On India’s Tryst with Destiny

Did the nation keep the promises made in its maiden speech?

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.

This was the opening line of the speech¹ made by India’s first Prime Minister — Jawaharlal Nehru, on the eve of India’s Independence, towards midnight of 14 August 1947.

Figure 1: Jawaharlal Nehru delivering the ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech to the Indian Constituent Assembly in Delhi

It is not the easiest sentence to follow. The language seems grandiose and archaic. I wonder how the intended audience — Indians, most of whom did not speak English, received it? I had to Google to confirm the meaning of tryst: A private rendezvous. (Thank you Google, for explaining a Middle English word using an old French one!) By destiny, I suppose Nehru meant India’s independence from British rule. Why did he call it private? The struggle for independence was meant to be open and public. Anyway:

A tryst was made. A pledge was redeemed. Not wholly. But, substantially!

The speech continues:

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.

In August, when midnight strikes in India: it’s lunchtime in America and Europe prepares to say adios to the day’s summer sun. So, the expression is incorrect. At least, in the literal sense. Perhaps, Nehru was alluding to the figurative slumber with 80% of the world population living under a closed autocracy² (see Figure 2). Within a few years of the historic speech, that number would drop to 50% and then further down to the current 25%. On that fateful midnight, India was at the vanguard of this phenomenon.

Figure 2: The sudden spike of electoral autocracies in 1975 and 2015, can be attributed to India. It represents the ‘Emergency’ period and V-Dem’s interpretation of the current regime, respectively.

This improvement wasn’t happenstance. India’a active advocacy³ for democracy across the world helped. The intent makes it to the speech:

Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart.

India would conduct it’s first general elections a few years later, in 1951, offering universal adult suffrage i.e. the right to vote irrespective of caste, color, creed, religion, sex, economic status, etc. In 2023, we take this for granted. But, a look at when other “developed” nations adopted this concept⁴ makes one appreciate India’s early stand:

• Canada in 1960, when aboriginals acquired the vote
• Australia in 1962, when aboriginals acquired the vote
• United States of America in 1965, when the vote was extended to African Americans, though racial gerrymandering is still strife
• Switzerland in 1990, when the last holdout canton was compelled to extend the vote to women⁵

A cold start, but the speech quickly warms up. Each word elegantly unpacks into deep and loaded notions.

The pledge was for India to attain self-governance and free itself off the two-century-long cruel⁶ imperial rule, that is summed up in an overly forgiving manner through two words:

We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.

The pledge was not redeemed wholly, as what could have been a paced out devolution of power, was instead a sudden transfer with the forced displacement of fifteen million people and over a million murders⁷.

Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labor, and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over, and it is the future that beckons to us now.

It is inconceivable today that 340 million impoverished souls, leeched out to their bones by an invader, found the strength to suppress this deep rooted trauma (that bursts out every now and then in different forms), and got back to work the next day!

The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.

Other than a common colonial oppressor and shared geographic boundaries, they didn’t have much in common: not language, not food, not culture, not religion. Yet, somehow, these people signed up for a new collective legal identity.

One pledge had JUST been redeemed, and these over-achievers immediately took on a new one:

The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.

And, how did they fare?

Poverty:

For 40 years post Independence, over half the population was living in extreme poverty⁸. This can be attributed to the decision of adopting socialism⁹ in the early days. The decision made sense given the circumstances then. But, it did not work out in favor of the peoples.

There has been a faster improvement over the last 30 years, after the economy was (relatively) liberalized¹⁰. The share of population living in extreme poverty is now down to 10%.

Grade: B-

Figure 3: The ‘License Raj’ kept the economy suppressed until mid-1990s. There is a boom as soon as the economy opens up: A great example of a good policy immediately lifting millions out of poverty!

Ignorance:

If the counter to ignorance is education, the country has fared well¹¹. Adult literacy has flipped from 12% in 1947 to 75% in 2020s. Primary school completion rate is now above the world average at >95%. The country has exported artists, CEOs, doctors, engineers, and scientists to the world through initiatives in education⁹. But, the quality of education in many areas remains questionable.

If the fuel for ignorance is extreme and irrational faith, it has been burning, and has offset the development made by education. This phenomenon has accelerated over the last decade¹².

