neatness hid many diverse tensions and fractures, lines of solidarity and
conflict. It was far from clear that anyone had wanted such an outcome- and it is clear that it suited none of the three main parties to such
negotiations, the Congress, the British, or even the Muslim League, whose
cause had been best served in that they had achieved aPakistan, albeit
a somewhat ‘moth-eaten’ one. It was also clear that events, as they finally
took shape, had much more to do with elite negotiations, and with
Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s negotiating skills in particular, than it had
anything to do with popular will; partition was encountered with a sense
of bewilderment by many.
Nevertheless, independence had arrived, and this was the end of a long
hard road. There was a necessity for optimism. And it was now up to
Jawaharlal Nehru to put it in words, and to find words to express joy but
not to draw attention to the fact that events had run away from those to
whom power was given. The words were carefully selected, for they would
remain indelibly imprinted on the Indian collective consciousness, the
moment of the birth of an independent state:
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.^35The voice crackled on the radio – the speech was delivered in Nehru’s
characteristically crisp English, with perhaps a touch of exaggeration on
the vowels. It was also, perhaps, too perfect a speech, for violence and
carnage still continued throughout the country, amplified and intensified
by the partition and population movements that accompanied it. Gandhi,
typically perverse in the hour of his anointment as father of the new nation,
refused to celebrate, or to be in Delhi. He had spent the last months
travelling through India using his moral authority and presence to try and
halt the violence where he could. The old man now preferred to observe a
day of prayer and fasting in Calcutta.138 THE END OF THE RAJ