An Independence Day message from Red Fort

Witness to India’s battles for freedom, the monument tells us that the nation must choose, unfailingly and unflinchingly, between social collapse and social cohesion, between the poison of hate and the nutriment of harmony

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

India’s Independence Day is, unquestionably, the Prime Minister (PM)'s day. From the very first time— in 1947, when India's first PM Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled the country's new national flag from the ramparts of Delhi's Red Fort —the date has been the PM's day.

And so it should be. August 15 has also become, by the sheer association of time with space, Red Fort’s day, with the PM, the flag and the fort fluxing into one moment of glory.

And just as Bastille Day, commemorating the Féte de la Fédération right from July 14, 1790, brings the Bastille to France's life, on India’s Independence Day, Red Fort speaks to us about our past, present, and future.

Inaugurated by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (1592-1666) in 1639, it carries on the walls of its Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Special Audience) a Persian phrase: “Gar firdaus bar rii-e-zamin ast, hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin ast” (If there be a paradise on Earth, it is here, it is here, it is here). I take the phrase to be about India itself. It is said to have been first used by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1569-1627) when he beheld the valley of Kashmir.

The Fort's full story is not heavenly. Things have happened in Red Fort that could very well turn the phrase on its head: “If there be hell on Earth, it is here, It is here, it is here.”