Mr. President, it was my proud privilege, Sir, six weeks ago, to move this Resolution before this Hon’ble House. I felt the weight and solemnity of that occasion. It was not a mere form of words that I placed before the House, carefully chosen as those words were. But those words and the Resolution represented something far more; they represented the depth of our being; they represented the agony and hopes of the nation coming at last to fruition. As I stood here on that occasion I felt the past crowding round me, and I felt also the future taking shape. We stood on the razor’s edge of the present, and as I was speaking, I was addressing not only this Hon’ble House, but the millions of India, who were vastly interested in our work. And because I felt that we were coming to the end of an age, I had a sense of our forbears watching this undertaking of ours and possibly blessing it, if we moved aright, and the future, of which we became trustees became almost a living thing, taking shape and moving before our eyes. It was a great responsibility to be trustees of the future, and is was some responsibility also to be inheritors of the great past of ours. And between that great past and the great future which we envisage, we stood on the edge of the present and the weight of that occasion, I have no doubt, impressed itself upon this Hon’ble House.
