Today is the 77th anniversary of the birth of the modern Indian nation. On behalf of the Coalition, I wish the people of India, and Australians of Indian ancestry, a happy Indian Independence Day. At the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, the Indian Independence Act came into force establishing a sovereign and democratic India.
The road to a free and independent India had been one of many struggles, much suffering and immense sacrifice. Mahatma Gandhi said only five years earlier, “Freedom is not for the coward or the faint-hearted.” Indeed, freedom was just the beginning – a point emphasised by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he said on the eve of Independence that the future, “is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving.”
With freedom and incessant striving, the people of India have created the largest democracy in the world, a country celebrated for its economic and social achievements, and a nation committed to preserving the peace that allows all nations to prosper.
The friendship between Australia and India is longstanding and abiding. Camaraderie was cultivated during the ill-fated Dardanelles Campaign on Gallipoli in 1915. There, Indian gunners, muleteers, stretcher bearers and infantrymen fought alongside the men they came to know as Anzacs. In the decades after India’s Independence, new pipelines opened between our two countries carrying business, goods and people.
Over the years, many Indians made Australia their home, contributing to the community and country. And testimony to the bonds between our two countries, today, some 783,000 Australians have Indian ancestry.
Today, cooperation between our two nations encompasses many economic and enterprising fields which benefit both our peoples. But in these testing times where conflicts rage in Eastern Europe and the Middle East – and where tensions are high in our own region – it is our defence cooperation which is critical in helping to deter aggression and to preserve stability. May we be energised in this endeavour by the memories of our forebears who forged and defended free nations.
Happy Indian Independence Day.
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