Lahore Resolution & Cripps Mission

Lahore Resolution 

• The resolution of Muslim League at Lahore was distinct.
• A. K. Fazlul Huq presented the historical Lahore resolution on March 23, 1940.
• The resolution text, unanimously approved by the Subject Committee, accepted the concept of a united homeland for Muslims and recommended the creation of an independent Muslim state.

Cripps Mission

• Bose was the only leader who sought Non-Cooperation with the allied forces and active cooperation with the Axis powers.
• Things however changed soon with the Japanese advance in Southeast Asia and the collapse of the British army.
• On March 9, Japan captures Rangoon and all of Southeast Asia.
• Winston Churchill, now heading the war cabinet, dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps On 22 March 1942, to talk with the Congress.
• The Congress leaders, released in December 1941 and they passed a resolution offering cooperation with the war effort on condition that Britain promised independence to India after war.
• The negotiations between the Cripps Mission and the Congress failed as Britain was not willing to transfer effective power immediately.

Offers of Cripps Mission

1. Dominion Status after war.
2. Constitution making body was to be partly elected by the Provincial assemblies and nominated members from Princely States.
3. Any provinces that was not prepared to accept the new constitution would have the right to enter into separate agreement with Britain implying the acceptance for the demand of Pakistan.
4. British control of defence during the War.

• Both the Congress and the Muslim League rejected the proposal.
• Gandhi called the proposals as ‘a post- dated cheque on a crashing bank’.
• Nehru recalled later: ‘when I read these proposals for the first time I was profoundly depressed’.
• Churchill’s attitude did not change even when Britain needed cooperation in the war efforts so desperately and Subhas Chandra Bose’s campaign to join hands with the Axis powers in the fight for independence.
• Bose had addressed the people of India on the Azad Hind Radio broadcast from Germany in March 1942. 
• This was the context in which Gandhi thought of the Quit India movement.