Challenges for the new nation

India became free at midnight on 14–15 August 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister, spoke to the Constituent Assembly that night in his famous 'tryst with destiny' speech: India was keeping a promise made long ago.

The freedom struggle had united people around two goals that almost everyone accepted:

• the country would be run as a democracy;
• the government would work for the good of all, especially the poor and the weak. These welfare goals were later written into the Constitution's Directive Principles.

But the new nation faced three big challenges from its birth:

• Unity: shaping a united nation that still accepted the huge diversity of languages, religions and cultures. Many foreign observers expected such a diverse country to break apart.
• Democracy: making the democratic Constitution actually work, with elections and representative government.
• Development: ensuring the development and well-being of the whole society, not just a few. That needed good economic policies, not only a good Constitution.

A constitution was necessary but not sufficient: it set the rules, but people and leaders had to make them work.

Freedom came with partition. Mahatma Gandhi did not join the independence day celebrations. He was in Kolkata, trying to stop the violence between Hindus and Muslims. For him it was a day of both rejoicing and mourning.

Poets captured the sorrow: Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote that this was not the dawn they had waited for, and Amrita Pritam called on the poet Waris Shah to see the suffering of Punjab's women.

Nehru insisted that India must treat its minorities fairly, whatever had happened elsewhere.