Resentment against the alien company and its unfair rule over the local public began to grow

and
in 1857, the first organised revolt against it took place with a group of Indian soldiers rebelling
against the British rank in the Barrackpore, Bengal unit. As a direct result of the rebellion,
administrative control of the country passed from the East India Company to the British Crown
in London. From 1858 to 1947, India was governed by London with representatives in the form
of governor-generals and viceroys posted in India. However, several incidents such as the 1919
Jallianwala Bagh massacre, where more than 1,000 people were killed after General Reginald
Dyer ordered troops to fire machine guns into a crowd of Indian protesters and the Bengal
famine of 1943, which killed up to five million people, only went to alienate the local people
from their rulers.
Prominent Indian leaders and revolutionaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose,
Lala Lajpat Rai, Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Jawaharlal Nehru
and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel took part in the uprising against the British over different time
periods, which ultimately led to India's freedom from foreign rule.
On 15 August 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, raised the Indian national flag
above the Lahori Gate of the Red Fort in Delhi.
"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new,
when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance"