'Long ago we made a tryst with destiny'
'Long ago we made a tryst with destiny'
Jawaharlal Nehru's jewel encrusted first eight words to Tryst with Destiny, one of the greatest speeches of all time. Indian independence was achieved 77 years ago tomorrow.
This speech is impossibly grand, and wonderful.
It was delivered by Nehru, a man who had been a leader of the independence movement for decades, who had gone to jail on multiple occasions for his uncompromising commitment to freedom, a diplomat who brought the independence cause to the wider world, and the elected leader who would the next day become India’s first prime minister.
The speech was delivered to the Indian Constituent Assembly, as the minutes ticked down towards the end of British rule.
The phrase ‘tryst with destiny’ has that magical elevation that puts words to the mood of the nation — that this was a moment like no other, the culmination of a centuries long struggle, a crowning achievement.
I’m trying to think of other speeches that attempted to define a revolutionary national moment. There’s Kwame Nkrumah’s Independence Day speech for Ghana in 1957. Thabo Mbeki’s uplifting ‘I am an African’ on the adoption of the new post-apartheid constitution in 1997. There’s Patrick Pearse’s Easter Uprising speech declaring a new government and an independent Ireland, so poignant and moving given Pearse’s near certain knowledge that the people weren’t rising with him, that this would be a stepping stone not an end point.
But for mine, Nehru’s birth of a nation speech is the best speech of this type ever delivered. It’s first paragraph is the most famous part:
‘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 supressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of Inida and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
Such poetic language, the sort that belongs to the era of Churchill, Roosevelt and Bevan, where orators could strive for long form excellence, rather than a memorable sound bite for the news cycle or social media. It’s also lofty, ambitious, poetic, literary, and unapologetically pitched beyond the writiing or speaking capability of the ordinary person. It works because at an elevated moment like this, there’s something inspiring about hearing words climbing towards heaven.
My favourite bit is the reference to midnight, the moment of independence. ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom’. Nehru is eyeing the moment, the second, when this transformation will occur, and he gives voice to it.
I’ll place the entire transcript below. Happy Independence Day for tomorrow India!
Best wishes
Tony
I wrote a story about attending the Kolkata test in 2001, that on my personal newsletter, Good one, Wilson!
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Jawaharlal Nehru: 'Tryst with Destiny', Independence for India - 1947
14 August 1947, Dehli, India
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 supressed, 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 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 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 any one 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 materializes. 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 sorrowstricken 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 [Gandhi], 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 [or] 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.
Gandhi biographer Ram Guha was a fabulous guest on episode 3 of the Speakola podcast, talking about five speeches of Gandhi.