Circumstances

The speech “Tryst with Destiny” was delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru close to midnight on the 14th of August 1947, on the eve of India becoming independent from the British Empire.

The speech was delivered in front of the Indian Constituent Assembly and broadcast on the radio all around India.

The circumstances of the speech were of historical importance (as the speaker points out) because, after years of foreign rule, the Indian people finally convinced the British Parliament to grant them independence:

…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. (p. 26, ll. 6-8)

However, India obtained this independence almost a century after the Indian independence...