Today, when
India completes its Seventy years of freedom, we remember that precious moment
when Independent India’s first Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru delivered
his first speech breathing in the air of Independence.
Here’s the
complete speech “Tryst with Destiny” by Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, which was given
by him at the midnight on 15th August, 1947, when the country was
celebrating its Independence.
“Long years ago we made a tryst
with destiny, and now that time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not
wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of today's
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 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 with some pride.
At the dawn of history India started on her unending
quest, and trackless centuries which are filled with her striving and the
grandeur of her successes and her failures. Through good and ill fortunes alike
she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her
strength. We end today a period of ill fortunes 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 might fulfill 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 people are too closely knit together today
for anyone of them to imagine that it can live apart.
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.
A new star rises, the star of freedom in the east, a new
hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materialises. May the star never
set and that hope never be betrayed by!
On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this
freedom, the father of our nation, 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. We
shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind
or stormy the tempest.
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.
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.”
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