Independence Day Greetings | Independence Day Patriotic Songs & Wallpapers

"Gandhi's absence was a worrying omen. The seventy-seven-year-old Mahatma, or 'great soul; was the most famous and the most popular Indian since Buddha. Regarded as little short of a saint among Christians as well as Hindus, he had been a staunch defender of the British Empire until the 1920s. Since then, he had campaigned for Indian self- rule. Many times it had been almost within his grasp: in 1922, 1931, 1942,1946. Each time he had let it go. Now, finally, India was free, but that had nothing to do with Gandhi - and Gandhi would have nothing to do with it. "In the chamber the dignitaries fell silent as the foremost among them, Jawaharlal Nehru, stepped up to make one of the most famous speeches in history. At fifty-seven years, Nehru had grown into his role as India’s leading statesman. His last prison term had finished exactly twenty-six months before. The fair skin and fine bone structure of an aristocratic Kashmiri Brahmin was rendered approachable by a ready smile and warm laugh. Dark, sleepy, soulful eyes belied a quick wit and quicker temper. In him were all the virtues of the ancient nation, filtered through the best aspects of the British Empire: confidence, sophistication and charisma. "Long years ago;' he 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 substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom." The clock struck, and, in that instant, he became the new county’s first prime minister. The reverential mood in the hall was broken abruptly by an unexpected honk from the back. The dignitaries jerked their heads around to the source of the sound, and a look of relief passed over their faces as they saw a devout Hindu member of the assembly blowing into a conch shell- an invocation of the gods. Mildred Talbot, a journalist who was present, noticed that the interruption had not daunted the new prime minister. 'When I happened to spot Nehru just as he was turning away, he was trying to hide a smile by covering his mouth with his hand:
"It was the culmination of a lifetime's struggle; and yet, as Nehru later confided to his sister, his mind had not been on the splendid words. A few hours before, he had received a telephone call from Lahore in what was about to become West Pakistan. It was his mother's hometown and a place where he had spent much of his childhood. Now it was being torn apart. Gangs of Muslims and Sikhs had clashed in the streets. The main gurdwara-the Sikh temple-was ablaze. One hundred thousand people were trapped inside the city walls without water or medical assistance. Violence was a much-predicted consequence of the handover, but preparations for dealing with it had been catastrophically inadequate. The only help available in Lahore was from two hundred Gurkhas, stationed nearby, under the command of an inexperienced British captain who was only twenty years old. They had little chance of stopping the carnage. The horror of that night in Lahore set the tone for weeks of bloodshed and destruction. Perhaps the Hindu astrologers had been right when they had declared 14 August to be an inauspicious date. Or perhaps the viceroy's curious decision to rush independence through ten months ahead of the British government's schedule was to blame ... "
And writing recently in the British daily, Guardian, the renowned journalist Ian Jack had this to say:

"Independence day was set. For August 15.Then the astrologers said August 14 was the more auspicious date. Nehru compromised. India's assembly would be convened on the afternoon of August 14 and continue in session until Nehru's speech shortly before midnight, when, to the chiming of an English dock and the blowing of Indian conch shells, independent India would be born. Dressed in a golden silk jacket with a red rose in the buttonhole, Nehru rose to speak. His sentences were finely made and memorable Nehru was a good writer; his Discovery of India stands well above the level reached by most politician-writers. Nehru was then 57 and widowed after what had been an unhappy arranged marriage. He spoke in the language that came naturally to him, an English acquired through Harrow, Cambridge, the Inner Temple. There were poetic, Edwardian touches - the "tryst with destiny'; the "midnight hour" - and the odd poetic license: "the world sleeps" hardly applied to Britain, where it was early evening, or America, which was having lunch.

"Some footnotes are in order. When Nehru says the pledge for freedom will be redeemed "not wholly or in full measure" he is referring to partition. When he refers to "the greatest man of our generation ... the architect of this freedom, the father of our nation" he means Gandhi. When he mentions the "pains that continue even now" he has in mind the slaughter between Hindus and Muslims that began the previous year and which was becoming crueller and bloodier. As Nehru spoke, he was aware drat Sir Cyril Radcliffe had delivered the report that would clumsily define the new boundaries of India and Pakistan and split the Sikh Punjab into two. Mountbatten insisted it was kept quiet until after August 15 ... "