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that Jawaharlal Nehru was chosen President of the Congress, in confirmation of his rapidly rising status within the Indian national movement. Born in 1889, twenty years after Gandhi, Nehru was a product of Harrow and Cambridge who had become a close protégé of the Mahatma. He was intelligent and articulate, knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and with a particular appeal to the young.
    In his autobiography Nehru recalled how ‘Independence Day came, January 26th, 1930, and it revealed to us, as in a flash, the earnest and enthusiastic mood of the country. There was something vastly impressive about the great gatherings everywhere, peacefully and solemnly taking the pledge of independence without any speeches or exhortation.’ 2 In a press statement that he issued the day after, Nehru ‘respectfully congratulate[d] the nation on the success of the solemn and orderly demonstrations’. Towns and villages had ‘vied with each other in showing their enthusiastic adherence to independence’. Mammoth gatherings were held in Calcutta and Bombay, but the meetings in smaller towns were well attended too. 3
    Every year after 1930, Congress-minded Indians celebrated 26 January as Independence Day. However, when the British finally left thesubcontinent, they chose to hand over power on 15 August 1947. This date was selected by the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, as it was the second anniversary of the Japanese surrender to the Allied Forces in the Second World War. He, and the politicians waiting to take office, were unwilling to delay until the date some others would have preferred – 26 January 1948.
    So freedom finally came on a day that resonated with imperial pride rather than nationalist sentiment. In New Delhi, capital of the Raj and of free India, the formal events began shortly before midnight. Apparently, astrologers had decreed that 15 August was an inauspicious day. Thus it was decided to begin the celebrations on the 14th, with a special session of the Constituent Assembly, the body of representative Indians working towards a new constitution.
    The function was held in the high-domed hall of the erstwhile Legislative Council of the Raj. The room was brilliantly lit and decorated with flags. Some of these flags had been placed inside picture frames that until the previous week had contained portraits of British viceroys. Proceedings began at 11 p.m. with the singing of the patriotic hymn ‘Vande Matram’ and a two-minute silence in memory of those ‘who had died in the struggle for freedom in India and elsewhere’. The ceremonies ended with the presentation of the national flag on behalf of the women of India.
    Between the hymn and the flag presentation came the speeches. There were three main speakers that night. One, Chaudhry Khaliquz-zaman, was chosen to represent the Muslims of India; he duly proclaimed the loyalty of the minority to the newly freed land. A second, the philosopher Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, was chosen for his powers of oratory and his work in reconciling East and West: appropriately, he praised the ‘political sagacity and courage’ of the British who had elected to leave India while the Dutch stayed on in Indonesia and the French would not leave Indo-China. 4
    The star turn, however, was that of the first prime minister of free India, Jawaharlal Nehru. His speech was rich in emotion and rhetoric, and has been widely quoted since. ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom,’ said Nehru. 5 This was ‘a moment 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’.
    This was spoken inside the columned Council House. In the streets outside, as an American journalist reported,

bedlam had broken loose. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were happily celebrating together . . . It was Times Square on New Year’s Eve. More than anyone else, the