Word: prasad
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Later that evening Nehru, and other men who would be India's new rulers on the morrow, went to the home of Rajendra Prasad, president of the Constituent Assembly. On his back lawn four plantain trees served as pillars for a temporary miniature temple. A roof of fresh green leaves sheltered a holy fire attended by a Brahman priest. There, while several thousand women chanted hymns, the ministers-to-be and constitution-makers passed in front of the priest, who sprinkled holy water on them. The oldest woman placed dots of red powder (for luck) on each...
...twelfth chime of midnight died out, a conch shell, traditional herald of the dawn, sounded raucously through the chamber. Members of the Constituent Assembly rose. Together they pledged themselves "at this solemn moment . . . to the service of India and her people. . . ." Nehru and Prasad struggled through the thousands of rejoicing Indians who had gathered outside to the Viceroy's House (now called the Governor General's House) where Viscount Mountbatten, who that day learned he would become an earl, awaited them. There, 32 minutes after Mountbatten had ceased to be a Viceroy,* Nehru and Prasad rather timidly, almost...
...about a settlement within India-if one is possible-were meetings between political groups outside the Congress party. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Moslem League's opportunistic president, barking for Pakistan (a separate Moslem state), came close to agreement on national government with his old political enemy, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee of the Hindu (Orthodox) Mahasabha. A Government refusal to allow Dr. Mookerjee to interview Gandhi helped to balk a possible agreement. The Moslem premiers of Sind and Punjab and Bengal urged conciliation. A millionaire industrialist and longtime intimate friend of Gandhi, Ghan-shyamdas Birla, said that he believed Gandhi...