CRY Freedom

Erudite, expressive and passionate. The heroes who won India her Independence said many inspiring words. Here is a selection.

" Swaraj ( self rule ) is my birth right and I shall have it!"
- Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who sparked the fire for complete independence in Indian consciousness

"We have no arms, but there is no necessity. Our strong political weapon is boycott (of foreign goods)."
- Lokmanya Tilak

" We must stop complaining about this British officer or that officer, this law or that law. There would be no end to that. Our movement must not be limited to being against any particular law, but it must be for acquiring the authority to make laws itself. In other words, we want absolute independence."
- Veer Savarkar

"Every blow aimed at me is a nail in the coffin of British imperialism."
- Lala Lajpat Rai

"Be the change you want to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi. Often quoted by members of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF).

"Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!"
- Subhash Chandra Bose

" Jai Hind (glory to India)"
- Subhash Chandra Bose. The slogan was later adpoted by the Government of India and the Indian Armed Forces.

"All revolutions are spiritual at the source."
- Vinoba Bhave

"Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from
the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches
its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary
desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake."
- Rabindranath Tagore, Geetanjali

"When there is oppression, the only self-respecting thing is to rise and say this shall cease today, because my right is justice."
- Sarojini Naidu

" Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai (The desire for sacrifice is now in my heart)
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazuay qaatil mein hai ( Let us see how strong the assassin is)"
- Ram Prasad Bismil, Poet and Revolutionary, loosely translated as "

" Inquilab Zindabad (Long live the revolution)"
- Bhagat Singh, Revolutionary. The slogan later became the war cry of the freedom struggle.

"India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples."
- Sri Aurobindo

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, 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, then an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity. At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her successes and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again."
- Nehru, "Tryst with Destiny" speech, delivered in the Constituent Assembly, New Delhi, on August 14, 1947, on the eve of the attainment of Independence

" Jallianwala Bagh yeh dekho (please look at Jallianwala Bagh)

Yahan chali thhi goliyan (bullets were fired here)

Yeh mat puchho kisne kheli yahan khoon ki holian (do not ask who played Holi here with their blood)

Ek taraf bandook thi dandan (on one side were guns and the sound of bullets), ek taraf thi tolian (on the other, groups of people)

Marne waale bol rahe thhe, Inquilab ki boliyan (the dying raised revolutionary slogans even as they were being killed)"

- Kavi Pradeep,