Foreign relations of India
India's relations with the world have evolved since the British Raj (1857–1947), when the British Empire monopolised external and defence relations. When India gained independence in 1947, few Indians had experience in making or conducting foreign policy. However, the country's oldest political party, the Indian National Congress, had established a small foreign department in 1925 to make overseas contacts and to publicise its independence struggle. From the late 1920s on, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had a long-standing interest in world affairs among independence leaders, formulated the Congress stance on international issues. As a member of the interim government in 1946, Nehru articulated India's approach to the world.
Independence Day (India)
Independence and partition inspired literary and other artistic creations. Such creations mostly describe the human cost of partition, limiting the holiday to a small part of their narrative. Salman Rushdie's novel "Midnight's Children" (1980), which won the Booker Prize and the Booker of Bookers, wove its narrative around children born at midnight of 14–15 August 1947 with magical abilities. "Freedom at Midnight" (1975) is a non-fiction work by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre that chronicled the events surrounding the first Independence Day celebrations in 1947. Few films centre on the moment of independence, instead highlighting the circumstances of partition and its aftermath. On the Internet, Google has been commemorating Independence Day of India since 2003 with a special doodle on its Indian homepage.