speech on 14 august 1947

Tryst with Destiny – Speech on 15 August 1947 by Nehru

On the eve of 15 th August 1947, the first Prime Minister of India, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, gave a famous speech addressed to the Indian Constituent Assembly and the pupils of the country. The speech was delivered in the intervening night of 14 th and 15 th August 1947 and is by far the most impressive speeches of the 20 th century.

In his speech Pt. Nehru spoke about the responsibility of a united and progressive nation, bestowed on the Constituent Assembly. He spoke that instead of resting it is the time for us to move and build the nation, which our great freedom fighters and leaders had aspired.

Speech on 15 August 1947 by Nehru

“Tryst with Destiny” was the title of the speech given on the midnight of 15 th August 1947 by the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru just after the independence of country. He had given speech to the Indian Constituent Assembly in The Parliament in the midnight. The speech given by him is one of the greatest speeches of all times focusing on the history of India and non-violent Indian independence struggle for getting freedom from the British Empire in India.

He gave a message to the nation first time through his speech after independence of the country. His speech was so much inspirational encouraging the mass people of India for the upliftment and development. The aim of his speech was to motivate Indian people in order to build a new and developed India through their hard work, zeal and enthusiasm. His message was to fight and remove all the social evils of the country such as illiteracy, ignorance, poverty, poor health conditions, etc to lead country towards the development.

His speech was to urge Indian people to actively participate in the nation-building process. Through his speech he had also emphasized the concept of equality among the Indian citizens. He paid homage to the Mother India and took pledge to save her in every condition in the future from the rivals. He also made a call to all the Indian citizens to show their togetherness and interest to all the services of Motherland. Following is the exact speech given by the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, on 15 th of August 1947 in the midnight:

Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speech to the Nation on the Independence Day

Tryst with destiny.

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity with some pride.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries which are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortunes alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortunes and India discovers herself again.

The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we might fulfill the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.

The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for anyone of them to imagine that it can live apart.

Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. 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.

The appointed day has come – the day appointed by destiny – and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

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.

We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be.

We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.”

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Tryst With Destiny | Watch full video & audio of first Independence Day address by Pt Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru’s ‘freedom at midnight’ speech is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, which marked the end of the british empire in india after long years of slavery and struggle for independence.

SNS | New Delhi | August 14, 2018 2:00 pm

Jawaharlal Nehru making his “Tryst with Destiny” speech at the midnight session of Parliament on August 14, 1947. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

August 1947. India had earned its Independence in principle. And the big day had been fixed — August 15. The Constituent Assembly of India convened in New Delhi on the afternoon of August 14 — to continue in session till past midnight when, an independent India came into being to the sound of conch shells being blown. Shortly before that, Indian’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru  delivered his historic first speech — the famous ‘Nehru speech’ that the world was going to remember forever.

Nehru’s ‘Freedom at Midnight’ speech is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, which marked the end of the British Empire in India after long years of slavery  and struggle for independence.

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Here is the full text of the speech delivered by Nehru in the Constituent Assembly in New Delhi, on August 14, 1947, on the eve of Independence Day.

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment, we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity. At the dawn of history, India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike, she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future? Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom, we have endured all the pains of labour, and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over, and it is the future that beckons to us now. That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. And so, we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments. To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. 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. The appointed day has come – the day appointed by destiny – and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about. It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed! We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people. 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. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest. Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death. We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike. The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman. We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action. To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy. And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind!”

Listen to the speech here .

Independence Day Special | Did you know of Chhattisgarh’s Jal Satyagraha?

Seventy one years later, EPIC Channel will run the Nehru speech along with important unknown facts on television at 10 pm on 15th August (Wednesday). The show will be part of EPIC Channel’s “Bharat Ki Awaaz” series that showcases India’s most iconic and independent voices that moved the nation.

• 15th August 1947
• Independence day
• Independence Day 2018

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A tryst with destiny

Freedom and Fragmentation: Images of Independence, Decolonisation and Partition at Cambridge University

By Stuart Roberts

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, delivering his Tryst with Destiny speech on the eve of independence. It is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century.

