Halfway to freedom

Title: Halfway to freedom

Photographer(s): Margaret Bourke-White

Writer(s): Margaret Bourke-White

Designer(s):

Publisher(s): Simon & Schuster, New York, U.S.A.

Year: 1949

Print run:

Language(s): English

Pages: 246

Size: 15 x 22 cm

Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket

Edition:

Print: American Book-Stratford Press, Inc.New York, U.S.A.

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: India,1946-1949

ISBN:

Miss Bourke-White, the noted photographer-reporter, who was in India for most of 1946 and again in 1947 and 1948, makes no attempt to present a formal history or a complete picture of all the facets of India today. Her book records merely what she saw and heard in the many months during which she trav- eled up and down the land. She writes of the great migration and the communal riots, the Princely States and the democratic awak- ening as shown by what is hap- pening in Kashmir. Gandhi looms large in the pages in both words and photo- graphs, and in both Miss Bourke- White manages to catch the hu- man as well as the spiritual qual- ities of the man whom John Gun- ther described as "an incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall, and your father." Gandhi's outmoded ideas about spinning-wheel cul- ture and his lack of understand- ing of the forces shaping the modern industrial state do not blind her to the power, courage and pure heart that led a nation to honor him as bapu (father).

t is a tribute to Margaret Bourke-White's insight as well as her artistry that in her new book, the first full-fledged ac- count of the new India, she is able to portray the tragic trek of the Indians in terms of hope as well as tears. Like her mag- nificent photographs, her text tells the story of the rebirth of an old, outworn, feudal nation into young twin giants, still bleeding, still groping but grad- ually making their way toward the threshold of a new life.