India marks 79 years of freedom today. This is the story of how it was won — from Plassey to Purna Swaraj — the Tamils who gave their lives for it, and why the fort where CM Vijay hoists the flag this morning carries its own piece of that history.
At 8.45 this morning, Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay hoisted the national flag at the ramparts of Fort St George in Chennai — his first Independence Day as Chief Minister, and the TVK government's first. It is a ceremony repeated across the country today. But the fort where it took place, and the freedom it commemorates, both carry histories longer and harder-won than a single morning's ceremony can convey.
The British came to India as traders. The English East India Company arrived for commerce, not conquest — but the Battle of Plassey in 1757 changed that. Victory in Bengal gave the Company enormous political and military power, and over the following century it expanded across the subcontinent through war, annexation and treaty.
What followed was rule by a corporation: heavy taxation, the dispossession of rulers and landowners, the collapse of indigenous industry, and famine. Resentment accumulated for a hundred years before it broke.
The immediate trigger was a rifle cartridge. The new Enfield rifle required soldiers to bite open cartridges widely believed to be greased with cow and pig fat — an offence to Hindu and Muslim sepoys alike. But the deeper causes ran through everything: economic exploitation, dispossession, military grievance, and a growing fear that the Company intended to interfere with Indian religion and custom.
The revolt spread through Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jhansi and much of central and northern India. Rani Lakshmibai, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Nana Sahib, Tantia Tope and Kunwar Singh led its most significant campaigns. It was suppressed — but it ended Company rule. In 1858, the British Crown assumed direct control of India, beginning the period known as the Raj.
The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885. In its early decades it sought reform rather than independence — greater Indian participation in government, constitutional concessions. Leaders including Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal built the political consciousness that later movements would draw on.
The partition of Bengal in 1905 transformed that. The Swadeshi movement it triggered called on Indians to boycott British goods, buy Indian-made products, support indigenous industry and build national educational institutions. The struggle stopped being a matter of petitions and became a matter of participation.
Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915, bringing with him a method: satyagraha, non-violence, civil disobedience, boycott, and above all mass participation. His approach brought farmers, workers, women and students into a movement that had until then belonged largely to the educated classes.
Then came Jallianwala Bagh. On 13 April 1919, British troops under Brigadier General Reginald Dyer opened fire on a large unarmed gathering in Amritsar. The massacre destroyed whatever faith remained in British justice and became a turning point in the national movement.
The Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22) urged Indians to withdraw from British institutions — schools, colleges, courts. The Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, launched by Gandhi's Salt March to Dandi, challenged the salt laws and became one of the most recognised acts of resistance anywhere in the twentieth century.
At the Lahore Congress session in December 1929, under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress adopted the demand for Purna Swaraj — complete independence. Nothing less.
From 26 January 1930, Indians observed that date as Independence Day, taking public pledges for full freedom. It is the reason 26 January was later chosen as the day the Constitution would come into force in 1950. The date India had claimed for itself in defiance became the date it gave itself a republic.
On 8 August 1942, with the Second World War underway, the All-India Congress Committee launched the Quit India Movement in Bombay. Gandhi's call was two words: "Do or Die."
The British arrested Gandhi and the Congress leadership almost immediately. The movement continued without them — and became the last great mass struggle against British rule.
Alongside it ran a different strategy. Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army — the Azad Hind Fauj — seeking to end British rule by force. The INA did not win militarily. But the INA trials after the war produced an extraordinary surge of public sympathy and unrest, including within the armed forces, and made the maintenance of British authority markedly harder.
| Factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| Post-war economic exhaustion | Britain lacked the resources to sustain imperial administration |
| Breadth of Indian nationalism | The demand had spread far beyond a political elite |
| Scale of mass movements | Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India had shown what resistance could mobilise |
| INA trials and military unrest | Loyalty of the armed forces could no longer be assumed |
| Political calculation | British leaders concluded that transfer of power was unavoidable |
The legal instrument was the Indian Independence Act 1947, passed by the British Parliament and given Royal Assent on 18 July 1947. It provided for two independent Dominions — India and Pakistan — from 15 August 1947.
At midnight between 14 and 15 August, Nehru delivered the address remembered as "Tryst with Destiny." India was free.
The freedom struggle is often told through Delhi, Bombay and Bengal. Tamil Nadu's contribution ran through all of it.
