Tryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru

[APPLAUDING] 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 suppressed, 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 successes 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 trumphs 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. That 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 might fulfil the pledges we have so oft-en 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 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