As the clock struck the magic hour

Let us also consider the methods by which power was acquired. How did men like Washington, Napoleon, Cromwell, Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini g...

Let us also consider the methods by which power was acquired. How did men like Washington, Napoleon, Cromwell, Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini get into power? Look at the methods of blood and steel, of terrorism and assassination, of bloodshed and anarchy by which these so-called great men… came into the possession of power. Here in this land under the leadership of one who will go down in history as perhaps the greatest man of our age we have opposed patience to fury, quietness of spirit to bureaucratic tyranny and are acquiring power through peaceful and civilised methods. What is the result? The transition is being effected with the least bitterness, with utterly no kind of hatred at all…

From 1600, Englishmen have come to this country — priests and nuns, merchants and adventurers, diplomats and statesmen, missionaries and idealists. They bought and sold, marched and fought, plotted and profited, helped and healed. The greatest among them wished to modernise the country, to raise its intellectual and moral standards, its political status. They wished to regenerate the whole people. But the small among them worked with sinister objectives. They tried to increase the disunion in the country, made the country poorer, weaker and more disunited. They also have had their chance now. The freedom we are attaining is the fulfilment of this dual tendency among British administrators.

While India is attaining freedom, she is attaining it in a manner which does not produce joy in the hearts of the people or a radiant smile on their faces. Some of those who were charged with the responsibility for the administration of this country tried to accentuate communal consciousness and bring about the present result which is a logical outcome of the policies adopted by the lesser minds of Britain. But I would never blame them. Were we not victims, ready victims, so to say, of the separatist tendencies foisted on us? Should we not now correct our national faults of character, our domestic despotism, our intolerance which has assumed the different forms of obscurantism, of narrow-mindedness, of superstitious bigotry?

Others were able to play on our weaknesses because we had them… We have gained but we have not gained in the manner we wished to gain and if we have not done so, the responsibility is our own. And when this pledge says that we have to serve our country, we can best serve our country by removing these fundamental defects which have prevented us from gaining the objective of a free and united India.