Tryst with destiny: The crafting of Nehru’s historic speech on the first eve of independence

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s inspirational historic speech on the eve of Independence is widely known as one of the great speeches of the 20^th century. It consisted of soaring rhetoric, a shrewd understanding of the power of language, and a sweeping sense that this was a message for all the ages.

The speech had both the honors of sacrifices of the freedom fight that led to this moment and lay out a vision for the future, a future that still had to be written as a country, a civilization that took re-birth. It had to belong to the present and the future.

• Jawaharlal Nehru Ji delivered his 'Tryst with destiny speech to the Constituent Assembly close to the midnight hour on 14 August 1947.
• Nehru’s private secretary MO Mathai would complain that the PM spent too much time “in dictating letters and drafting or dictating statements and speeches”
• Unlike the prime ministers who came after him, Nehru was generally disinclined towards the idea of his speeches being written by someone else.
• He was India's first prime minister who delivered the speech to the Constituent Assembly close to the midnight hour on 14 August 1947.

“Long years ago,” Nehru Ji said, “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. At this solemn moment, we should take the pledge of dedication to the service of India, and her people, and to the still larger cause of humanity.”  

“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.”

In the spirit of Independence Day might still lie a gem that is of great value for the country’s future. While the struggles of freedom fighters are commemorated, the fruit of their work may be taken for granted by