Jawaharlal Nehru, delivering his Tryst with Destiny speech.

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance... ...The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world." An excerpt from Jawaharlal Nehru's Tryst of Destiny speech, August 15, 1947

At the stroke of midnight

Three figures stand next to an early border post between new nation-states of India and Pakistan: The geographical challenges of the border between India and Pakistan – which runs across vast expanses of desert, mountain, glacier and forest – are extreme. To this day, it remains the most militarised border in the world.

Two figures stand next to an early border post between new nation-states of India and Pakistan: To this day, it remains the most militarised border in the world.

On August 15, 1947, at the stroke of midnight, India and Pakistan achieved independence from British rule – signalling the beginning of the end of the largest empire in history.

Their freedom had been hard fought and came at a huge cost. Contrary to legend, the British had not been keen to devolve power gradually. This struggle for sovereignty took many forms: violent and non-violent, elite and popular, religious and secular, plural and separatist.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Independence, Cambridge’s Centre of South Asian Studies is staging a unique exhibition over four floors of the Alison Richard Building – drawing on the Centre’s unparalleled collection of more than 100,000 photographs, 600 written collections, 900 maps and thousands of hours of film footage.

While the exhibition’s primary focus is on partition and independence, the collection covers more than 200 years of life under The Raj and the early decades of post-colonial India.

Featuring first-hand photographs of Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah – and highlighting female assassins, refugees and the personal stories of those affected by the British withdrawal, Freedom and Fragmentation: Images of Independence, Decolonisation and Partition runs until October 27, 2017.

Co-curator Dr Edward Anderson, Smuts Research Fellow in Commonwealth Studies, said: “Partition was a painful, traumatic experience for tens of millions of people. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives and up to 14 million people were displaced in the single largest migration in human history.

“We are not saying this is the definitive story of partition and independence – it’s the one drawn from our collections. 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.

“Everyone knows about Gandhi, but there was lots of violence and revolutionary movements with competing images of what an independent India should be like. Each floor of the exhibition explores one of four themes: Repression and Resistance, Ideas of Independence, Partition, and The Raj.”

Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies Professor Joya Chaterji said: “This exhibition explores what freedom meant to people on the ground as power was transferred not to one, but to two nations – India and Pakistan – and euphoria mingled with the agony of refugees, and relief with horror at the brutality of partition.

“We need to be conscious that our archive is an elite archive, primarily seen through the eyes of elite, white men which can obscure and silence many other versions of what was happening at that point. That’s what archives do, not just this one. Despite this caveat, we believe that the images and texts on display provide a rare insight into a pivotal moment in history.”

Repression & Resistance

Gandhi on hunger strike: An intimate portrait of the Mahatma by Reverend Stait, during one of his hunger strikes. Fasting was an instrument in Gandhi’s armoury of political protest: his violence against his own body captured the public imagination and generated considerable press coverage. British officials were always anxious when Gandhi went on these uncompromising fasts, particularly by the potential for widespread civil unrest if he died.

Gandhi on hunger strike. An intimate portrait of the Mahatma by Reverend Stait, during one of his hunger strikes. Fasting was an instrument in Gandhi’s armoury of political protest: his violence against his own body captured the public imagination and generated considerable press coverage. British officials were always anxious when Gandhi went on these uncompromising fasts, particularly by the potential for widespread civil unrest if he died.

In its last decades, British rule in India faced resistance on many fronts, and in many forms.

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.

Most such societies bound members by Hindu oaths, denying membership to Muslims. Mainstream political parties largely distanced themselves from ‘extremists’, insisting on non-violent anti-colonial campaigns based on unity between Muslims and Hindus.

Gandhi’s campaigns to boycott imported goods and alcohol, to ‘uplift’ villages, and break unjust laws sat alongside liberal efforts to reform the Raj by constitutional means. But at the time, and in the years since, the militant revolutionaries have maintained a powerful hold on the popular imagination.

The era was one of intellectual ferment, in which a variety of ideologies vied for support. Several men and women who shaped visions for independent India and Pakistan were educated at Cambridge, but their dreams for the country did not always align.