Veerapandiya Kattabomman, the Palayakkarar of Panchalankurichi, refused to pay tribute to the East India Company and was hanged in 1799 — resistance that predates 1857 by nearly six decades. Rani Velu Nachiyar of Sivaganga fought the Company and reclaimed her kingdom, among the earliest Indian rulers to do so. The Marudhu Pandiyar brothers were executed in 1801 for their rebellion.
In the twentieth century, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai launched the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company to break the British shipping monopoly, and was sentenced to a term so severe he was made to pull an oil press in prison — earning him the name Kappalottiya Tamizhan, the Tamil who sailed a ship. The poet Subramania Bharati gave the movement a Tamil voice, writing of freedom, and of the dignity of women and the oppressed, in verse that outlived him. Vanchinathan, Subramania Siva and Tiruppur Kumaran — who died in 1932 still holding the national flag after a police assault, remembered as Kodi Kaatha Kumaran, the one who protected the flag — each paid for the movement with their lives.
There is a particular reason today's ceremony at Fort St George carries weight beyond protocol. On 15 August 1947, at 5.30 in the morning, a national flag was hoisted at that same fort — among the first raised anywhere in independent India. That flag survives. Made of pure silk and measuring roughly twelve feet by eight, it is preserved in the Indian Independence Gallery of the Fort St George Museum, a few steps from where the Chief Minister stood this morning.
The flag itself had been adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947, weeks before independence: saffron for courage and sacrifice, white for truth and peace, green for growth and auspiciousness, and at its centre the Ashoka Chakra with its 24 spokes — the wheel of dharma, and of righteous progress.
One further Tamil Nadu detail belongs here. For decades after independence, it was Governors who unfurled the flag at state-level ceremonies. That changed in 1974, after then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi raised the matter with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — and Chief Ministers gained the right to hoist the Tricolour in their state capitals. Every Chief Minister who has hoisted a flag on Independence Day since, in any state, has done so because of a question first asked from Tamil Nadu.
Marking the 80th Independence Day, CM Vijay received the ceremonial guard of honour and the police parade salute before unfurling the flag and delivering his Independence Day address. The ceremony included the presentation of state honours: the Thagaisal Thamizhar Award, carrying a cash prize of ₹10 lakh and a citation, for outstanding contribution to Tamil Nadu and the Tamil community; the Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Award for excellence in science and technology; the Kalpana Chawla Award for courage and bravery; the Chief Minister's Good Governance Awards; awards for outstanding service to persons with disabilities; and awards for social service, women's welfare, best local bodies and the Chief Minister's State Youth Awards. Police medals were also presented.
The customary tea party at Lok Bhavan was not held this year, with Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar away in Thiruvananthapuram.
| Date | What It Marks |
|---|---|
| 15 August 1947 | Independence Day — freedom from colonial rule |
| 26 January 1950 | Republic Day — the Constitution comes into force |
Independence was freedom from something. The Republic was the decision about what to do with it.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1757 | Battle of Plassey |
| 1799 | Veerapandiya Kattabomman executed |
| 1857 | First War of Independence |
| 1858 | British Crown assumes direct control |
| 1885 | Indian National Congress founded |
| 1905 | Partition of Bengal; Swadeshi Movement |
| 1915 | Gandhi returns to India |
| 1919 | Jallianwala Bagh massacre |
| 1920–22 | Non-Cooperation Movement |
| 1929 | Lahore Congress adopts Purna Swaraj |
| 1930 | Salt March; 26 January observed as Independence Day |
| 1932 | Tiruppur Kumaran dies holding the flag |
| 1942 | Quit India Movement |
| 1945–46 | INA trials; widespread unrest |
| 18 July 1947 | Indian Independence Act receives Royal Assent |
| 22 July 1947 | National flag adopted by the Constituent Assembly |
| 15 August 1947 | India becomes independent |
| 26 January 1950 | Constitution comes into force |
Independence came with partition, and partition came with displacement, communal violence and death on a scale that made 1947 simultaneously the most triumphant and the most painful year in the subcontinent's modern history. Any honest account of the day holds both.
It was also not won by leaders alone. Farmers, workers, students, women, soldiers, journalists, lawyers, teachers, social reformers, tribal communities and revolutionaries — most of whose names appear in no history book — made independence possible. That is what the flag at Fort St George, and every flag raised this morning, is actually for.
Independence Day Freedom Struggle Tamil Nadu History Fort St George August 15, 2026