“At the
stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life
and freedom…’ the historic speech marked India’s independence
from British rule and simultaneously made the Red Fort in Delhi a politically
significant monument!
It is
at the Red Fort, Prime Ministers make their Independence Day speeches every
year. Red Fort has been a strategically important
monument through the ages, due to Delhi being the capital city for a good part
of the Mughal rule in India. In 1638,
the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan moved the capital of his empire from Agra to a
newly constructed city in Delhi that he called Shahjahanabad. Along with the construction
of this new city, he laid the foundations of his palace, the Red Fort or Lal
Qila. This massive walled citadel with red sandstone walls took nearly a decade
to complete.
Red Fort
has Lahori Gate and Delhi Gate. Images
of the fort have featured prominently on
postage stamps. It is associated with history.
The vandalism carried out in 1857 after the suppression of the rebellion
makes it a site remembered for national resistance. In Nov 1945, the Red Fort was selected as the venue
for the court martial of Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh
Dhillon. These were three token individuals, selected from the many thousands
of Indian officers and troops who had joined the Indian National Army and
fought against the British during the Second World War. Initially fighting on
the British side, they had been taken prisoner by the Japanese in Malaya, and
agreed to change allegiance. Freed from jail, they joined the newly constituted
INA and assisted the Japanese attack on Burma in 1945. Many members of the INA
were captured by the British during that campaign. The trial of three of the
officers, on charges of ‘waging war against the king’, provoked huge public
anger.
In
2018, the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji addressed the nation from the
ramparts of Red Fort on 72nd Independence Day, devoting maximum time of speech in presenting the
report card of his government. Making a pitch for retaining power in 2019,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented a picture of “rising” India and
contrasted it with what he termed as “policy paralysis” during the UPA rule. That
was Modiji’s fifth speech at Red Fort after NDA came to power in 2014. “When
125 crore people move towards achieving a goal, there is nothing that cannot
happen. In 2014, the people of the country did not just stop at forming the
government. They moved together towards nation-building and are continuing to
do so,” he said. The PM said also said that he was an ‘impatient agent’ of
change.
My dear countrymen,
I convey my best wishes to all of you on this auspicious occasion of
Independence Day. Today, the country is brimming with self-confidence. The
country is scaling new heights by working extremely hard, with a resolve to
realize its dreams. Today’s dawn has brought a new spirit, a new enthusiasm, a
new zeal and a new energy with it. My dear countrymen, in our country, there is
a Neelakurinji flower which blooms once every 12 years. This year, Neelakurinji
is in full bloom on the hills of Southern Nilgiri like the Ashok Chakra (the
wheel of Ashoka) in the Tricolour on our Independence Day. My dear countrymen, we are celebrating this
festival of independence at a time when the Mount Everest has been conquered
many times; several brave-hearts and many of our daughters have unfurled the
Tricolour atop the Mount Everest. However, during this festival of
independence, I will remember our young tribal children from remote forest
areas, who have unfurled the Tricolour on the Mount Everest, further enhancing
its glory.
Today, the country
is full of self-confidence. The country is scaling new heights by working
extremely hard with a resolve to scale new heights. The next year will mark 100
years of the Jalliwanwallahbagh massacre. The masses had sacrificed their lives
for the country's freedom; and the exploitation had crossed all limits. The
Jalliwanwallahbagh incident inspires us of the sacrifices made by those brave
hearts. I salute all those brave hearts from the bottom of my heart. India has
become the sixth largest economy of the world.
The country is experiencing change
in the last four years. The country is progressing with new zeal, enthusiasm
and courage. Today the country is
constructing twice the highways and four times more houses in the villages. The country is producing record
foodgrains and manufacturing record number of mobile phones. The sale of tractors
has reached a new high ~ the Prime Minister said.
To those
who often try to paint the Prime Minister on the grounds of religion ~ here is
what this interesting report from Live Mint has to say .. .. Narendra Modi spends less time on religion and
caste compared to his predecessors, but talks more about poverty and the poor
in his speeches.
Some
excerpts from that article in Live Mint. Independence Day (I-Day) speeches have for
long been an occasion for prime ministers to showcase the achievements of their
government, and to reiterate their commitment to the process of
nation-building. A Mint analysis of the
content of all Independence Day speeches by prime ministers since 1991 reveals
that while certain topics, such as nationalism and rural India (or Bharat),
have remained consistently popular, some new themes, such as the economy and
infrastructure, have gained in prominence over the past two decades. The
analysis is based on the frequency of mentions per 10,000 words in the
Independence Day speeches of each prime minister. Only prime ministers who have
completed a full five-year term were considered in this analysis: P.V.
Narasimha Rao (1991-1996), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998-2004), Manmohan Singh
(2004-2014) and Narendra Modi (2014-present).
Modi’s Independence
Day speeches are the longest in this period at an average of about 8,000 words.
His predecessors, Singh and Vajpayee, delivered much shorter speeches. The nature of the occasion perhaps demands a
nationalist rhetoric and, hence, words related to the country, or the nation,
have been equally frequent across the time period under consideration. Such references
spiked in Vajpayee’s post-Kargil speech (129 per 10,000 words) in 2000. Another
topic that has remained evergreen over time is Bharat or rural India, with
nearly every speech containing an average of 50 references per 10,000 words. While
other prime ministers mentioned education infrequently, Singh consistently
spoke about education in his Independence Day speeches. Interestingly, references to religion and
caste have been fading over the past 30 years, with the highest references to
religion made by Rao at the peak of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, demanding
construction of a Ram mandir at the disputed Babri Masjid site.
Modi’s speeches
have retained the thrust on nationalism and focus on rural topics, but on other
issues, he makes far fewer references compared to his predecessors. Even on
themes related to religion and caste, Modi seems to have spent relatively less
time than his predecessors. The most striking feature
of Modi’s speeches is the theme he has spoken much more than any other:
Poverty.
Interesting
!
With regards
– S. Sampathkumar
12th
Aug 2019.
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