Independence Day: Know More About Quit India movement

On 8 August 1942, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi launched the ‘Quit India’ movement at the All-India Congress Committee session in Bombay. The next day, Gandhi, Nehru and many other leaders of the Indian National Congress were arrested by the British Government. Disorderly and non-violent demonstrations took place throughout the country in the following days.

By the middle of 1942, Japanese troops were approaching the borders of India. Pressure was mounting from China, the United States and Britain to solve the issue of the future status of India before the end of the war. In March 1942, the Prime Minister dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the War Cabinet, to India to discuss the British Government’s Draft Declaration. After the war, the draft granted India Dominion status but conceded few changes to the British Government Act of 1935. The draft was unacceptable to the Congress Working Committee, who rejected it. The failure of the Cripps Mission further estranged Congress and the British Government.

Gandhi seized upon the failure of the Cripps Mission, the advances of the Japanese in South-East Asia and the general frustration with the British in India. He called for a voluntary British withdrawal from India. From 29 April to 1 May 1942, the All India Congress Committee assembled in Allahabad to discuss the resolution of the Working Committee. Although Gandhi was absent from the meeting, many of his points were admitted into the resolution: the most significant being the commitment to non-violence. On 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee met again at Wardha and resolved that it would authorise Gandhi to take charge of the non-violent mass movement. The resolution, generally referred to as the ‘Quit India’ resolution, was to be approved by the All India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay in August.

On 7 to 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee met in Bombay and ratified the ‘Quit India’ resolution. Gandhi called for ‘Do or Die’. The next day, on 9 August 1942, Gandhi, members of the Congress Working Committee and other Congress leaders were arrested by the British Government under the Defence of India Rules. The Working Committee, the All India Congress Committee and the four Provincial Congress Committees were declared unlawful associations under the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908. The assembly of public meetings was prohibited under rule 56 of the Defence of India Rules. The arrest of Gandhi and the Congress leaders led to mass demonstrations throughout India. Thousands were killed and injured in the wake of the ‘Quit India’ movement. Strikes were called in many places. The British swiftly suppressed many of these demonstrations by mass detentions; more than 100,000 people were imprisoned.

The ‘Quit India’ movement, more than anything, united the Indian people against British rule. Although most demonstrations had been suppressed by 1944, upon his release in 1944, Gandhi continued his resistance and went on a 21-day fast. By the end of the Second World War, Britain’s place in the world had changed dramatically, and the demand for independence could no longer be ignored.

Impact of the movement

The Quit India movement of 1942–44 was the final mass civil disobedience campaign launched by the Indian National Congress against British rule.[1] Against the backdrop of the Second World War, its objective was to secure a British commitment to immediate full independence (purna swaraj) once the conflict was over, as opposed to the promise of Dominion status. Dominions (such as Australia and Canada) were largely self-governing but remained part of the British Empire, with the British monarch as head of state. The movement’s immediate outcome was the arrest of the main Congress leadership, including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as thousands of Congress supporters. Most of them remained incarcerated until the end of the war. But in the longer term, the nature of the protest, which involved a greater readiness by some Congress activists to use violence against the colonial state, influenced post-war negotiations over India’s future. The British authorities succeeded in controlling the immediate challenge from Quit India. Still, the speed with which the British pursued an ‘exit strategy’ between 1945 and 1947 can be attributed – at least in part – to the fear of a violent end to the Empire that the movement generated. Along with the military setbacks experienced by Britain during the war, the Quit India movement irreparably damaged the veneer of invincibility that had previously surrounded the Raj.