The Quit India Movement: Part I

• ‘Quit India,’ slogan launched the legendary struggle which also became famous by the name of the ‘August Revolution.’
  • In this struggle, the common people of the country demonstrated an unparalleled heroism and militancy.
  • The repression that they faced was the most brutal that had ever been used against the national movement.
  • The circumstances in which the resistance was offered were also the most adverse faced by the national movement until then — using the justification of the war effort, the Government had armed itself with draconian measures, and suppressed even basic civil liberties. selfstudyhistory.com

Reasons of starting a struggle:

• Failure of Cripps Mission:
  • The failure of the Cripps Mission in April 1942 to solve the constitutional deadlock exposed Britain’s unchanged attitude on constitutional advance and made it clear that any more silence would be tantamount to accepting the British right to decide the fate of Indians without consulting them.
  • The failure of the Cripps Mission made it clear that Britain was unwilling to offer an honourable settlement and a real constitutional advance during the War, and that she was determined to continue India’s unwilling partnership in the War efforts.
  • Gandhiji had been as clear as Nehru that he did not want to hamper the anti-fascist struggle, especially that of the Russian and Chinese people. But by the spring of 1942 he was becoming increasingly convinced of the inevitability of a struggle.
  • A fortnight after Cripps’ departure, Gandhiji drafted a resolution for the Congress Working Committee calling for Britain’s withdrawal and the adoption of non-violent non-cooperation against any Japanese invasion.
  • Congress edged towards Quit India while Britain moved towards arming herself with special powers to meet the threat.
  • Nehru remained opposed to the idea of a struggle right till August 1942 and gave way only at the very end.
• There were other factors that made a struggle necessary.
  • Popular discontent, a product of rising prices and war-time shortages, was gradually mounting.
  • High-handed government actions such as the commandeering of boats in Bengal and Orissa to prevent their being used by the Japanese had led to considerable anger among the people.
    • There were fears of Britain following a scorched earth policy in Assam, Bengal and Orissa against possible Japanese advance.
  • The war had its obvious impact on the economic and social life of the Indians, many of whom had reached the threshold of their tolerance and were ready for a final showdown with British imperialism.
• Economic impact of war:
  • The economic impact of war was initially beneficial to various groups of Indians. As commodity prices rose, it benefited industrialists, merchants and rich peasants producing for the market; it took away the bad effects of the depression and for the peasants, it reduced the pressure of rent.
  • But in 1942 the main problem caused by the war was “a scarcity crisis“, resulting from mainly a shortfall in the supply of rice.
  • Between April and August the price index for food grains rose by sixty points in north India. This was partly because of bad seasonal conditions and partly due to the stoppage in the supply of Burmese rice and the stringent procurement policy of the British.
  • While the higher food prices hit the poor, the rich were hurt by excess profit tax, forcible collection of war funds and coercive sale of war bonds.
• The impact of the manner of the British evacuation from Malaya and Burma.
  • The British had evacuated, the white residents and generally left the subject people to their fate.
  • The streams of refugees who came back from Malay and Burma, bringing with them horror stories of not only Japanese atrocities, but also of how British power collapsed in Southeast Asia and British authorities abandoned the Indian refugees to their fate forcing them to traverse hostile terrains on foot, enduring hunger, disease and pain.
    • Letters from Indians in South-East Asia to their relatives in India were full of graphic accounts of British betrayal and their being left at the mercy of the dreaded Japanese.
    • There was a widespread fear that if Japan invaded, the British would do the same in India.
    • And that seemed no longer a distant possibility, as the British initiated a harsh ‘denial policy‘ in coastal Bengal by destroying all means of communications, including boats and cycles, paying very little compensation.
  • From May 1942 American and Australian soldiers began to arrive in India and soon became the central figures in stories of rape and racial harassment of civilian population. Rumours were rife, both fed by the Axis propaganda machine, and by Subhas Bose’s Azad Hind Radio, broadcast from Berlin from March 1942.
• The growing feeling of an imminent British collapse.
  • This enhanced the popular willingness to give expression to the discontent.
  • The news of Allied reverses and British withdrawals from South-East Asia and Burma and the trains bringing wounded soldiers from the Assam-Burma border confirmed this feeling.
  • The rout by an Asian power shattered white prestige and exposed the racist tendencies of the rulers.
  • There was a widespread popular belief in India that British power was going to collapse soon and therefore it was the opportune moment for a fight to the finish and to liberate India from nearly two hundred years of colonial rule.
• Conditioning masses to face Japanese invasion:
  • One major reason for the leadership of the national movement thinking it necessary to launch a struggle was their feeling that the people were becoming demoralized and, that in the event of a Japanese occupation, might not resist at all.
  • In order to build up their capacity to resist Japanese aggression, it was necessary to draw them out of this demoralized state of mind and convince them of their own power.
• The popular faith in the stability of British rule had reached such a low that there was a run on the banks and people withdrew deposits from post-office savings accounts and started hoarding gold, silver and coins.
• So convinced was Gandhiji that the time was now ripe for struggle that he said to Louis Fischer in an interview in the beginning of June: ‘I have become impatient. . . I may not be able to convince the Congress . . . I will go ahead nevertheless and address myself directly to the people.’
  • He did not have to carry out this threat and, as before, the Congress accepted the Mahatma’s expert advice on the timing of a mass struggle.
• 1942, Militant Gandhi:
  • In 1942 there was a remarkable change in Gandhi’s attitude and he seemed to be in an unusually militant mood.
  • Gandhi was not slow to feel this popular mood of militancy and realised that the moment of his final engagement with the Raj had arrived.
    • “Leave India to God“, Gandhi wrote in May 1942. “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”.
  • As the possibility of a Japanese invasion became real, Gandhi refused to accept that the Japanese could be the liberators and believed that India in the hands of the Indians was the best guarantee against fascist aggression.
  • He briskly set aside all opposition from within the Congress against direct action, coming mainly from Nehru and Rajagopalachari, and prepared the party for the final struggle, “the biggest fight in my life“.

