On 15 March 1946, the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, gives an address to the House of Commons in which he emphasises the need for India to gain independence, while outlining the problems involved.

On 3 June 1947, in New Delhi, Lord Mountbatten and the main leaders of India negotiate the partition of that country in accordance with the British plan. From left to right: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Vice-President of the Interim Government; Lord Hastings Ismay, adviser to Lord Mountbatten; Lord Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, ‘Great Leader’ of the All-India Muslim League (AIML).

Am 14. Juni 1947 analysiert die Tageszeitung Süddeutsche Zeitung die Folgen der politischen Unabhängigkeit Indiens und befürchtet Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Hindus und Moslems infolge der effektiven Spaltung zwischen Indien und Pakistan.

A radio broadcast by the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, on 15 August 1947 on the occasion of India's gaining independence.

On the streets of Calcutta, the people celebrate Indian independence, declared on 15 August 1947, and the withdrawal of British troops.

On 24 January 1950, India’s Constituent Assembly adopts the Indian national anthem from a song written and composed by the Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore.

‘Farewell to colonialism!’ In the early 1950s, Berlin-born Dutch cartoonist Fritz Behrendt criticises the Soviet Union’s foreign policy, which aims to take advantage of the wave of decolonisation in Asia and the Middle East to promote communist ideology in these newly independent countries. In a world dominated by two superpowers engaged in a Cold War (the United States and the USSR), Behrendt speculates on the future of the decolonised countries, represented by a group of four people with stereotypical features (an Asian woman, a man with a turban wearing a traditional Indian costume, a black man in a boubou and a Muslim in Bedouin dress). Although these four welcome the permanent departure of the European coloniser (a seemingly British moustachioed man in colonial garb, holding an umbrella, golf clubs and a suitcase), they do not realise that two new characters are already trying to replace the former coloniser. From left to right, Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, wearing a colonial helmet and holding a file with ‘Stalin’ written on the front, and Nikolai Bulganin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, carrying a backpack with a Soviet flag, try to enter on tiptoes by the back door of the house, which symbolises the newly independent states.