![]() ![]() #AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT NATIONAL TOUR FULL#And so it is that at 11pm on 14 August, Delhi's Parliament House was full as Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad and Dr Radhakrishnan spoke to a hopeful India, Ustad Bismillah Khan played the shehnai and Sucheta Kripalani sang Vande Mataram, Saare Jahan Se Achha and the National Anthem, as outside, thousands thronged the streets to celebrate, lighting lamps and painting the town tiranga as we awoke to life and freedom. The solution, it seemed to the powers that were, lay in between. Barcelona residents were euphoric as the clock stroke midnight, ending a six-month-long national state of emergency and consequently, the local curfew. And it couldn't be a day earlier, because Mountbatten was in Karachi, delivering the King's message of Independence to Pakistan (one reason it is believed that Pakistan changed its date from 15 to 14 August from 1948). So 15 August was chosen, and then what happened? Well, a number of astrologers believed that 15 August in 1947 was an inauspicious date. Why? Because it was the second anniversary of Japan's surrender.” (Mountbatten served as Supreme Allied Commander of the Southeast Asia Command in World War II, who later signed on Japan's formal surrender.) So why midnight?Īll right, you say. I hadn't worked it out exactly then-I thought it had to be about August or September and I then went out to the 15th August. the Macau SAR government and the China National Tourism Administration. When they asked had we set a date, I knew it had to be soon. The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) held a press conference and a lunch. Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation spreading the news of freedom in Confederate States. I was determined to show I was master of the whole event. At the stroke of midnight, prayers were answered as all enslaved people in Confederate States were declared legally free. Years later, in a book called Freedom at Midnight, Mountbatten is quoted as saying, “The date I chose came out of the blue. ![]()
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