Why Did Mountbatten Choose August 15 As India's Independence Day?

India is set to celebrate the 77th anniversary of the country's independence on August 15. Like every year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort.

This year, US Congressmen, Ro Khanna and Michael Waltz, who are also co-chairs of the House India caucus will lead a bipartisan Congressional Member Delegation to India and will also attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address from the Red Fort on Independence Day.

Even as the country is ready to celebrate its Independence Day, not many know why the British Raj decided to formally end its rule on August 15.

Why Did Mountbatten Choose August 15 As India's Independence Day?
Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, was entrusted with the responsibility of transferring power to India by June 30, 1948 by the British Parliament. However, he opted 15 August 1947 as the day the colonial rule ends in India.

He had two reasons to pick the said date. Firstly, he did not want further bloodshed or riots. Additionally, Mountbatten selected August 15, as this date coincided with the second anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.

One might be surprised to know that the date came out of the blue. Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins documented this in their 'Freedom at Midnight'.

"I have selected a date for the Transfer of Power," he told a journalist who asked the exact date of Indian independence, according to The Wire.

"He was uttering those words, the possible dates were still whizzing through his mind like the numbers on a spinning roulette wheel. Early September? Mid-September? Mid-August? Suddenly the wheel stopped with a jar and the little ball popped into a slot so overwhelmingly appropriate that Mountbatten's decision was instantaneous. It was a date linked in his memory to the most triumphant hours of his own existence, the day in which his long crusade through the jungles of Burma had ended with the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire. What more appropriate date for the birth of the new democratic Asia than the second anniversary of Japan's surrender?

His voice constricted with sudden emotion, the victor of the jungles of Burma about to become the liberator of India announced:

'The final Transfer of Power to Indian hands will take place on 15 August 1947.'...

Louis Mountbatten's spontaneous decision to announce the date of Indian independence on his own initiative was a bombshell. In the corridors of the House of Commons, Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, no one had suspected Mountbatten was ready to ring the curtain down so precipitously on Britain's Indian adventure. In Delhi, the Viceroy's most intimate collaborators had no inkling of what Mountbatten was going to do. Not even the Indian leaders with whom he had spent so many hours had received a hint that he would act with such decisive haste."

Following this announcement, the Indian Independence Bill was passed in the British Parliament's House of Commons on July 4, 1947.

It is interesting to note that India celebrated January 26 as Independence Day between 1930 and 1947.