India's First Independence Day Celebrations in Delhi AUGUST 15, 1947

JAI HIND...India's First Independence Day Celebrations in Delhi AUGUST 15, 1947

India's First Independence Day Celebrations in Delhi AUGUST 15, 1947...IN PICS

Tryst with Destiny was a speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India. The speech was made to the Indian Constituent Assembly, on the eve of India's independence, towards midnight on August 14, 1947. It focuses on the aspects that transcend India's history. It is considered in modern India to be a landmark oration that captures the essence of the triumphant culmination of the hundred-year Indian freedom struggle against the British Empire in India.
.................................................. ..................

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 materializes. 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 sorrowstricken 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 [Gandhi], 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.

Tryst with destiny - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

India's First Independence Day Celebrations in Delhi AUGUST 15, 1947...IN PICS

video of part of the nehru speech-

india gains independance - rare video

Eleven days before returning independence to India, Lord Mountbatten works with his advisors to divide India peaceably




British Flag replaced by Indian Flag on Aug 15th, 1947

Times of India

MK Gandhi's Speech (Real un-edited Voice) at geneva.

the power of ONE

The words of Mahatma Gandhi!!

Nehruvian Moments



Mahatma Gandhi in conversation with Pandit Nehru at Howrah Station before Gandhiji's departure from Calcutta



Congress President Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru engaged in a brief conversation, before the latter announced his resignation from the Congress presidentship. Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, and Babu Rajendra Prasad can be seen in the background.


THE TRICOLOUR: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Vice President, Interim Government, holds the silk flag. The flag was adopted as the national flag by the constitutent assembly at New Delhi.

INDUSTRIALISING INDIA



Jawaharlal Nehru, who declared open the Indian Rare Earths Factory at Alwaye, Travancore - Cochin, is on a conducted of the factory. (Left to right) : Dr.H.J.Bhabha, Dr.S.S.Bhatnagar, Shri K.R.K. Menon, Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, The Rajpramukh of Travancore-Cochin and Shri Lal Bhahadur Shastri.

BUILDING INSTITUTIONS


Dr. Rajendra Prasad, opened the new building of the Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi on January 31, 1959. Photo shows the President and the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, with members of the Executive Council and staff of the Institute

POLITICS OF THE DAY



Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammed Ali Jinnah about to leave for Birla House, Delhi, to see Mahatma Gandhi in this undated photo.

COUNTDOWN TO FREEDOM



Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his six colleagues who were sworn in on Sept. 2, 1946 as members of the Interim Government met the press informally the same afternoon. Pandit Nehru addressed the press for half an hour on the tasks before the new Government formed by him
MAKING A REPUBLIC


The Britain's Prime Minister, Clement Attlee enjoys a joke with Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian Premier, and Dr. Daniel Malan, South African Premier, at the sherry party given at No.10, Downing Street, London. The Commonwealth Premiers met to discuss India's decision to become a republic.

MEETING THE NIZAM

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru welcomed by His Exalted Highness, the Nizam of Hyderabad at King Kothi Palace in Hyderabad on Dec. 25, 1948, when the Prime Minister called on the Nizam.