11. , INDIA AT FIFTY:-REDEEMING THE PLEDGE 2.1 This report is being written as India approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its Independence. In words etched in the historical memory of the nation, its first Prime Minister, speaking in the Constituent Assembly at midnight on 14-15 August 1947 said: "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." For this.Cmmission, charged with the statutory responsibility of promoting and 2.2 protecting human rights, it becomes necessary to ask: L Have we, fifty years after Independence, done enough to redeem that pledge in terms of the h u m n rights of our compatriots? Has our pledge to the people of India, that their rights to life, liberty, equality and the dignity of the individual, as guaranteed by our Constitution and undewritten by our treaty commitments, been redeemed if "not whollyn; then "vey substantially"? The a n s w r to these questions is complex and it can scarcely be the purpose of this Annual Report to provide a commentary on fifty years of Independence. Yet the 2.3 contours of the answer need to be delineated, if only to relate the Commission's functions and efforts in 1996-97 with the realities of our nation as they are today, half a century.,after Independence. What do the contours reveal? . , In the firs: instance, they reveal the awesome attachment of the people of India 2.4 to the exercise cuftheir civil and political rights and their impatience with any effort to curtail such rights. Witness, for instance, the swift rebuff to the Emergency dectared in 1975. In 1996-97, this characteristic was illustrated, once again, in the vigorous exercise of such rights in the General €lectionsrleading to the constitution of the Elwenth Lok Sabha. Over 592.5 million voters were registered, of whom 343.3 million went to the poll^, in a period extending over one month. Never before, anywhere in the world, had a free and fair election of such dimension been organized and conducted. Concurrently, elections were held for the State Legislatures of Assam, Haryana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and these were followed - also during the year under review - by elections to the Legislatures of Jammu & Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. For those in this country, including this Commission, who had been urging the fuller exercise of civil and political rights in areas of current or recent insurgency,