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10 seminal novels questioning what freedom looked like after 1947
Every year, India celebrates Independence Day on August 15.
This article recommends ten storybooks that help people think about what happened when India became free in 1947.
The books are novels, which are long made-up stories.
Some stories are about the day India split into two countries, India and Pakistan.
One book, Midnight's Children, is about a boy born at the exact moment of independence.
Another, Train to Pakistan, tells about a village that receives a train full of people who did not survive.
Some books are about poor families, like Pather Panchali, and some are about people treated unfairly because of their place in society, like Untouchable.
The article says these stories show what freedom really meant to ordinary people.
Reading them is a good way to understand history through the lives of characters.
An Independence Day reading list recommends ten novels written before and after 1947 that ask what freedom actually looked like.
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children follows a boy born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, tied to the new nation's fate.
Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan portrays Partition through a border village receiving a train carrying only the dead.
Other featured works include A Suitable Boy, Pather Panchali, Untouchable, The Shadow Lines and The God of Small Things.
Several novels address caste, communal hatred, land reform and nation-building, questioning what independence meant for ordinary Indians.
- Who
- Novelists including Salman Rushdie, Khushwant Singh, Raja Rao, Upendranath Ashk, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Vikram Seth, Bapsi Sidhwa, Mulk Raj Anand, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy
- What
- A curated reading list of ten novels that explore Indian independence, Partition and the question of what freedom meant after 1947
- Where
- India and Pakistan, including regions such as Punjab, Bengal and Kerala, and cities like Lahore, Calcutta, Dhaka and London
- When
- Around Independence Day; the novels are set in the years before and after 1947
- Why
- To ask what freedom actually looked like once it arrived, beyond speeches and flag hoistings
Key facts
- Reading List
- 10 novels
- Theme
- Indian independence (1947) and its aftermath
- Earliest Published Works
- Untouchable (1935) and Kanthapura (1938)
- Longest Novel
- A Suitable Boy — more than 1,300 pages
- Featured Translator
- Daisy Rockwell — Girti Deewarein as Falling Walls
- Alternate Title
- Ice-Candy-Man published as Cracking India
- Unfinished Cycle
- Upendranath Ashk's seven-volume work Girti Deewarein
- Notable Settings
- Punjab, Bengal, Kerala, Lahore, Calcutta, Dhaka, London
Quotes
Salman Rushdie
Author of Midnight's Children
“Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, and his life gets tied to the new nation's in ways that are part magic, part curse.”
firstpost.com




