#Nehru speech at the stroke of midnight full#

Those hastily drawn borders by the British became the focus of four wars and seven decades of animosity between India and Pakistan. Nehru ruled for 17 years and died on May 27, 1964. Jinnah, who “brought about, almost single-handed, one of the most sweeping political transformations of the century in Asia,” The Times wrote, died the same year, on Sept. Gandhi’s death “left all India stunned and bewildered as to the direction that this newly independent nation would take without its ‘Mahatma’ (Great Teacher),” wrote The New York Times.

30, 1948, Gandhi, who remained the strongest advocate for peace, was assassinated by a Hindu extremist who opposed his ideology. About the same number of Hindus and Sikhs went mostly east into the new India.

Millions of Muslims fled India, most heading west. Up to 15 million people moved across the two borders in less than a year, one of the fastest mass migrations in history. The borders were announced two days after independence: Hindu-majority India flanked by Muslim-majority West Pakistan and East Pakistan. Communities that had lived together for centuries viciously turned on each other. Those stirring words met the occasion, but had no effect on the swirling chaos on the ground as mobs sought on their own to determine the religious makeup of towns and villages. Nearing the conclusion, he said, “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.”

#Nehru speech at the stroke of midnight full#

“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,” he began. 15, 1947, Nehru, Gandhi’s successor at the helm of the independence movement and India’s first prime minister, was inside Parliament in New Delhi delivering an address recognized as one of the greatest of the 20th century. Shortly before the clock struck midnight on Aug. But it prolonged the uncertainty for millions and very likely increased the loss of life to come. He didn’t want the British to be blamed for any ensuing violence. 9, he finished drawing the map, but the British viceroy, his superior, kept it a secret. The British negotiated with the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, who believed that a separate state was the only way to protect the rights of Muslims, who were a minority and the (mostly Hindu) Indian National Congress, led by Nehru, who grudgingly went along with the British decision to divide India on the basis of religion.Ĭyril Radcliffe, who had never been to Asia, arrived in India 36 days before the date of the partition to draw the lines to split one of world’s largest and most ethnically diverse countries. Gandhi, more an idealist than a realist, wanted an undivided nation he chose to remain out of government.

Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah were divided on what should happen once the British left. They reluctantly relinquished India after 200 years, leaving the country at the brink of implosion. Their efforts were kept in check by ruthless military force, but by the end of World War II, Britain lacked the will and the means to defeat the campaign.

Indians had struggled for decades to rid themselves of British rule, galvanized by the nonviolent movement led by Gandhi. But there was a fatal flaw: There were no borders. 15, 1947, power over one-fifth of humanity was transferred from Britain to the newly independent countries of India and Pakistan. This day - a moment, really - in history belongs to these leaders: Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.Īt the stroke of midnight on Aug. While the world was consumed with war in the first half of the 1940s, three men were subsumed with growing unrest across India, with the fates of tens of millions of their compatriots in their hands.