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Source ISBN: 9780008247782

Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780007381296 Version: 2017-03-06

EPIGRAPH

‘The responsibility for governing India has been placed by the inscrutable design of providence upon the shoulders of the British race.’

RUDYARD KIPLING

‘The loss of India would be final and fatal to us. It could not fail to be part of a process that would reduce us to the scale of a minor power.’

WINSTON CHURCHILL

to the House of Commons,

February 1931

‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge … At the stroke of the midnight hour, while 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 …’

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

to the Indian Constituent Assembly,

New Delhi, August 14, 1947

EPIGRAPH

1 ‘A Race Destined to Govern and Subdue’

2 ‘Walk Alone, Walk Alone’

3 ‘Leave India to God’