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Jawaharlal Nehru, gave
this following speech as India's first Prime Minister to the
Constituent Assembly in New Delhi at midnight on August 14, 1947.
Though this speech is full of ideals and embellishments to inspire a
nation, about to make a new beginning, it is historic and can be
recognized as the first voice of Independent India.
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'Awake to freedom'
"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 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, then 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 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 successes 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. That
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 so long as there are tears and suffering, so
long our work will not be over.
And so we have to labor 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
imagines 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 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."
-- Speech by Jawaharlal
Nehru
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