A Tryst with Destiny
The speech delivered by India’s first Prime Minister
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on August 15, 1947 on India’s 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.
Pandit Nehru |
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.
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. |
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 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 [Mahatma 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 [or] 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 |