At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, an enormous crowd in New Delhi held its breath. Then, on All India Radio, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru spoke words people would remember forever: 'At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.' After nearly 200 years under British rule, India was an independent nation at last.
The road to that midnight had taken decades. A lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi, whom people called Mahatma, meaning 'great soul,' had led a long peaceful struggle. He marched 240 miles to the sea to make salt in protest of British taxes. He went on hunger strikes. He wore a simple white cloth he had spun himself. He convinced millions to fight British rule not with weapons but with civil disobedience, refusing to obey unfair laws. The world had rarely seen a movement like it.
When freedom finally came, India also faced a painful split with Pakistan and the massive movement of people across new borders. But the country pressed on. It wrote a constitution that promised democracy and equal rights, held its first giant election in 1951, and built itself into the largest democracy on the planet. Today India is home to more than 1.4 billion people, hundreds of languages, Bollywood films, cricket stadiums, software empires, and a Mars probe. Every August 15, the prime minister still raises the orange, white, and green flag over the Red Fort in Delhi, and the country celebrates the day it woke up to freedom.
