equal terms with the chiefs when he recognised those who would “reshape the destiny of this country”. Rather than taking his cues from traditional rulers, Nkrumah used this mass base to ensure that the possibilities of postcolonial society would not be limited by precolonial traditions.

Years later, in a book called Freedom at Midnight, Mountbatten is quoted as saying, “The date I chose came out of the blue. I chose it in reply to a question. I was determined to show I was master of the whole event. When they asked had we set a date, I knew it had to be soon. I hadn't worked it out exactly then—I thought it had to be about August or September and I then went out to the 15th August. Why? Because it was the second anniversary of Japan's surrender.” (Mountbatten served as Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Command in World War II, who later signed on Japan's formal surrender.) So why midnight? Nkrumah’s midnight speech is everywhere in Ghana today. It circulates on radio and in social media posts. Key quotations from it are emblazoned on t-shirts, posters, magazine covers, billboards, and beyond. As Nkrumah has ascended to founding father status within Ghana’s current Fourth Republic, contemporary politicians from all sides of the political spectrum invoke it. This is true even when advocating for policies that are in direct tension with those of Nkrumahism.

Wikipedia citation

Few of the people in the hall could talk to each other in their native language; their only common tongue was the English of the colonizers, whose rule was about to end. Their nation would harbor fifteen official languages and 845 dialects. The Urdu of the deputies of the Punjab was read from right to left; the Hindi of their neighbors in the United Provinces from left to right. The Tamil of the Madrasis was often read up and down, and other tongues were decoded like the symbols on a Pharaonic frieze. Even their gestures were dissimilar. When a darkskinned Madrasi from the South nodded his head, he meant “yes.” When a pale northerner made the same movement, he meant “no. Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death. Frankly, never has a single book amazed and intrigued me so much, while being so educative and informative.

In 1940, soon after the beginning of World War II, the League’s ambiguous Lahore Resolution pressed for the creation of not one, but several, sovereign Muslim-majority states, when the British quit India. One of the curious aspects of Nkrumah’s midnight speech is the fact that he asked the band to play the Ghana National Anthem twice. The first time, it was played after a moment of silence and Nkrumah’s declaration: “Ghana is free forever!”

This book is recommended for anyone interested in knowing our freedom fighters, freedom movement, the Raj, the Maharajas and the Mahatma very substantially, if not wholly or in full measure. The India represented by those men and women would be a nation of 275 million Hindus (70 million of them, a population almost twice the size of France, Untouchables); 50 million Moslems; seven million Christians; six million Sikhs; 100,000 Parsis; and 24,000 Jews, whose forebears had fled the destruction of Solomon’s Temple during the Babylonian exile. Tom's longing to be free from his dull life with his aunt and uncle is said to be so strong it seems that it would 'burst the walls and set him free indeed'. It is this overwhelming, and essentially childlike desire to to find a more appealing place and like-minded companions with whom to play that allows him to enter into the older Hatty's dreams. As the old Mrs Bartholomew - the landlady to Tom's uncle and aunt - Hatty dreams vividly of her childhood living with her aunt and cousins and taking refuge in their beautiful old rambling garden. It is this garden, re-created in Hatty's dreaming mind, that Tom literally enters in some enchanted hour of the night. This garden is the perfect place to play for Tom, and the young Hatty, with her fervent imagination, is the ideal companion. Added Anderson: "We want people to learn more about the way in which India and Pakistan gained their freedom - and the colonial state from which they achieved it. Despite Gandhi’s global renown, in India his advocacy of non-violent non-cooperation did not persuade everyone. Some Indians responded to imperial repression by establishing revolutionary societies which tried to force the British out of India by violence.