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IMAGES
Pic: Homai Vyarawala BY the time India celebrated its inauguration as a republic in 1950, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was already a memory. Actually, it happened three years before, as Jawaharlal Nehru delivered the inaugural Independence Day address on an overcast day on August 15, 1947. The Father of the Nation stood by, his work done, his place assumed by the rulers of New India. Overnight, Gandhi was the past. Nehru was the future. Photographs researched and compiled by Satish Sharma |
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© Living Media India Ltd |
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Photographs are double-edged swords. They
can be kind to a country, or unkind. They can flatter
people, or they can flatten them. Usually, though, they
show us up for what we are. The 50 years since India
became independent have been some of the most turbulent
in modern world history and yet, among the most
triumphant. We present some of the most moving and
telling images of that time, images that go beyond
mechanically recording events or profiling rulers or
rabble-rousers. They are nostalgia unlimited. They define
India. They define us. 
