For many Indians, the achievement of independence on 15 August 1947 was the culmination of a long struggle, the moment when, in Jawaharlal Nehru's words, ‘the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance’. People looked forward to the creation of a new political order, one in which the problems and conflicts associated with the British Raj would vanish like the morning mist. Instead, the new nation found itself exposed to a high degree of stress and instability. At a time when it should have been able to direct its energies wholeheartedly towards policies of social and economic reform, the bitter legacy of the communal rioting which had accompanied partition threatened to undermine it. The tension between Hindus and Muslims throughout the northern provinces was matched by the strained relations between India and Pakistan at the international level. In India the main hope for peace and secularism appeared to be the ruling party, the Indian National Congress, but even within its ranks there were those who insisted on India's having a moral obligation to safeguard the well-being of Pakistan's non-Muslim minorities. When the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) met in November 1947 for the first time after independence, its retiring President, J.B. Kripalani, well known for his firm commitment to secularism, likened the positions of the two countries to those of Britain and Germany on the eve of the Second World War: