The future is in our hands

Just before V.K. Krishna Menon was appointed high commissioner for India to the UK, he submitted this article to the Indian Express. There can be no looking back, he argued, the future will now have to be shaped by the millions who inhabit this land

Whatever lies in the womb of the future, the political transition in India, symbolised by observances ordered by the Congress and the Government of India for August 15 marks a historical epoch. It does not see India or her friends in a mood of festivity, relaxed and unreserved. The events of the recent past, and unhappily, even of the immediate present, haunt us with grim memories and implications. The shadow of partition casts its gloom on the face of India and Pakistan.

Yet, we are conscious of our destiny. A new India has arisen, not in resplendent glory or towering strength that we have striven and hoped for, but, nevertheless, not without promise of the greatest epoch in our history which is inherent in it, and awaiting to be implemented — by us and by none other than us.

The Empire has quit; alien rule is no more. This is the reality which we can forget or fail to appreciate only at our peril. There is not a single political danger as menacing to our future as failure to appreciate that Britain has quit India and that the future lies in our hands. If she or any invader, political, economic or other returns to our soil, or in our minds, we shall have invited or permitted that conquest.

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On August 8, 1942 the Congress raised the demand “Quit India”. It became the accepted policy of our rulers in 1947. The date, June 1948, which was at first fixed for the withdrawal was advanced to August 1947, in itself proclaiming the march of events. We have paid a heavy price, both of us, to speed up the event. You cannot beat time except at a great cost! We counted the cost, we have endured the shock that it is to us. There can be no looking back. Several centuries of history are behind us, continuous, alive and remembered. No nation, no people bear this record. Often have we been drawn into dreams and abstractions from hard facts of the present by the splendour and compelling fascination of that past. Too often have we thought in terms that the past would be reborn. That cannot be. For the future must be of our making.

We may no longer blame it on fate or on the British Government. Millions of our land who inhabit it must shape its destiny. Our new state must belong to the people not only by the letter of the Constitution, but in its function from day to day. Democracy for us cannot end with parliamentary government and the right of “free speech” for those who may. It cannot be confined to the exercise of the powers of debate in New Delhi or other capitals of India. Our people everywhere, in the cities and the villages, in towns and and in hamlets, must be the owners and architects of our legacy and our destiny. To that kind of endeavour we are pledged. We should constantly remind ourselves of the solemn pledges contained in the Independence Declaration of January 1930. We should all be ever aware that the masses whom Gandhi made potent are the one single largest factor of our liberation. Their emancipation must now begin and be speedily concluded…

Excerpted from a piece that appeared in the ‘Indian Express’, August 1947