Category: Speech
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Jawaharlal Nehru: A Guiding Force in Our Past, Present, and Future
Nehru’s fantastic effort to raise India from what Tagore called the ‘mud and filth’ left behind by the British has now been replaced with the Indian people being pushed back into that same ‘mud and filth’ of ignorance, obscurantism, dis-empowerment, unfreedom and above all communal hatred. The following text is Aditya Mukherjee’s presidential address at…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1963
My Fellow Countrymen, Brothers, Sisters, Children and Soldiers, We are assembled here once again, on the sixteenth anniversary of independent India. My greetings to all of you on this auspicious occasion. Many of you may remember that day when sixteen years ago, we met for the first time at the Red Fort and hoisted our…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1962
Brothers, Sisters, and Children, The children seated here would have no recollection ofthe time when India was not free. The youth oftoday must have been small children then. Fifteen years have gone by since a new age started in our country. Today is the anniversary of our independence and we are assembled here at the…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1961
Sisters, Brothers and Children, It is the fourteenth anniversary of independent India. I congratulate everyone on this auspicious day. On this day ideas and memories come crowding into the mind. First of all, there is the memory of Gandhiji who led us towards freedom. We must not only think of him but of the lesson…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1961
Sisters, Brothers and Children, It is the fourteenth anniversary of independent India. I congratulate everyone on this auspicious day. On this day ideas and memories come crowding into the mind. First of all, there is the memory of Gandhiji who led us towards freedom. We must not only think of him but of the lesson…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1960
Sisters, Brothers, Compatriots, Yesterday you celebrated Janmashtami. Today we are gathered here to celebrate the anniversary of India’s freedom. Thirteen years ago, this beloved flag of ours fluttered from the ramparts of the Red Fort for the first time, heralding to the world the birth of a new nation, of a new star in the…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1959
Striving for Progress Sisters, Brothers and Comrades, Today we are assembled here once again to celebrate the anniversary of independent India. On this day, we look back a little at our achievements in the past and to the future as well on this day. Twelve years is a very short period in India’s history of…
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From the Red Fort: Nehru’s Independence Day Address, 1958
Call to Consolidate Freedom Sisters, brothers, children and fellow countrymen. Today is the eleventh anniversary of our Independence and we are assembled here to celebrate it. Greetings to all of you on this auspicious occasion. But are we assembled here merely as a matter of routine or to witness a spectacle or with some other…
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The Concept of Democratic Socialism
Speech at a symposium on ‘Our Conception of Democratic Socialism’ organised by the Congress Socialist Forum, New Delhi, 19 April 1958. We have to mould our thinking in the light of the tremendous technological progress taking place today. The pace of its progress is so great that our thinking tends to become out of date. The effect…
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The Caste System must go
Excerpts from Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech at Gandhigram (near Madurai) December 8, 1957 I have been here about eight or nine hours now since this morning, and I have breathed the air of this place and sensed the atmosphere here, seen many faces, young and old, and also looked at these hills and mountains capped by clouds. I have…