India in 1947
1 USD = 3.30 Rupees. Population = 390 million. Life expectancy = 37 years. The infant mortality rate = 146 per 1,000. Gold = Rs 88.62 per 10 grams.
Goa is still under Portuguese rule. No national anthem was written. Air India was just a year old. Australia won the series 4-0, one match drawn, team cricket team India’s first tour. Lala Amarnath headed the India team and Don Bradman the Australian team.
15 August 1947 – British India is dissolved. Dominion of India gains its independence from the United Kingdom. A largely Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan are created by partitions of the subcontinent.
That was what India looked like in 1947. A very small glimpse compared to being one of the biggest populations in the world. The Quit India movement led by Mahatma Gandhi alone did not force Britishers to move out, there was more. Learn it from what John Freeman, British High Commissioner said in his speech in 1967 during a seminar marking the 20th anniversary of Independence.
Freeman said, “…the mutiny of 1946 had raised the fear of another large-scale mutiny along the lines of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, from the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who had participated in the Second World War. The mutiny had accordingly been a large contributing factor to the British decision to leave India. The British were petrified of a repeat of the 1857 Mutiny, since this time they feared they would be slaughtered to the last man."
Since then, India has changed a lot. We have our weaknesses but we do have our strengths as well. The collective mind of India as a nation should not be polluted by the greedy. From time to time some of us will have to step up. Do you ask why? Because we should.
Two such aspects that can take us towards realizing our nation’s collective potential are by being the country of science and kindness. A combination that has seen all tides of time since life has taken birth on this beautiful planet of ours, to what we call our home.
With that thought in mind, Indigifts wishes you, Happy 75th Independence Day.
“Where the mind is without fear and
the head is held is high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into
fragments by domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms
towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand
of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into
ever-widening thought and action -
Into the Heaven Of Freedom, my father,
let my country awake.”
-Rabindranath Tagore
