‘Tryst With Destiny’: The Full Text of Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speech

Jawaharlal Nehru

[Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, delivered a speech entitled “Tryst with Destiny” a little after midnight on 14 August 1947. Speaking from the ramparts of the historical Red Fort in Delhi, he addressed the speech to the Constituent Assembly and to millions of Indians as well. In this brief and passionate speech, he refers to many important issues concerning India’s past, present and future and dwells on the deeper raison d’etre of the upcoming freedom. He lauds the distinction of India in terms of its constant engagement with the spiritual quest it pursued from the dawn of history, celebrates the significance of the present moment and outlines what path India ought to pursue in future. It is a symbolic speech and has multiple implications having relevance even in the difficult circumstances that exist today. It is also a wonderful piece of literature.

The following is the text of the speech, produced in full.]

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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 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.

[Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was India’s first prime minister.]

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In another article printed in The Wire, “India’s New Tryst With Destiny Has No Place for Jawaharlal Nehru”, Sidharth Bhatia writes (extract):

At midnight of August 14, 1947, the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru stood in Parliament and read out a speech that has become iconic, one that still has the capacity to raise goosebumps in everyone who reads or listens to it even today. “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,” he said.

Seventy-five years later, as that moment is being celebrated around the country with all the fervour of a government-mandated programme and people wave (polyester) flags from their windows, Nehru is conspicuous by his absence. Not only is his name and image been banished from all official communication, we get to see his photo behind chains in the offices of the National Herald, a newspaper he founded and which has now been partially sealed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

As if to further emphasise the unimportance of the man, his descendants have been questioned for hours by the ED, his great-grandchildren forcibly picked up from their protests by the Delhi police, and a large contingent of cops deployed outside Sonia Gandhi’s house.

If the Narendra Modi government wanted to make a statement that the Nehru-Gandhis don’t matter anymore and that Jawaharlal Nehru himself matters even less, it managed to make it, at least as far as Sanghis are concerned. For the entire optics of the sealing of the Herald and rough treatment of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi fulfil the most perverse fantasies of the Sanghi mind, where the myth of their treachery, starting from Nehru onwards, is firmly lodged, history be damned.

And what better way to attack them than to deploy the Brahmastra of the Modi government, the ED. This investigative body has been used freely against the political enemies of the government and the BJP – in Maharashtra, against Sanjay Raut, the most voluble critic of both, in West Bengal, against Mamata Banerjee’s minister and also a nephew, and on the national level, the Gandhis, who have been attacking Modi personally and his government. The CBI may be a caged parrot, but the ED is, at least for the moment, a guided missile that is being sent out repeatedly against those who the government finds inconvenient or irritating.

Mayawati was silenced three years ago when the ED opened an enquiry on the ‘memorial scam’, but the Gandhis seem to be made of sterner stuff and have continued to go after Modi. Priyanka Gandhi, surrounded by police personnel and about to be hauled crudely by them, chanted, “Jab jab Modi darta hai, police ko aage karta hai (Whenever Modi is scared, he pushes the police forward).” That must hurt. It is now certain that they cannot expect an invitation to any celebration marking the 75th year of independence.

The anniversary meanwhile has been reduced to two distinct themes: the hailing of the chief and his many putative achievements, and the waving of the flag, literally. Exhortations have come from on-high that the flag must be kept outside everyone’s homes so that the nation is united and those who are on various social media platforms should use the flag as part of their DP (display picture). This particular digital DP – or even inspirational quotes from Modi – can be downloaded from a website, which asks for all kinds of personal details such as location and contact details. As the advocacy organisation Internet Freedom Foundation warns, this has some serious implications.

Of course, in the name of #AzaadikaAmritMahotsav and our own patriotism, we may not mind handing over this personal data to yet another government body. That bus has left a long time ago.

There are some ironies here though. Consider that the organisation that Mr Modi belongs to, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, took no part in the freedom struggle and even more ironically, till now, did not recognise the Tiranga. While Modi is now asking his fellow citizens to wave this flag enthusiastically, the RSS has not hoisted it for 52 years. The elders of the RSS had found the colours of the tricolour deeply offensive because they represented the nation’s diversity. The national flag, according to the RSS, should have consisted only of the bhagwa (saffron) and not also the much-hated green.

Apart from the many images of Modi, the website showcases many activities including rangoli competition, stories of ‘unsung heroes’ and downloads of images and Modi quotes. Ditto, the new song, ‘Har Ghar Tiranga‘, which is not about India’s achievements over 75 years, but the pet themes of this dispensation – yoga, outsized statues (of Shiva and Vallabhai Patel, among others), Swachh Bharat, ending with many images of, who else, but the current prime minister. The template is the same as ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ – the past never really goes away.

But in all this patriotic fervour, one would be hard put to get anything about Nehru, even on the website. He has simply been airbrushed away, somewhat like the removal of purged leaders from photographs in the old Soviet Union. As far as Narendra Modi and his government are concerned, Jawaharlal Nehru simply does not exist.

Keeping that in mind, the “chaining” of Nehru, the police action on the Gandhi siblings and the virtual house arrest of Sonia Gandhi, make perfect sense. The presence of the Gandhis is inconvenient for the current prime minister. But he cannot wish them away. And as far as Nehru is concerned, his resounding “Tryst with Destiny” speech will still resonate and inspire Indians for many more years, far beyond this Amrit Mahotsav with its limited shelf life.

(Sidharth Bhatia is a journalist and writer based in Mumbai and is a Founding Editor of The Wire.)