Puneite Urmila Lal, recalls the moments when the nation breathed the fresh air of freedom, when she was a 13-year-old.
In 1947, I was in my teens as a 13-year-old and I had begun to understand the real meaning of ‘freedom struggle’. My father, an eminent journalist of those times, was already immersed in the freedom movement and as a nine-year-old I had participated in the 1942 Quit India movement. The people who took up the revolt were none other than our parents, friends, relatives and multitudes of our countrymen.
On August 14, 1947, around 11pm, I along with my parents went to the Central Hall of Parliament, New Delhi, as my father was able to obtain passes for my mother and me.
We awaited with bated breath for the stroke of midnight. At that hour India became free from the shackles of the British. The air rent with cries of Jai Bharat and Jai Hind! It was the proudest moment for the whole of India.
The Instrument of Freedom, as the document was called, was signed by the last British Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten. He appointed in the presence of the then Chief Justice of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as the prime minister and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari as the governor general.
The next day was August 15, 1947. It was a day of reckoning and joy for each Indian. We rose early and were at the Red Fort before sun break. Nehru arrived in his simple kurta and pyjama and his famous Nehru waistcoat on the ramparts of the Red Fort to unfurl the tricolour, which was now in shades of green, white and saffron with the Ashok Chakra in the centre.
The tricolour which we carried in the early days of the freedom struggle was in the same shades of green, white and saffron but with Gandhiji’s charkha in the centre symbolising the Swadeshi movement.
The tricolour was unfurled by Nehru to the rendition of Jana Gana Mana at exactly 7am (incidentally the tradition of unfurling the tricolour at 7am has been maintained over the years till today).
Nehru then addressed our free nation in his characteristic bhaiyon aur beheno and ended it by asking the crowd to say Jai Hind three times with him. This tradition has also been maintained over the years till today by all the prime ministers of India.
We breathed the fresh air of freedom in a free nation. Many of us including myself looked back with tears in our eyes remembering those who had sacrificed their lives for the freedom. I am now 78 years old and sometimes it makes me sad to see and know the ups and downs our country has had to go through.
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