Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, an American base, in December 1941, and this drew the US into the Second World War. Japan’s armies began to march swiftly through Southeast Asia, bringing the war to the very doors of India. If the Japanese had to be resisted, something had to be done to involve the Indians in the war effort.
Realising the gravity of the situation, Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain, under pressure from American President Roosevelt, agreed, reluctantly, to consider proposal for a self-government in India. Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the War Cabinet, was dispatched to India with the proposals of the British government. He met the Congress president Maulana Azad on March 25, 1942, followed by a meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru. They both told him that the viceroy should only be a constitutional head, and the proposed Council should have an Indian as defence member.
But this was rejected by the War Cabinet when the demand was placed before Churchill by Cripps on March 27. Cripps met M.K. Gandhi and showed him the proposal, to which the latter stated: “Why did you come if this is what you have to offer – I would advise you to take the next plane home.” Gandhi was also believed to have remarked that Cripps’ proposals were “a post dated cheque on a crashing bank”. But this statement attributed to Gandhi in Sewagram was denied by him as a “tissue of lies”.
The expected failure of the Cripps Mission showed that Britain was not willing to make any political concessions during the war. But then could Britain defend India? Singapore, a heavily guarded fortress of Britain, had fallen on February 15, 1942 and then Rangoon on March 7. The war was now on the borders of India. The country was seething with frustration. It wanted action. That was also the thinking of Gandhi.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) decided to meet in April 1942. Gandhi sent a draft for the CWC meeting through Miraben, saying Britain could not defend India, that India had no quarrel with any power including the Japanese, and that British and all foreign troops should be immediately withdraw from India. Gandhi was prepared to leave the Congress with his followers if his draft was not accepted: “The time has come when every one of us has to choose his own course.” Though there was a majority of 11 to 6 in the Working Committee in favour of Gandhi’s draft, to avoid a split, Nehru’s alternative and less militant draft was accepted.
There was a showdown between Gandhi and some of his lieutenants on the one hand, and Nehru and Azad on the other, in the next meeting of the Working Committee meeting which began on July 5, 1942 at Wardha and lasted for several days. Azad felt that if Japan invaded India she should be resisted, for it would be most undesirable to change an old master which, in the course of time, had “become effete and was losing its grip for a new and virile conqueror”. So he opposed Gandhi’s plan of civil disobedience. Nehru supported him. However, a compromised was reached.
On July 14, the CWC passed a resolution calling upon the British to quit India; but adding, at the insistence of Nehru, that after such withdrawal the Congress was agreeable to the stationing of the armed forces of Allied Powers to resist the Japanese aggression. The die was thus cast and there was now no going back. It was also decided to call a meeting of the AICC in Bombay on August 7 to ratify the resolution. The Bombay meeting of the AICC confirmed the Wardha CWC resolution. On August 8, Nehru moved the ‘Quit India’ resolution and Sardar Patel seconded it. The resolution was passed amidst scenes of great enthusiasm and nationalist fervour.
Before the Quit India movement was launched, Gandhi was asked whether he would call off the movement as he did in 1922 in the event of any eruption of violence. He replied, “I am the same Gandhi as I was in 1922, I attach the same importance to non-violence that I did then.”
But, in fact, he was not the same Gandhi. According to historian Sankar Ghose, “He, in his seventies, was an impatient Gandhi who could not wait for Independence, whatever the consequences. So he gave the call, ‘Do or Die.’ ‘I waited and waited,’ Gandhi wrote in the Harijan on June 7, 1942, ‘until the country should develop non-violent strength necessary to throw off the foreign yoke. I feel that I cannot afford to wait …If in spite of all precautions rioting takes place, it cannot be helped.’ He now said that everyone was ‘free to go to the fullest length’, though only under ahimsa. But ‘the fullest length’ could include a general strike if that became a dire necessity. He was even prepared to tolerate ‘fifteen days of chaos’. He was no longer unduly perturbed by violence taking place.”
At 5 in the morning of August 9, a day after the AICC ratified the Quit India resolution, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad and all top Congress leaders were arrested. Though Gandhi, who had been imprisoned at Aga Khan Palace at Poona, was released earlier in May 1944 on grounds of health, Nehru was in prison at Ahmednagar Fort for 34 months, his longest ever, from August 1942 to June 1945. The wholesale arrest of the leaders touched off a spontaneous popular revolt throughout India. For a week all business was paralysed in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta and many other places.
The authorities let loose cruel repression. In Delhi, the police fired on 47 separate occasions on August 11 and 12. In UP there were 29 firings between August 9 and 21, resulting in the death of 76 persons and severe injury to 114. In the Central Provinces the police killed 64, wounded 102 and arrested 11,088 in the first three weeks. In Mysore State about 600 persons were killed by police firing during the first few days of the movement. In Patiala, eight students were killed while trying to hoist the national flag over a public building. Over 100 were shot in a Mysore procession. In Calcutta there were numerous firings, resulting in many deaths. The same was the case in all big cities. In Midnapore (Bengal) and in some parts of Maharashtra, parallel governments were set up which functioned effectively for a short time.
The casualties from August 9 to November 30, 1942 were, according to the Secretary of State for India, 1,008 killed, and 3,275 seriously injured. The popular estimate was however very much higher. The number of people imprisoned was over 100,000. The movement had taken a turn not contemplated by Gandhi and the Congress leaders. Infuriated by the wholesale arrest of their leaders and the cruel repression let loose by the authorities, people in several places destroyed public property like bridges, police stations, etc., and removed even rail tracks, cut off telegraph wires and vented their anger in various other acts of violence.
Acharya Kriplani (who was INC president in 1946-47) writes in his biography of Gandhi: “Had the people had the guidance of the leaders, such wanton destruction would not have taken place. Even if Gandhiji alone were out, he would have undertaken a fast if nothing else had prevailed. It would have cooled down people’s ardour for destruction and the movement would have gone on generally on right lines.”
But Kriplani held the firm view: “It is my opinion that India could not have achieved its independence, but for the accession of strength which the nation received by the successive struggles started by Gandhiji. A nation which could throw a challenge to the Empire at a time when the armies of all the Allies were on Indian soil could no more be held in thralldom.” Even if one is wiser by hindsight, the Acharya’s opinion is difficult to challenge.
Praveen Davar is former secretary, AICC and the author of Freedom Struggle & Beyond.
