Freedom at Midnight (45 page)

Outside the assembly hall, the rain had stopped, and a jubilant, exultant mood swept over the crowd. As Nehru emerged, thousands of happy people rushed forward, threatening to engulf him and the ministers behind him in their embrace. As he watched the thin screen of policemen trying to hold them back, an enormous smile animated Nehru's face.

"You know," he said to an aide standing beside him, "exactly ten years ago, in London, I had a fight with

Linlithgrow, the viceroy. I got so mad I shouted, Til be damned if we don't have our independence in ten years.'

"He answered, 4 Oh no, you won't,' " the Prime Minister recalled with a laugh. " 'India will not be free in my time, Mr. Nehru,' he said, 'nor in yours either.' "

That grand and guilty edifice, the British raj, was no more. Beyond New Delhi's Constituent Assembly Hall, in the vastness of the two new states just born on the subcontinent, the momentous changes portended by the conch shell's call found their echo in jubilant cheers and a thousand small gestures. In Bombay, a policeman nailed a sign bearing the word "Closed" to the gates of the citadel of white supremacy, the Bombay Yacht Club. Henceforth, those precincts in which three generations of pukkasahibs and memsahibs had sipped their whiskeys undisturbed by native stares would be a mess for cadets of the Indian Navy.

In Calcutta, eager hands tore down the signs of the city's central thoroughfare. Clive Street became Subhas Road, named for an Indian nationalist who had aligned himself with Japan against the British in World War II. In Simla, at the stroke of midnight, hundreds of Indians in saris and dhotis ran laughing down the Mall, the avenue on which no Indian had been allowed to appear in his native dress. In Firpo's in Calcutta, Falletti's in Lahore, the Taj in Bombay, hundreds more invaded the restaurants and dance floors that had been reserved for guests in dinner jackets and evening gowns.*

Delhi celebrated with lights. The austere, hard-working capital was ablaze with them. New Delhi's Connaught Circus and the narrow alleys of Old Delhi were hung in green, saffron and white lights. Temples, mosques and Sikh gurudwaras were outlined in garlands of light bulbs. So, too, was the Red Fort of the Mogul emperors. New Delhi's newest temple, Birla Mandir, with its curlicue spires and domes hung with lights, looked to one passerby like a hallucination of Ludwig of Bavaria. In the Bangi Sweepers Colony among whose Untouchables Gandhi had often dwelt, independence had brought a gift that many of

* One member of the Constituent Assembly had even wanted a clause in India's constitution denying a public place the right to require the raj's favorite apparel, the dinner jacket, for its guests.

THE ARCH OF TRIUMPH OF HISTORY'S GREATEST EMPIRE

For almost 75 years the haughty silhouette of the Gateway of India has risen above the waters of the Bay of Bombay, stern symbol built to glorify an empire on which the sun never set. Intended to commemorate the landing in India of their Imperial Majesties George V and Queen Mary, the gateway was for years the first vision many an Englishman had of the land that was his nation's proudest imperial possession. On February 28, 1948, the last British soldiers left on Indian soil passed under its span, marking with their departure the end of three centuries of British military presence in India and opening the countdown on the Age of Imperialism.

A LOVE OF SPORT-

Sport was the unifying passion of the British in India. They invaded her jungles on elephant back {above) in pursuit of tiger and panther, galloped over her dusty plains "pigsticking," riding down wild boar with lances {below). No British cantonment was considered complete without a proper cricket pitch and its accompanying pavilion in which players and their guests could gather for tea. And, above all, from Madras to Simla, the British reveled in their discovery of India's national game, polo.

-AND SOUND BRITISH INSTITUTIONS

From courts and customs houses to the classroom, the British dotted India with institutions patterned on those they'd left behind in England. Foremost among them were schools, replicas of Eton and Harrow on the plains of the Punjab or the Himalayan foothills, where well-to-do Indians learned to recite Chaucer, decline Latin verbs, play cricket—and long for freedom. (Above) the Commander in Chief of the Indian Army inspects the class entering the Dehra Dun Military Academy in 1933.

THE COUPLE OF THE YEAR, 1922,

AND A QUARTER OF A CENTURY LATER

Fate seemed to have linked Edwina Ashley and Louis Mountbatten to India. Their romance bloomed there in 1921 {opposite, bottom) while Mountbatten was serving as A.D.C. to his cousin David, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), on a royal tour. The young naval officer proposed marriage in a sitting room at Viceregal Lodge, New Delhi, and their wedding {opposite, top), with the Prince of Wales as their best man, was London's social event of 1922. A quarter of a century later, the Mountbattens returned to Delhi as India's last Viceroy and Vicereine to preside over the coming to independence of a fifth of mankind after three centuries of British rule.

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TWO HISTORIC RIDES

Not quite five months separate these two photos. (Above) Lord and Lady Mountbatten arrive at Viceroy's House, March 22, 1947, to take up their charge in an India torn by dissension and menaced with civil war. (Below) in the same carriage, built for the royal visit to Delhi of Mountbatten's cousin, George V, they ride off to the tumultuous ceremonies marking the dawn of freedom for four hundred million human beings.

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