Jawaharlal Nehru, who studied natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, aspired to socialist, secular, and democratic India, while Muhammed Iqbal, also an alumnus of Trinity, saw Pakistan as a crucible for Islam’s global rejuvenation.

Sarojini Naidu, the poetess who studied at Girton, sought a grand pact between India’s Hindus and Muslims. This was later orchestrated by Mohammad Ali Jinnah in 1916, then a Congress-minded nationalist and liberal.

Jinnah (not a Cambridge graduate) would later go on to become Pakistan’s ‘Quaid-i-Azam’, or great leader, and founding Governor General. 

Aurobindo Ghose of King’s College led the Jugantar revolutionary society, and Subhas Chandra Bose of Fitzwilliam College forged alliances with Britain’s opponents in World War II.

Choudhary Rahmat Ali, educated at Emmanuel College Cambridge, envisioned of a federation of Muslim states of Pakistan.

Ali (1897–1951) was one of the earliest proponents of the creation of the state of Pakistan. He is credited with creating the name "Pakistan" for a confederation of Muslim homelands in South Asia.

Rahmat Ali taught at the elite Aitchison College in Lahore before graduating from Emmanuel in 1931. He is best known as the author of a famous 1933 pamphlet titled Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever in which he coined the word ‘Pakistan’ for the first time.

The final partition of India disillusioned him profoundly, on account of the mass killings and migrations it generated. He was also dissatisfied with the territories awarded to Pakistan, which bore little relation to his maps and plans.

Ali died in 1951 of pneumonia in Cambridge at the age of 53. The Master of Emmanuel, Edward Welbourne, who had been Rahmat Ali’s tutor during his student days, covered his hospital and funeral costs. He is buried in Cambridge City Cemetery.

The High Commissioner for Pakistan later repaid these expenses. In 2004, Tariq Azim, the Minister for Overseas Pakistanis, visited the grave with a view to his remains being sent to Pakistan, but this idea was never followed through.

Ideas of Independence

Mohammed Ali Jinnah reading The Dawn: Founded by Jinnah in 1941, The Dawn was the official mouthpiece of the All India Muslim League. Mohammad Ali ‘Jinnahbhai’ was born in 1876 and travelled to England in 1892. It was there that politics began to consume him. On his return to India he joined the Indian National Congress, quickly making a mark in nationalist circles in Bombay. He famously refused to back down after a speech on indentured Indian labour in Natal, which he denounced as ‘harsh and cruel’, despite objections from the Viceroy, Lord Minto.

Tensions between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs began to escalate in the mid-1920s, amid widespread popular unrest and post-war hardship.

The ‘Lucknow Pact’ between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League – the cause of much optimism in 1916 – gradually unravelled.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the architect of the 1916 Pact – broke with the Congress by 1935 and revived the All-India Muslim League.

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.

In 1945, at the end of the war, Clement Atlee’s Labour government came to power with a novel policy for India.

Whereas Churchill had insisted that he would not preside over the dismemberment of the British Empire, Atlee concluded that in the context of the huge challenges of domestic post-war reconstruction, Britain’s grip on India was too weak to be sustained.

An ‘escape from empire’ had to be contrived.

The ‘Transfer of Power’ negotiations included leaders of the Muslim League, the Congress, and representatives of the British Cabinet (pictured here with Gandhi).

After months of efforts to reach a rapprochement between the Congress and the League, it became clear that the Congress was not willing to recognise the League as the representative of India’s Muslims or grant the safeguards it demanded on their behalf.

Lord Louis Mountbatten, sent out to oversee the handover of power, decided that instead of taking two years to organise the partition process, as was originally envisaged, he would wrap it up in under six months.

On 14 and 15 August 1947, India and Pakistan – which together had been the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire – became independent nations.

By the late 1960s, most of Britain’s empire around the world had been dismantled. In 1971, after a brief but brutal Liberation War, East Pakistan declared its independence as Bangladesh.

Pakistan and India flags raised at the border: National flags – among the most powerful and recognisable symbols of nationalism – were hoisted at the border post of Wagah, separating the two parts of divided Punjab. The daily lowering of Indian and Pakistani flags at Wagah – one of the main crossing points between the two nations – has become an extraordinary, theatrical, and highly charged spectacle, attracting audiences from far and wide. It represents a curious mix of aggressive jingoism and practical cooperation.

