…Today, with the tricolor in their hands and the slogan of Jai Hind on their tongue, every Indian wants to know about that night when our ancestors would have breathed for the first time in a free country. How would the night of 14-15 August 1947 have been? How would the view of your Delhi have been? How people across the country would have stayed awake the whole night to not only see but also live an independent country. How would India have freed itself from the terror of British rule and stood on its own feet and thrown away the dust of centuries in one night? How would that night and that first morning of independence have been?
Famous writers Dominic Lapierre and Larry Collins, while depicting the historic day of 14 August 1947 in their book ‘Freedom at Midnight’, write – ‘The Union Jack fluttering on military cantonments, government offices, private houses etc. had started being lowered. When the sun set on August 14, the Union Jack gave up the flagpole across the country, so that it could quietly become a thing of the past in Indian history. Dhara Sabha building was completely ready for the function at midnight. In the room where grand oil paintings of the Viceroys of India used to hang, now many tricolor flags were fluttering proudly.
Lapierre and Collins write – ‘From the morning of 14th August, celebrations had started in every city and village of the country. Residents of Delhi came out of their homes. People rode bicycles, cars, buses, rickshaws, horse-drawn carriages, even elephants and horses and headed towards the center of Delhi i.e. India Gate. People were singing and dancing, congratulating each other and the tune of the national anthem was being heard everywhere.
‘People were running towards Delhi from all directions. Chariots after chariots, bullock carts after bullock carts, cars, trucks, trains, buses were bringing everyone to Delhi. People came sitting on the rooftops, hanging from the windows, came on bicycles and even on foot, people from distant villages also came who had no idea that India was under British rule till now and is no longer so. People rode on donkeys and horses. Men wore new turbans, women wore new sarees. Children hung on the shoulders of their parents. Many people who had come from the countryside were asking what was the fuss about? So people were saying loudly – Hey, you don’t know, the British are going. Today Nehruji will hoist the flag of the country. We became free.
‘People coming from villages were explaining the meaning of independence to their children in their own way now that the British were gone. Now we will have more animals, now there will be more crops in our fields, now there will be no restriction on coming and going anywhere, the cowherds told their wives that now the cows will give more milk, because we have got freedom. People refused to buy tickets in buses, even in a free country they buy tickets. A beggar who had come to watch the independence ceremony started entering the department which was reserved for foreign politicians. When the soldier asked where is your invitation letter? So he was surprised. ‘invitation’? He said- Now what kind of invitation? We have become free. Got it! Now there will be no big or small. Everyone will be equal… Everyone had their own understanding about independent India, their own thinking, their own dream… because none of them had ever lived in an independent country. People wanted to see what an independent country was like.
Famous writer Rajendra Lal Handa has written in great detail on the life of Delhi between 1940 and 1950, the changes taking place in the corridors of power and socio-economic aspects in his ‘Kitab Dilli Mein Dus Varsh’. While writing about the eyes of the night of independence, he has depicted the crowd of the Dhara Sabha and the enthusiasm of the people. He writes – “At around two o’clock in the night, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, left Dhara Sabha and went towards Viceroy Bhawan to invite the Governor General. The crowd also followed him in the enthusiasm of freedom. There was no free space and the crowd was so large that it was impossible to find out where people were going.
After some time, the Prime Minister came to Dhara Sabha building along with the Governor General. At that time people’s enthusiasm had reached its peak. Slogans were being raised in greeting of the leaders. At that time, everything appeared new and unprecedented – unprecedented celebrations, unprecedented scenes, unprecedented enthusiasm, unprecedented patriotism and unprecedented gathering of people.
Not only in the Legislative Assembly building, there was no place to keep sesame seeds outside, on the green grass, on the roads, in the huge field in front of the Secretariat. People must have seen such a crowd often, but at any one place at midnight, two to three lakh people would not have gathered at any time. Delhi has seen many celebrations and festivals in the past. Saw the celebrations of great Chakraborty and victorious emperors, but all those festivals of the past paled in comparison to the great festival which the people of Delhi witnessed on the night of 14-15 August 1947. That night freedom arrived in Delhi. Exactly at midnight the moment the day of 15th August was born. Lakhs of men and women felt as if freedom was descending from heaven to earth like the Ganga.
Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins write – “The crowd of Khaddar-bearers sitting in that building, right in front of Nehru, represented the people of that nation, which was just about to be born that midnight. All those representatives were so different from each other, but despite that difference, now they were going to be so united that such an example of unity in diversity will not be found anywhere else in the world. Nehru was proposing before the Constituent Assembly that as soon as the sound of midnight would end, we would all get up and take an oath to serve the Indian people to the maximum.
Outside the meeting hall, there was suddenly a flash of lightning in the midnight sky and a monsoon rain. Thousands of Indians surrounded the building from all sides. They started getting wet. The prospect of that midnight, which was silently approaching every moment, had kept him so thrilled and engrossed that he was not even aware of getting wet. Finally that sound of midnight started. Which announced the end of a day and also the end of an era. No person should move at all during the twang. Then Nehru’s conch shell announced the end of a great empire and the beginning of a new era on Indian soil. The ceremony was absolutely grand. Nehruji was in cotton Jodhpuri pajama and bandi. Vallabhbhai Patel appeared in white dhoti.
R. l. Handa writes – “After the oath-taking etc., the ceremony ended by 3 o’clock in the night. Some people returned to their homes, many sleeping on green lawns and footpaths. The next day i.e. on 15th August at 8 am, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the tricolor flag of India in place of the Union Jack at the Red Fort. Delhi is a city thousands of years old.
In its history it would certainly have never seen such a huge crowd at one place as had gathered around the Red Fort that day. According to local newspapers and government estimates, there were not less than 10 lakh men there. There was no road or land visible anywhere from Delhi Gate to Kashmiri Gate and from Jama Masjid to Red Fort. There was nothing else except a huge crowd. It took four hours for this crowd to disperse. All the roads remained packed with crowd till almost 1 o’clock in the afternoon.
This celebration of the first morning of independence continued since midnight. The midnight celebration of 14-15 August had excited the people. That night, the melodious sound of the national songs ‘Jana Gana Mana’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ seemed heavenly. These songs had been heard many times before, but that night each word seemed to be shouting its meaning into the ears of the listeners. That night I actually understood the true meaning of adjectives like Shasyashyamla, Bahubal Gharini, Ripudal Varini etc. When ‘Jana Gana Mana’ started, thousands of heads swayed to its beautiful rhythm. But as soon as Punjab and Sindh were mentioned in the national anthem, hundreds of people in the gathered crowd raised their heads and looked at each other. The people present there suddenly remembered the pain of partition, which on the other hand had taken shape in the form of a country named Pakistan and had given rise to violence on the borders.