Quit India Movement

Quit India Movement

• The Indian National Congress met at Wardha on July 1 4, 1942.
• The meeting resolved to launch a mass civil disobedience movement. C. Rajagopalachari and Bhulabhai Desai who had reservations against launching a movement at that time resigned from the Congress Working Committee.
• Nehru, despite being among those who did not want a movement then bound himself with the majority’s decision in the Working Committee.
• Gandhi expressed this in a press interview on May 16, 1942 where he said: ‘Leave India to God’ If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy. This ordered disciplined anarchy should go and if there is complete lawlessness, I would risk it.‘
• The Mahatma called upon the people to ‘Do or Die’ and called the movement he launched from there as a ‘fight to the finish.
• The All India Congress Committee that met at Bombay on 8 August 1942 passed the famous Quit India Resolution demanding an immediate end to British rule in India.
• Gandhi said, ‘We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.”
• A non-violent mass struggle under Gandhi was to be launched. But early next morning on 9 August 1942 Gandhi and the entire Congress leadership was arrested.
•  The momentum and its intensity was such that Linlithgow, wrote to Churchill, describing the protests as ‘by far the most serious rebellion since 1857, the gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed from the world for reasons of military security.”

Course of Movement

• With Gandhi and other prominent leaders of the Congress in jail, the Socialists provided the leadership for the movement.
• The movement included the Congress, the Socialists, and the Forward Bloc.
• Jayaprakash Narayan and Ramanand Misra escaped from prison and organised an underground movement.
• Women activists like Aruna Asaf Ali played a heroic role.
• The press being censored, the rebels set up a clandestine radio broadcast system from Bombay.
• Usha Mehta established Congress Radio underground which successfully functioned till November 1942.
• Thousands of people were killed using machine guns and some places were even bombed by using airplanes on people.
• The people protested in whatever form that they could, such as hartals, strikes, picketing.
• People attacked government buildings, railway stations, telephone and telegraph lines and all that stood as symbols of British authority.
• Parallel governments were established in Satara, Orissa, Bihar, United Provinces and Bengal.
• The rebels even set up ‘national governments’ in pockets they liberated from the colonial administration.
• An instance of this was the ‘Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar’ in the Midnapore district in Bengal that lasted until September 1944. 
• R.H. Niblett, who served as District Collector of Azamgarh recorded in his diary that the British unleashed ‘white terror‘ using an ‘incendiary police to set fire to villages for several miles’ and that ‘reprisals (becoming) the rule of the day.’
• Gandhi commenced a twenty-one day fast in February 1943 which nearly threatened his life. Finally, the British government relented. 

Release of Gandhi  

• Gandhi’s release from prison, on health grounds, on May 6, 1944 led to the revival of the Constructive Programme.
• Lord Archibald Wavell, who had replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy in October 1943, had begun to work towards another round of negotiation. 
• Though the movement was suppressed, it demonstrated the depth of nationalism and the readiness of the people to sacrifice for it.
• Nearly 7000 people were killed and more than 60,000 jailed.
• Significantly it also demonstrated the weakening of the colonial hegemony over the state apparatus.
• The work of Subash Chandra Bose and Indian National Army strengthened the idea of removal of British from India.
• Many officials including policemen helped the nationalists.
• Railway engine drivers and pilots transported bombs and other materials for the protestors.