At the Stroke of the Midnight Hour

The hall was full, and the clock was moving towards midnight.

It was the night of 14 August 1947, in New Delhi. Inside the great round building of the Council House, now India's old Parliament House, the members of the Constituent Assembly sat in their places. They were the men and women chosen to write the laws of a new country. Outside, in the warm, damp monsoon night, crowds filled the streets, waiting.

For nearly two hundred years, much of India had been ruled by Britain. In a few minutes, that rule would end.

The long road

The struggle for independence had lasted for generations. Millions of people had taken part: in marches and strikes, in the Salt March of 1930, in the Quit India movement of 1942. Tens of thousands had gone to prison. Many had given their lives.

After the Second World War, Britain was exhausted and could no longer hold on to its empire. In 1947, the British government announced that it would leave India by the middle of August.

But freedom came with a terrible price. Leaders of the Muslim League had demanded a separate country for India's Muslims, and in the end the British, the Congress and the League agreed to divide the land. Two new countries would be born: India, and Pakistan. The provinces of Punjab, in the west, and Bengal, in the east, would be cut in two.

The session begins

The special session of the Assembly began at eleven o'clock that night. It opened with the singing of "Vande Mataram", the song of the freedom movement, sung by Sucheta Kripalani, who had herself been to prison for the cause. Members stood in silence to remember those who had died in the struggle.

Then Jawaharlal Nehru, who was about to become India's first Prime Minister, rose to speak.

He spoke in English, in a calm and serious voice. His speech has become one of the most famous ever given in India. It began:

"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 "tryst" is a promise to meet. Nehru meant that India had long ago promised itself freedom, and now the time had come to keep that promise.

He reminded the members that freedom was not a time for rest. It brought duties: to end poverty, ignorance, disease and inequality, and to serve the millions of ordinary people of India. He spoke of Mahatma Gandhi's wish to wipe every tear from every eye.

Midnight

As the clock struck twelve, someone in the hall blew a conch shell, the ancient sound that opens prayers and ceremonies in India. The members rose and took a pledge to dedicate themselves to the service of India and her people.

Outside, the crowds cheered. Fireworks lit the sky. In cities and villages across the country, people stayed awake to hear the news, and lamps were lit on rooftops.

The next morning, 15 August 1947, Nehru was sworn in as Prime Minister. That evening, the new flag of India, saffron, white and green with a wheel at its centre, was raised in front of an enormous, joyful crowd in New Delhi.

The man who was not there

One person who had done more than almost anyone to win that freedom was not in Delhi at all.

Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta, in a poor neighbourhood called Beliaghata, staying in an old house together with a Muslim leader, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. The city had been torn by terrible riots between Hindus and Muslims, and Gandhi had gone there to try to bring peace. On 15 August, he did not celebrate. He spent the day fasting, spinning and praying.

He knew what was happening in other places. As the new borders were announced, millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims found themselves on the "wrong" side of a line drawn on a map. They left their homes, their land and their neighbours, and set out on foot, in bullock carts and in overcrowded trains for the other country. In the violence that followed, a vast number of people were killed, and families were broken apart forever.

Both at once

The night of 14 and 15 August 1947 is remembered with great pride in India. Every year, on Independence Day, the Prime Minister raises the flag at the Red Fort in Delhi, and children across the country sing and march.

It is also remembered, quietly, as a time of grief, on both sides of the new borders.

Both memories are true. Freedom was won, and it was worth winning. And the hope Nehru spoke of that night, of a country that served every one of its people, is a promise still being kept.

Want to read more?

Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi begins with the night of independence and tells the story of the years that followed. Yasmin Khan's The Great Partition is a clear and humane history of how India and Pakistan were divided. Nehru's whole speech is in the official record of the Constituent Assembly debates.