It has been said that if Nehru had not become a politician, he could have been one of the world's most famous writers. Even going by the few books he wrote like Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, and the thousands of letters that have been collected in various anthologies, there was never any doubt that he was among the great men of letters of the last century. So it was not surprising that when called upon to make the defining speech of India's independence struggle, on the midnight of August 14, the great man came up with a little gem that would be etched on the nation's consciousness for a long time. 'Tryst With Destiny ... ' stands out along with the likes of Lincoln's Gettysburg address as a masterpiece of modern day oratory. Lyrical in its construct, moving in its tone, optimistic in its outlook, and far reaching in its impact - the speech still stands out as one of the most eloquent summaries of India's past, present and future, compressed into just 1093 words.
For most people who know the speech by its first few lines, here we present the full text, along with two recent descriptions of the moments and the drama that led to its creation and delivery.
Alex von Tunzelmann writing in her recent book Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire says, "Inside the chamber of the Constituent Assembly on the night of 14 August 1947, two thousand princes and politicians from across the one and a quarter million square miles that remained of India sat together on parliamentary benches. Yet amid all the power and finery, two persons were conspicuous by their absence. One was Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, who was in one of those parts of the empire that had just become Pakistan. His absence signified the partition of the subcontinent, the split which had ripped two wings off the body of India and called them West and East Pakistan (later Pakistan and Bangladesh), creating Muslim homelands separate from the predominantly Hindu mass of the territory. The other truant was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was sound asleep in a smashed-up mansion in a riot -tom suburb of Calcutta.
"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 ... "
THE FULL 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 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 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 [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 anyone 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 ought 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:'