Road To Freedom

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• For God and Country
• The Empire Builders
• Tribal Uprisings
• Sepoys on the Move
• British Authority Collapses
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Roll of Honour
• The Trial of the Last Emperor
• English Education
• The Blue Mutiny
• Perishing in Peace
• ‘Rani Ka Hookum’
• Barbarous Britannia
• Return to Swadeshi
• The Delhi Durbar
• Hunger Deaths
• The One-Man Army
• Mamool Raj
• The British Raj in Black and White
• Europeans Take To The Street!
• Pressing On !
• The Battle For A Free Press
• The Battle Lines are Drawn
• Women : Crossing the Threshold
• An Old Man's Dream
• Father of Indian Unrest
• The Monk Who Shook The Nation
• The Battle is Taken to the Legislature!
• Partition of Bengal
• The Great Divide
• The New Spirit of India
• Swadeshi Enterprise
• From Swadeshi to Swaraj
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Heroes and Martyrs
• Revolutionaries Outside India
• Carrot and Stick
• Gandhi in Champaran
• The Gentle Satyagrahi
• Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh
• Jallianwala — The Aftermath
• A People Reject Their Rulers
• The Himalayan Blunder
• Gandhiji Withdraws from Political Activities
• Bardoli
• Saga of Indian Revolutionaries
• A Pinch of Salt!
• Gandhi and Ambedkar
• Leave India to God… or to Anarchy
• Quit India
• The Last War of Independence
• Apostle of Peace
• India Wins Freedom
• The Light Has Gone Out
• Under One Flag

Quit India

Quit India

With the failure of the Cripp's Mission, Gandhiji came to the conclusion that the best thing Britain could do was simply to quit India — without talks, without proposals, without worrying about the future. The Free Indian would decide what to do with the various problems confronting the nation. The historic All-India Congress Committee session at Gowalia Tank, Mumbai on 8th August 1942 was attended by 7,500 delegates. It was at this session that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru moved the 'Quit India' resolution. It was seconded by Sardar Patel and passed by an overwhelming majority with only 13 members opposing it. Gandhiji spoke for two hours. "Every one of you should from this moment," said Gandhiji, "consider yourself a free man or woman and even act as if you are free and no longer under the heel of this imperialism. This is no make - believe. You have to cultivate the spirit of freedom before it comes physically. The chains of a slave are broken the moment he considers himself a free man." In conclusion he said, "Here is a mantra, a short one that I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is : 'Do or Die'. We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery." On the following day, in the early hours of August 9, the police swooped down on the Congress leaders and arrested Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and several others. Gandhiji had said that after the arrest of the leaders each person would be his own general and would be expected to "do or die" in the implementation of the "Quit India" resolution. The people of India did exactly that. New groups were formed overnight and new leadership emerged to direct the agitation against British rule in villages, towns and cities. As the government unleashed a reign of terror the movement went underground. The freedom fighters no longer courted arrest to fill the prisons, instead they resorted to hit-and-run tactics and successfully evaded arrest. Jaya Prakash Narayan with his daring escape from the Hazaribagh jail became the symbol of the new spirit of rebellion. Police stations, post offices, courts, railway stations and other symbols of government authority became the targets of attack. Bridges were blown up, railway tracks were removed and telephone and telegraph wires were cut. Thus the movement was certainly not within the 'four corners of non-violence' as Gandhiji wanted it to be. For the first time, after the 1857 mutiny, the government appeared to have lost control.

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Reminiscent of 1857, students of the Benaras Hindu University raised the slogan Angrez bhag gaya 'the English have fled'. They hijacked trains and draped them in the tricolour.
In the first week after the Quit India resolution was passed, 250 railway stations were damaged and over 500 post offices and 150 police stations were attacked. Train services were disrupted for many weeks in Bihar and Eastern U.P.
The government hit back with a vengeance. In just one week, soldiers fired on unarmed crowds in different parts of the country on 538 occasions. This included machine-gun firing by low-flying aircraft. The government once again resorted to whipping and burning of entire villages as punishmenr. By the end of 1942, those arrested crossed the 60,000 mark.
When the government gagged the press, the freedom fighters set up the underground Congress radio which they operated from different locations in Bombay to evade detection. This radio which was manned by among others, Usha Mehta, continued to keep the country informed of the Quit India agitation and was finally confiscated by the police in November 1942.
Defying the brutal strength of the government, people set up parallel governments in different parts of the country. The people's government, Jatiya Sarkar set up in Tamluk in the Midnapur district of Bengal and which lasted till September 1944, undertook cyclone relief work, gave grants to schools, set up courts and distributed grains to the needy. The Prati Sarkar (parallel government) set up by Nana Patil and others in Satara, Western Maharashtra continued to function till 1945. The Prati Sarkar enforced prohibition, abolished untouchability and rural education was promoted.
Peasants, workers, students and women took active part in the movement. Though the Muslim League did not participate in the Quit India Movement, significantly this period was free from communal clashes. Even government officials, zamindars and Indian industrialists gave covert support.
Though Gandhiji did not approve of the methods adopted by the Quit India agitators, he held the government responsible maintaining that it was its repressive measures which had invited such a violent backlash.
Though the government succeeded to a large extent in suppressing the movement, the Quit India movement had once and for all liberated the people from the fear of British authority. Independence or Poorna Swaraj was no longer negotiable. Now the people of the country would be satisfied with nothing less than independence.