Resolution for Complete Independence (Quit India Resolution):

• The CWC meeting at Wardha (July 14, 1942) accepted the idea of a struggle and  passed a draft resolution demanding complete independence from the British government and accepted the idea of a struggle. The draft proposed massive civil disobedience if the British did not accede to the demands.
  • The resolution said”-The committee, therefore, resolves to sanction for the vindication of India’s inalienable right to freedom and independence, the starting of a mass struggle on non-violent lines on the widest possible scale, so that the country might utilise all the non-violent strength it has gathered during the last 22 years of peaceful struggle…they (the people) must remember that non-violence is the basis of the movement...”
• Hence the Congress Working Committee approved of a draft resolution on mass— as opposed to individual— civil disobedience.
• However, it proved to be controversial within the party.
  • A prominent Congress national leader Chakravarti Rajgopalachari quit the Congress over this decision, and so did some local and regional level organizers.
  • Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad were apprehensive and critical of the call, but backed it and stuck with Gandhi’s leadership until the end.
  • Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Dr Anugrah Narayan Sinha openly and enthusiastically supported such a disobedience movement, as did many veteran Gandhians and socialists like Asoka Mehta and Jayaprakash Narayan.
• The “Quit India” resolution, adopted by the AICC in Bombay on 8 August 1942, proposed to begin this mass civil disobedience under Gandhi’s direction, if power was not immediately handed over to the Indians.

AICC Meeting—Gowaliar Tank Maidan, Bombay (August 8, 1942):

• The Congress Working Committee had adopted the ‘Quit India’ Resolution on July 14th 1942 at Wardha. The All India Congress Committee accepted this resolution with some modifications, on 8th August, 1942 at Gowalia Tank in Bombay. It was unprecedented in the popular enthusiasm it generated.
  • The Quit India Resolution was ratified and the meeting resolved to:
    • Demand an immediate end to British rule in India.
    • Declare commitment of free India to defend itself against all types of Fascism and imperialism.
    • Form a provisional Government of India after British withdrawal.
    • Sanction a civil disobedience movement against British rule.
    • Gandhi was named the leader of the struggle.
  • Do or Die Speech of Gandhiji:
    • On this occasion, Gandhi delivered his famous “Do or Die” speech, arguing that this was the final battle-a “fight to the finish”-and so the Indians must win independence or give up their lives for it.
    • Gandhiji’s speech made it clear that he is not going to be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom.
    • Gandhi followed up with the now-famous exhortation: “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’. (on 7th August,1942 session). We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery.”
    • This fired the imagination of an already rankled Indian population, expecting a breakdown of the established authority.
      • As Gyanendra Pandey puts it, Gandhi provided them with a “psychological break“, by asserting that everyone should henceforth consider themselves as “free man or woman“, and should choose their own course of action if the leaders were arrested.
  • Gandhiji’s speech contained specific instructions for different sections of the people.
    • Government servants:
      • Do not resign but declare your allegiance to the Congress.
    • Soldiers:
      • Do not leave the Army but do not fire on compatriots.
    • Princes:
      • They were asked to ‘accept the sovereignty of your own people, instead of paying homage to a foreign power.’
    • The people of the Princely States:
      • Support the ruler only if he is anti-government and declare yourselves to be a part of the Indian nation.
    • Students:
      • They were to give up studies if they were sure they could continue to remain firm till independence was achieved.
  • On 7 August, Gandhiji had placed the instructions he had drafted before the Working Committee, and in these he had proposed that:
    • Peasants ‘who have the courage, and are prepared to risk their all’ should refuse to pay the land revenue.
    • Tenants were told that ‘the Congress holds that the land belongs to those who work on it and to no one else.
      • If Zamindars are anti-government, pay mutually agreed rent, and if Zamindars are pro-government, do not pay rent.
    • These instructions were not actually issued because of the preventive arrests, but they do make Gandhiji’s intentions clear.
• The British were prepared to act. The very next day, on 9th August, all the top eminent Congress leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad were arrested. Most spent the rest of the war in prison and out of contact with the masses.
  • The Government had been preparing for the strike since the outbreak of the War itself, and since 1940 had been ready with an elaborate Revolutionary Movement Ordinance.
  • The sudden attack by the Government produced an instantaneous reaction among the people.  There were clashes with authority, strikes, public demonstrations and processions in various part of country.
  • The Government responded by gagging the press. The National Herald and Harijan ceased publication for the entire duration of the struggle, others for shorter periods.
  • Due to the arrest of major leaders, a young and till then relatively unknown Aruna Asaf Ali presided over the AICC session on 9 August and hoisted the flag; later the Congress party was banned.

