THE City celebrated ‘Independence Day’ with unprecedented enthusiasm. From early morning, citizens came out in their tens of thousands in the brilliantly decorated thoroughfares of the City with the joy of a new life radiating in their faces. The entire City was, as it were, on the move.

Never before in the history of Madras, have such unforgettable scenes of unbounded enthusiasm been witnessed.

An extensive tour round the City revealed that there was hardly pace or a vehicle, which did not fly the National Flag. The National Flag also found a proud and prominent place on the person of everyone — irrespective of caste, creed or colour.

The awakening of the people to the new era of freedom that has opened before them found its manifestations in several ways. Some showed their welcome in a deeply religious spirit — by organising ‘bhajans’ and by worshipping in the temples, where the bells announced the dawn of freedom and where special ‘pujas’ were offered. Some others paid a round of visits to important and interesting places in the City while the rest mutely joined in the endless streams of humanity, which moved about, apparently aimlessly but with the one idea uppermost in their minds — that they were free.

Of the prominent places of interest, in the City, those which attracted the largest number of visitors were Fort St. George, the Harbour, the High Court, the Corporation Building, the Central Station, and the Government House at Mount Road.

At Fort St. George, hundreds of people had gathered overnight eagerly awaiting the moment when the National Flag would fly aloft on the Flag Staff, where the Union Jack symbolic of alien rule had been flying for nearly two centuries. As the early hours of the morning approached, the crowd had swelled to thousands and the Beach opposite the Fort was literally a sea of humanity. When the National Flag was at last hoisted on the Flag Staff, wild cheering broke out from those who had kept a long vigil and national slogans rent the air. The Fort continued to be flooded with streams of visitors for the rest of the day and all eyes went up proudly to greet the Flag of a Free India.

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