Speech delivered in the Constituent Assembly, New Delhi, 14 August 1947, on the eve of the attainment of Independence

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.  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.  It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures.  Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength.  We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.  The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.  Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility.  The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India.  Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour 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.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today.  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.  The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye.  That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

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

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure.  This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others.  We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. 

-Jawaharlal Nehru

i read one of my fav't pieces of writing this year with an indignant resolve, unequivocally different from years past.  this time around, i don't reflect on Gandhi's practical idealism, the downfall of British reign over the motherland, or the fight against AIDS in my country.  freedom feels grey tonight....

i reflect on how i feel trapped in my home                                                                  while my brother is taken away from his home, replaced by barbed wire and blank walls

i reflect on how i cook abundantly for my family                                                  while my brother is still hungry after a piece of hard bread and sliced potato

i reflect on how i get excited over HEB $1 movies                                                     while my brother wonders if he should get paid $1 a day to do inmate's laundry

i reflect on how it may be too hot to go running                                                           while my brother gazes through a negligible hole that welcomes the sunlight  

i reflect on being born in the Houston Medical Center                                                while my brother is told to get the fuck out of "our" country

i reflect on my respect for houses of worship                                                             while my brother is told to respect federal buildings

i reflect on a picture of the three musketeers on my desktop                                          while my brother can only picture it in his mind

i reflect on teaching my dad PC language regarding race                                       while my brother can be thrown in the "segregation" hole if he ever speaks up

i reflect on tears that fall on my inaction, my indecision                                                 while my brother must hold back his tears, lest a guard see his weakness

i reflect on the freedom to pray anytime, anywhere                                                     while my brother, my Muslim brother, prays next to his prison bedside five times a day

i reflect on how our tryst used to be our homes, IHOP, Chacho's...                               now a distant destiny we can only imagine in our motherlands, in our hearts

"We're the best representatives for peace between Indians and Pakistanis...why don't they just hire us?!!"

-two brothers whose mission will never die....shalom