These silent films, from the Centre's collections, show refugees moving between the new borders of India and Pakistan. The footage was taken on both sides of Punjab's border during 1947.

Partition – rushed through in under three months – was accompanied by widespread violence, particularly in the province of Punjab.

About 750,000 people are thought to have died and more than 14 million people crossed the borders between India and Pakistan, in the single largest mass migration in human history.

Millions more fled their homes, seeking shelter in neighbouring regions where their co-religionists were clustered.

The new borders between India and Pakistan were not published until after partition, and so many did not know whether their district was now in India or in Pakistan; and the uncertainty aggravated the chaos and panic.

The governments of India and Pakistan assisted, as far as they were able, with the rehabilitation of the refugees from the Punjab and other areas deemed exceptionally ‘disturbed’.

But all other refugees had to rebuild their lives using their own networks of connections, and their meagre personal resources. Some did so with remarkable success.

However, the poorest among them, as well as unaccompanied widows and girls, fared less well, living for years in very basic camps.

Some of these camps still exist in India and remain home to refugee orphans and widows, particularly in divided Bengal, where refugees continue to flow across borders to the present day.

Colonel and Mrs Showers (with dog), Jaipur, 1910: This formal portrait of Colonel and Mrs Herbert Lionel Showers was taken while Colonel Showers was Officiating Resident of Jaipur in Rajasthan. Colonel Showers (1862-1916) was part of a long family line of officers in the British Indian Army from the late eighteenth century onwards. Mrs Showers, seen in this picture, first travelled to India in 1902, attended the Delhi Durbar in December that year, and married Herbert Lionel Showers – then in the Political Service in Nainital – the following year.

Colonel Showers (with dog), Jaipur, 1910: This formal portrait of Colonel and Mrs Herbert Lionel Showers was taken while Colonel Showers was Officiating Resident of Jaipur in Rajasthan. Colonel Showers (1862-1916) was part of a long family line of officers in the British Indian Army from the late eighteenth century onwards. Mrs Showers, seen in this picture, first travelled to India in 1902, attended the Delhi Durbar in December that year, and married Herbert Lionel Showers – then in the Political Service in Nainital – the following year.

The British sought to maintain a careful distance from most Indians, sheltering in ‘white towns’, clubs and cantonments. The wives of British officers ran households full of Indian servants, each with assigned tasks, and socialised only with other Britons of equal rank.

The richest collections in the archive at the Centre of South Asian Studies relate to the professional and social lives of Britons in colonial India. These materials reveal much about how power was exercised at different levels of government.

The Centre's documents and images throw light on the relationships imperial officers developed with influential Indians to help them rule on the ground, aided by mapping and census surveys. Princes, landlords, and chiefs were seen as bulwarks of British rule in this era, and the British carefully cultivated their loyalty.

British colonial power represented itself through theatrical rituals of power such as the durbar, and grandiose monuments of Lutyens’ Delhi, with its syncretic blend of Mughal and neo-classical architectural styles.

But in reality, the closest that most Indians got to the colonial state – particularly in rural regions (which, in 1947, were home to over 80% of the population) – was perhaps a post-box and the occasional visit of a district collector. How deeply colonial policies transformed the subcontinent is a subject that historians continue to debate.

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.

"Although Gandhi is still revered as a central figure, it is undeniably the case that at the time - and to this day - it's often the militant revolutionaries who have held the firmest grip on the imagination of the population.

"One simple reason is that the stories are captivating: people dressing up in disguises, smuggling themselves and weapons, and operating in secret.

"Gandhi's non-violent approach was not necessarily subscribed to by the entire population. Even today, there is a lasting iconography around figures like (revolutionary) Chandra Shekhar Azad who many saw as striking back at a colonial state that subjugated Indians both physically and psychologically.

"Our exhibition, using the remarkable and unique archives of the Centre of South Asian Studies, is a window on one of the defining and most tumultuous moments of the 20th century."

