"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom"

we all know pt. nehru's "A Tryst With Destiny" speech but do you know why is it specifically at midnight that india declared freedom?

well beacause - astrology

read on

15th aug was not supposed to be our independence day. in 1929, when nehru gave the call for poorna swaraj in lahore, it was declared that 26 january 1930 would be our first independence day. this did not really work out for....another 17 years

eventually when it did work out and freedom from the british raj was imminent, mountbatten was to transfer power to india by 30 june 1948 and india and pakistan would be given dominion status. he decided to advance these plans to 15th august

mountbatten had personally decided the date of aug 15 because he had considered that date to be “very lucky” for his career. during the world war II, it was on aug 15 1945 (japan timezone) that the japanese army had surrendered before him (he was the commander of allied forces)

when the date of independence was announced a number of astrologers believed that 15 august 1947 which was a friday, was a deeply inauspicious day. and it couldn’t be a day earlier, because mountbatten was in karachi, delivering the king’s message of independence to pakistan

alternative dates were suggested but mountbatten was adamant on aug 15. as a workaround, the astrologers suggested the midnight hour between aug 14 and 15 due to the simple reason that the day according to english starts at 12 am but in hindu (vedic) calendar it starts at sunrise

the astrologers had insisted that the speech of acknowledgement of transfer of power be done within the 48 minutes window (referred to as “abhijeet muhurta”) which lasted between 24 minutes before and after 12:15am i.e between 11:51pm & 12:39am.

as an additional constraint pt nehru had to deliver the speech within that timeframe. also the speech had to end by 12am so the holy shankha be blown to herald the birth of a new nation at the stroke of midnight hour.

and finally the moment came, which comes but rarely in history, when we stepped out from the old to new, when an age ended, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, found utterance...

Happy Independence day

Jai Hind