This book opens with an unbelievably tedious account of your Jawaharlal Nehru's childhood. The man who led India to independence, Gandhi's chosen successor, drives the reader to utter distraction with his - and his father's - obsession with acquiring and cultivating British upper class status and manners in the early 1900's. I am not sure that M.J.Akbar appreciates how repulsive is the story of young Nehru that the reader - if he or she can bear to persist - has to drag themselves through during the first hundred pages of his otherwise brilliant biography. Perhaps Akbar's intention is to contrast Nehru's early life and with what he became, perhaps the only person in modern Indian history who stands comparison with Gandhi for both his character and his achievements.

The stunning contrast between the privileged youth, and the man who welcomed imprisonment and faced danger is extraordinary. Akbar is most certainly a sympathetic biographer, at times he seems almost dazzled by his subject. And he certainly doesn't spare Nehru's detractors his scorn. But throughout he seems to have done his research carefully. If his comprehensive assassination of the character of Jinnah reflects a certain passionate view, it is all the more thorough for being meticulously backed up with documents and apparently independent accounts.

You could scarcely ask for a better or more readable account of the development of Indian independence, and particularly how the very many Indians working towards it were influenced by and reacted to (and against) Mahatma Gandhi. The drama and tragedy of the partition of British India into the Republics of India and Pakistan is laid out. I would only recommend reading this in conjunction with a biography a little more sympathetic to Jinnah's role in the creation of Pakistan.

I highly recommend this book as an introduction to the history of Indian independence and to the life of a man who was not only influential in the founding of India, but also in global politics in the 1950's and early 1960's. ( )