Freedom and Fragmentation: Images of Independence, Decolonisation and Partition runs until October 27, 2017 at the Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge.

Words: Stuart Roberts, Edward Anderson, Joya Chatterji

Film: Kevin Greenbank

Images: Centre of South Asian Studies, and the Partition Museum, Amritsar

Story design: Stuart Roberts

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Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi

‘India Discovers Herself Again’: The Full Text of Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Tryst With Destiny’ Speech

• Jawaharlal Nehru; and Sidharth Bhatia
• August 28, 2022

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‘Tryst With Destiny’: The Full Text of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speech

Jawaharlal Nehru

[Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, delivered a speech entitled “Tryst with Destiny” a little after midnight on 14 August 1947. Speaking from the ramparts of the historical Red Fort in Delhi, he addressed the speech to the Constituent Assembly and to millions of Indians as well. In this brief and passionate speech, he refers to many important issues concerning India’s past, present and future and dwells on the deeper raison d’etre of the upcoming freedom. He lauds the distinction of India in terms of its constant engagement with the spiritual quest it pursued from the dawn of history, celebrates the significance of the present moment and outlines what path India ought to pursue in future. It is a symbolic speech and has multiple implications having relevance even in the difficult circumstances that exist today. It is also a wonderful piece of literature.

The following is the text of the speech, produced in full.]

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.

The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.

The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for anyone of them to imagine that it can live apart.

Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. 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.

The appointed day has come – the day appointed by destiny – and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

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.

We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be.

We are citizens of a great country, on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service. Jai Hind.

[Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was India’s first prime minister.]

In another article printed in The Wire, “ India’s New Tryst With Destiny Has No Place for Jawaharlal Nehru ”, Sidharth Bhatia writes (extract):

At midnight of August 14, 1947, the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru stood in Parliament and read out a speech that has become iconic, one that still has the capacity to raise goosebumps in everyone who reads or listens to it even today. “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom,” he said.

Seventy-five years later, as that moment is being celebrated around the country with all the fervour of a government-mandated programme and people wave (polyester) flags from their windows, Nehru is conspicuous by his absence. Not only is his name and image been banished from all official communication, we get to see his photo behind chains in the offices of the National Herald , a newspaper he founded and which has now been partially sealed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

As if to further emphasise the unimportance of the man, his descendants have been questioned for hours by the ED, his great-grandchildren forcibly picked up from their protests by the Delhi police, and a large contingent of cops deployed outside Sonia Gandhi’s house.

If the Narendra Modi government wanted to make a statement that the Nehru-Gandhis don’t matter anymore and that Jawaharlal Nehru himself matters even less, it managed to make it, at least as far as Sanghis are concerned. For the entire optics of the sealing of the Herald and rough treatment of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi fulfil the most perverse fantasies of the Sanghi mind, where the myth of their treachery, starting from Nehru onwards, is firmly lodged, history be damned.

And what better way to attack them than to deploy the Brahmastra of the Modi government, the ED. This investigative body has been used freely against the political enemies of the government and the BJP – in Maharashtra, against Sanjay Raut, the most voluble critic of both, in West Bengal, against Mamata Banerjee’s minister and also a nephew, and on the national level, the Gandhis, who have been attacking Modi personally and his government. The CBI may be a caged parrot, but the ED is, at least for the moment, a guided missile that is being sent out repeatedly against those who the government finds inconvenient or irritating.

Mayawati was silenced three years ago when the ED opened an enquiry on the ‘memorial scam’, but the Gandhis seem to be made of sterner stuff and have continued to go after Modi. Priyanka Gandhi, surrounded by police personnel and about to be hauled crudely by them, chanted, “ Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai (Whenever Modi is scared, he pushes the police forward).” That must hurt. It is now certain that they cannot expect an invitation to any celebration marking the 75th year of independence.

The anniversary meanwhile has been reduced to two distinct themes: the hailing of the chief and his many putative achievements, and the waving of the flag, literally. Exhortations have come from on-high that the flag must be kept outside everyone’s homes so that the nation is united and those who are on various social media platforms should use the flag as part of their DP (display picture). This particular digital DP – or even inspirational quotes from Modi – can be downloaded from a website, which asks for all kinds of personal details such as location and contact details. As the advocacy organisation Internet Freedom Foundation warns, this has some serious implications.

