ABSTRACT
Locked in an imperial prison, Nehru had wondered during the war whether the time would ever come for him to embark on the radical reconstruction of India he had so long envisaged. Within five years, on 14 August 1947, he stood in India’s parliament, the Lok Sabha, and made his famous speech marking the nation’s independence, when he spoke of the arrival of the moment when they could keep their ‘tryst with destiny’. Deeply moved by this rare historical moment, the ending of an era, he pledged himself to the service of India and to humanity. 1 The next day he became free India’s first prime minister.
