India honours fight for freedom as it marks 71st anniversary of independence
INDIA celebrated the 71st anniversary of independence on August 15. After around almost 200 years of colonial rule and the struggle for freedom, helmed ably by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and millions of others, India awoke to freedom on August 15, 1947.
The treasured moment arrived after trials and tribulations of extraordinary measure and sacrifice by millions of Indians over almost two centuries. It filled Indians with unsurpassable joy, albeit pierced with the pain of partition of the country and pregnant possibilities of the course of the future.
The first prime minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, expressed this mood of the nation through his famous “Tryst of Destiny” speech to the constituent assembly on midnight of August 14, the eve of independence in the Indian parliament. While the speech deserves reproduction in full, the first paragraph lays out the broad contours of the struggles of the past, enormity of the present and anxieties for the future:
“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.”
On August 15, 1947, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the Indian national flag (Tiranga or Tricolour) at the Lahori Gate of Red Fort, the historic monument in the heart of Delhi which was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1639.
The red sandstone fort served as seat of the Mughal Empire for more than 200 years, until the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was exiled to Rangoon by the colonial rulers after the 1857 war of independence. Red Fort had been associated with India’s struggle for independence in more than one way.
Besides its association with the 1857 war of independence, three captured officers of the Indian National Army (INA) – Colonel Prem Kumar Sahgal, Colonel Shah Nawaz Khan and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon – were imprisoned and put on public trial at Red Fort in December 1945. The trials that followed became famously known as the “INA Trials” and served to mobilise public support for struggle heroes and against colonisers.
The trials took the wave of nationalist fervour to a crescendo.
The coincidence that the three officers put on trial belonged to the three major religions of India – Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism respectively – reinforced the message of unity in the face of the long-standing colonial policy of “divide and rule”.
Since then, successive Indian prime ministers have been addressing the nation from the ramparts of Red Fort every August 15. These speeches have become policy statements of the government of the day, as well as a road map of the future. They are a barometer of the priority areas.
This occasion has also been used by leaders to exhort citizens to rise for the good of the nation.
Red Fort bore testimony to the remarkable call of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” (Hail the soldiers, hail the farmers) by Lal Bahadur Shastri against the backdrop of war and grain shortage crisis in 1965, exhortation to people’s power by Morarji Desai and Indira Gandhi’s allusion to India’s glorious past, which was “studded with achievements”.
Rajiv Gandhi, seeking strength from diversity of India and calling to develop India “into a great power in the world, but not like other great powers that have risen by suppressing others”, Atal Bihari Vajpayee expounding on his vision of India: “an India free of hunger and fear, an India free of illiteracy and want.”
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh spoke about ridding India of “poverty, hunger, disease and ignorance” during his Independence Day speech in 2013. It was on August 15, 2014, from Red Fort, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the call of “Clean India” as the best tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary in 2019.
Continuing the glorious tradition, Modi spoke to the nation from the ramparts of Red Fort on August 15 this year and lauded our own “Tarini girls”: “Our daughters from the states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have come back after circumnavigating the seven seas.
They have returned after unfurling the Tricolour in the seven seas, colouring their waters with the hues of our Tricolour.”
As readers are aware, six women officers circumnavigating the globe on a sailing boat, INSV Tarini, visited Cape Town in March this year for their final port call before heading home to Goa in India.
The prime minister also complimented the Indian women and young tribal children from remote forest areas who unfurled the Tricolour atop Mount Everest, extolling the role of all sections of society in the nation-building process.
The prime minister also expressed his impatience to take India ahead in all respects and lead the world in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – his restlessness because of malnutrition in the country, which is a major hurdle in the development of children, and his eagerness to ensure adequate health cover for the disadvantaged.
In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, democracy is something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong. While we celebrated the 71st anniversary of our independence on Wednesday, the quest for real independence in a true sense – equal opportunity for all – continues unabated and in full measure.
Shukla is Consul-General of India in Cape Town