Of course, in the name of #AzaadikaAmritMahotsav and our own patriotism, we may not mind handing over this personal data to yet another government body. That bus has left a long time ago.

There are some ironies here though. Consider that the organisation that Mr Modi belongs to, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, took no part in the freedom struggle and even more ironically, till now, did not recognise the Tiranga. While Modi is now asking his fellow citizens to wave this flag enthusiastically, the RSS has not hoisted it for 52 years. The elders of the RSS had found the colours of the tricolour deeply offensive because they represented the nation’s diversity. The national flag, according to the RSS, should have consisted only of the bhagwa (saffron) and not also the much-hated green.

Apart from the many images of Modi, the website showcases many activities including rangoli competition, stories of ‘unsung heroes’ and downloads of images and Modi quotes. Ditto, the new song, ‘Har Ghar Tiranga‘, which is not about India’s achievements over 75 years, but the pet themes of this dispensation – yoga, outsized statues (of Shiva and Vallabhai Patel, among others), Swachh Bharat, ending with many images of, who else, but the current prime minister. The template is the same as ‘ Mile Sur Mera Tumhara ’ – the past never really goes away.

But in all this patriotic fervour, one would be hard put to get anything about Nehru, even on the website. He has simply been airbrushed away, somewhat like the removal of purged leaders from photographs in the old Soviet Union. As far as Narendra Modi and his government are concerned, Jawaharlal Nehru simply does not exist.

Keeping that in mind, the “chaining” of Nehru, the police action on the Gandhi siblings and the virtual house arrest of Sonia Gandhi, make perfect sense. The presence of the Gandhis is inconvenient for the current prime minister. But he cannot wish them away. And as far as Nehru is concerned, his resounding “Tryst with Destiny” speech will still resonate and inspire Indians for many more years, far beyond this Amrit Mahotsav with its limited shelf life.

(Sidharth Bhatia is a journalist and writer based in Mumbai and is a Founding Editor of The Wire.)

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Tryst with destiny: What went into the crafting of Nehru’s historic speech on the eve of independence

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.”

Key Highlights

• Unlike the prime ministers who came after him, Nehru was generally disinclined towards the idea of his speeches being written by someone else
• Nehru’s private secretary MO Mathai would complain that the PM spent too much time “in dictating letters and drafting or dictating statements and speeches”
• Nehru delivered his 'Tryst with destiny' speech to the Constituent Assembly close to the midnight hour on 14 August 1947

Jawaharlal Nehru’s historic speech on the eve of Independence is widely regarded as one of the great speeches of the 20 th century. It had it all – soaring rhetoric, a shrewd understanding of the power of language (English in this case), and a sweeping sense that this was a speech for the ages.

The speech had to both honour the sacrifices of the past that led to this moment and lay out a vision for the future, a future that still had to be written as a country, a civilization took re-birth. It had to belong to the present and the future.

Most of the boxes were ticked.  The first prime minister of India delivered the speech to the Constituent Assembly close to the midnight hour on 14 August 1947.

“Long years ago,” Nehru began, “we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new -- when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India, and her people, and to the still larger cause of humanity.”  

Nehru liked to write his own speeches

Unlike the prime ministers who came after him, Nehru was generally disinclined towards the idea of his speeches being written by someone else. Though he was compelled to take help in his speeches in his long tenure as prime minister, especially while delivering to a foreign audience (every turn of phrase counts in international relations), many of the speeches were his own.

Nehru’s private secretary MO Mathai would complain that the PM spent too much time “in dictating letters and drafting or dictating statements and speeches”.

The ‘Tryst with destiny’ speech was signature Nehru, crafted by his own hands.

The first prime minister also liked to speak extempore. Another one of his famous speeches – the ‘Light has gone out’ broadcast to the nation on radio when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated – was extempore.

While this was perhaps the more heartfelt speech given the sadness that had descended on the nation,  ‘Tryst with destiny’ has the power to speak directly to us after all these decades.

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