Mahatma gandhi (right), with Jinnah
On 3 June 1947, Viscount Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British
Governor-General of India, announced the partitioning of the British Indian
Empire into India and Pakistan, under the provisions of the Indian Independence
Act 1947. At the stroke of midnight, on 14 August 1947, India became an independent
nation. This was preceded by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's famous speech titled
Tryst with Destiny.
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..... We end today
a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.
Upon independence, India was given dominion status by the British.
At Prime Minister Nehru and his deputy Sardar Vallabhai Patel's request, Lord
Mountbatten continued to be the Governor General of India. The Governor General
was the equivalent of the current Indian President. Mountbatten continued in
office until June 1949. Thereafter Chakravarti Rajagopalachari took over as
Governor General and held office until 1950. During these years (until 1950),
King George VI continued as the King of India.
Sardar Vallabhai Patel
Patel took on the responsibility of unifying 565 princely states,
steering the effort with his “iron fist in a velvet glove” policies,
exemplified by the use of military force to integrate Junagadh and Hyderabad
state into India. Jammu & Kashmir became a part of India when Pakistan laid
siege and Maharaja Hari Singh signed an "Instrument of Accession"
with India to keep his state separate from Pakistan, despite it having a Muslim
majority population.
Pakistan responded by sending in its armed forces in an attempt
to counter the Indian influence and an armed conflict ensued. The First Kashmir
War later ended with a United Nations-mediated ceasefire. Indian military forces
remain in Kashmir, which has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan
for more than 60 years.
The Constituent Assembly completed the work of drafting the
Constitution of India on 26 November 1949; on 26 January 1950 the Republic of
India was officially proclaimed. The Constituent Assembly elected Dr. Rajendra
Prasad as the first President of India, taking over from Governor General Rajgopalachari.
Dr. Rajendra Prasad
Subsequently, a free and sovereign India absorbed two other
territories: Goa (liberated from Portuguese control in 1961) and Pondicherry
(which the French ceded in 1954). In 1952, India held its first general elections,
with a voter turnout exceeding 62 percent; in practice, this made India the
world's largest democratic country in the history of the modern and ancient
world.
