On this day in 1947, India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain. Salman Rushdie would get the title for his second novel from the speech India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, delivered in the first minutes of the new day:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we will 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. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance ... FULL STORY »