Grade: C+

Figure 4: Significant improvements were made to school attendance via various policies through the years

Disease:

From under 40 years in 1947, to over 70 years, right before the pandemic — the improvement in life expectancy¹³ at birth has been nothing short of a miracle. This was largely driven by a drop in child mortality and improvement in access to affordable healthcare.

The steady progress got a blow only recently from alleged mismanagement during COVID.

Grade: A-

Figure 5: Life expectancy at birth almost doubled with improved access to healthcare and nutrition

Inequality:

Economic inequality¹⁴, expressed in Gini coefficient, stayed flat until the 1990s. It then increased, tracing the economy’s shift to capitalism. The reduction in poverty (see Figure 3) has countered the negative sentiments from economic inequality to some degree. It is worth noting — India houses some of the world’s richest and poorest people.

Social inequality improved slightly through universal suffrage, affirmative action, and cultural movements. But, casteism, patriarchy, misogyny, and religious intolerance continues to poison Indian society.

Grade: C-

Figure 6: The cost of economic liberalization has been increased economic inequality, but the rising middle-class makes India look less unequal than other countries

My father was a few weeks old when the speech was delivered. I wonder if he subconsciously assimilated it, while an adult played it over the radio or read it aloud from a newspaper in the following weeks. At that instance, the odds of his lifespan was close to my current age. The odds of the experiment called India: unknown. They both beat the odds!

We celebrated his birthday a few weeks ago. In his lifetime, India’s population has 4X-ed and economy (measured by GDP) has 25X-ed¹⁵ to become the fifth largest¹⁶, ahead of it’s once imperialist overlord.

I may have been harsh in grading the development, for someone who inherited the privilege to be able to do so. Perhaps it comes from the anxiety that the hard fought miracle might disappear if not protected.

Once again, India has it’s work cut out:

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams.

Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom; so is prosperity now; and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

A focus on just three values should be a good start:

• Uphold secular values: To not succumb to the same fate as its three immediate neighbors to the west, India MUST stay secular.
• Do Less: It may have made sense to be a nanny-state at her infancy. Now that India is an adult, the government should just let her be. Ensure (i) security from outside threat, (ii) safety internally, and (iii) maintain the institutional plumbing. Leave the rest for her to figure out herself.
• Invest in Education: The money saved from doing less should be channeled to provide better education to a wider population. Within India, the provinces that have fared relatively better on all indices of human development are the ones that invested in education¹⁷. This model could be replicated across the country.

I wrote this essay under air-conditioning on a carefree summer day. Any discomfort I feel is from abundance: heaviness from over-eating, sparse attention from over-consumption, existential angst from over-thinking.

I guess this is my destiny. A tryst my ancestors made with. Long years ago.

Notes:

1. The full text of the speech, with video, can be found here.
2. Trends of political regimes, by World in Data [link].
3. Nehru was interested in international problems, especially in bringing democracy to Asia and Africa. More on his outlook can be found here.
4. The statistics on adoption of universal suffrage are from Pg 42 of ‘The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’ by Martin Wolf [link].
5. More on women suffrage in Switzerland can be found here.
6. It is estimated that British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in just 40 years [link]. An essay on this shameful colonization by former UN under-secretary-general Shashi Tharoor can be found here.
7. More on the horrors of partition can be found here, and an essay on the same by Pankaj Mishra can be found here.
8. Trends on Poverty and GDP, by World in Data, can be found here and here.
9. My earlier article on why Nehru adopted socialism, and also the rise of India-educated technologists in the US, can be found here.
10. This refers to opening the country’s economy to the world to make the economy more market and service-oriented, thus expanding the role of private and foreign investment. You can learn more at ‘the1991project’ [link].
11. Trends on Education, by World in Data, can be found here.
12. ‘Rationalists are under fire for questioning faith, and flawed interpretation of history while upholding scientific temperament’ [link].
13. Trends on Life Expectancy, by World in Data, can be found here.
14. Trends on Economic Inequality, by World in Data, can be found here.
15. Trends of GDP adjusted for inflation, by World in Data, can be found here.
16. ‘The history of independent India in numbers’ [link].
17. SDG index by Indian states [link].