celebrations in Delhi.
refugees uprooted by the hasty partition.
August 15, 1947: India gains independence from Great Britain.
On August 14 and 15 of 1947, the Parliament of the United Kingdom partitioned the former British India into the new independent dominions of Pakistan and India. Independence movements had existed in India for as long as colonialism had; in 1858, the Rebellion of 1857 (AKA the First War of Independence) ended the rule of the British East India Company, and the British government thereafter assumed direct control over the Indian subcontinent. A diverse, heterogeneous movement arose in response to British colonialism after company rule ended. At the head of the independence movement were leaders like Mohandas Gandhi, who promoted civil disobedience and non-violence; Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the earliest popular leaders of the independence movement; Subhas Chandra Bose, who formed a nationalist military force to drive out foreign powers; Sahajanad Saraswati, a critic of Gandhi’s and adamant social reformer, and many others.
In July of 1947 the efforts of the revolutionaries (and their affiliated organizations and movements) culminated in the Indian Independence Act of 1947. On the eve of August 15, India’s independence day, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru delivered his “Tryst with Destiny” speech. An excerpt:
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.
Unfortunately, the two nations’ newly-acquired independence was marred by the bloody conflict that followed.