Indias "Tryst With Destiny".

This speech was made by Jawaharlal Nehru, to the Indian Constituent Assembly,towards midnight on August 14, 1947.It celebrates the liberation of India from the colonial cluthes of the British Empire.It is regarded as a monumental oration in Indian history...Please read on and feel proud to be an 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 [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........(Inspiration)