The first time I came across it was when I was in Standard
IX in KV, Vasco da Gama, Goa. I like to read this speech at least once in
a year usually on the eve of our 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 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 success 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 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 materialises. 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, 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 and 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.
