Hailing dawn of freedom, charting path to progress

In its editorial on August 15, 1947, HT called on citizens to build a fair, equitable country

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India celebrates today its hard-won independence. Those who participate in the great event are fortunate. They have witnessed the dawn which has broken after a thousand years of subjection to alien rule in one form or another.

The whole of India, represented by the Congress, the Muslim League and the Princes, is the beneficiary of this great gift. Whether it was the cry for self-government of the colonial type or for Purna Swaraj or for Quit India. The Congress unswervingly worked for the country’s independence. The Muslim League did not participate in this struggle for liberation. It told the Congress: “Before you get Swaraj, determine our share.” It told the British: “If you quit, first divide.” Its main strategy was to remain in alliance with the British. In the later stages of the struggle, it did this blatantly, proclaiming that the Congress campaign to drive out the British was really aimed against the Muslims. The Princes, many of them sick at heart at their subservience to foreign masters, preferred the lesser “evil” of British rule to the greater “evil” of democratic rule in their own States. At one stage, during Lord Willingdon’s Vice-royalty, they openly aligned themselves with the British against the Congress civil disobedience movement.