Why was August 15 chosen as India's Independence Day?

India will be celebrating its 76th Independence day on Monday, August 15, 2022. Crores of Indians are enjoying independence because numerous freedom fighters sacrificed their lives to free India from British rule. Seventy five years ago, August 15, 1947 marked our first Independence day. But who decided this date? Why August 15, why not some other date? Let us find answers to these questions.

After several years of struggle, the British Parliament finally decided to free India. To do this, the Parliament gave the mandate to Louis Mountbatten, the last British governor-general of India, to transfer powers to India by June 30, 1948.

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However, Mountbatten decided to advance the date and chose August 15, 1947 to transfer power to the Indian government. He justified this move by giving two reasons. Firstly, he said that he did not want bloodshed or riots, and secondly Mountbatten chose August 15 as this date marked the second anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.

In his own words, as quoted in the book Freedom at Midnight, Mountbatten claimed, "The date I chose came out of the blue. I chose it in reply to a question. I was determined to show I was the master of the whole event. When they asked if we had set a date, I knew it had to be soon. I hadn't worked it out exactly then — I thought it had to be about August or September, and I then went out to August 15. Why? Because it was the second anniversary of Japan's surrender."

After Mountbatten’s decision, the Indian Independence Bill was passed in the British Parliament’s House of Commons on July 4, 1947. Apart from India’s independence, the bill called for dividing the then country into India and Pakistan.