Was it a spontaneous outburst, or an organized rebellion?

• Arrest of top leadership was followed by unprecedented mass fury that goes by the name of “August Revolution” in nationalist legends.
  •  The unusual intensity of the movement surprised everyone. Viceroy Linlithgow described it as “by far the most serious rebellion since 1857”.
  • It was violent and totally uncontrolled from the very beginning, as the entire upper echelon of the Congress leadership was behind bars even before it began.
  • And therefore, it is also characterised as a “spontaneous revolution“, as “no preconceived plan could have produced such instantaneous and uniform results“.
• QIM was not just an impulsive response:
  • The history of the Quit India movement as revealed in recent studies shows that it was not just an impulsive response of an unprepared populace, although the unprecedented scale of violence was by no means premeditated by the Congress leadership, as was claimed by the government.
  • The last two decades of mass movement which in the recent past had been conducted on a much more radical tone under the leadership of the various associated and affiliated bodies of the Congress, like the AITUC, CSP, AIKS and the Forward Block-had already prepared the ground for such a conflagration.
  • The Congress leaders before 9 August had drafted a twelve point programme which not only included the usual Gandhian methods of satyagraha, but a plan to promote industrial strikes, holding up of railways and telegraphs, non-payment of taxes and setting up of parallel government.
    • Several versions of this programme were in circulation among Congress volunteers, including the one prepared by the Andhra Provincial Congress Committee, which contained clear instructions for such subversive action.
    • However, compared to what actually happened, even this was a cautious programme.
  • As the movement progressed, the AICC continued to issue “Instructions to peasants” which outlined the course of action anticipating what was to eventuate in the later months of the movement.
• The element of spontaneity of 1942 was certainly larger than in the earlier movements, though even in 1919-22, as well as in 1930-31 and 1932, the Congress leadership allowed considerable room for an initiative and spontaneity.
  • In fact, the whole pattern of the Gandhian mass movements was that the leadership chalked out a broad programme of action and left its implementation at the local level to the initiative of the local and grass roots level political activists and the masses.
  • Even in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, perhaps the most organized of the Gandhian mass movements, Gandhiji signalled the launching of the struggle by the Dandi March and the breaking of the salt law, the leaders and the people at the local levels decided whether they were going to stop payment of land revenue and rent, or offer Satyagrahi against forest Laws, or picket liquor shops, or follow any of the other items of the programme.
  • Of course, in 1942, even the broad programme had not yet been spelt out clearly since the leadership was yet to formally launch the movement. But, in a way, the degree of spontaneity and popular initiative that was actually exercised had sanctioned by the leadership itself.
  • The resolution passed by the AICC on 8 August 1942 clearly stated: ‘A time may come when it may not be possible to issue instruction or for instructions to reach our people, and when no Congress committees can function. When this happens, every man and woman who is participating in this movement must function for himself or herself within the four corners of the general instructions issued. Every Indian who desires freedom and strives for it must be his own guide.’
• Apart from this, the Congress had been ideologically, politically and organizationally preparing for the struggle for a long time.
  • From 1937 onwards, the organization had been revamped to undo the damage suffered during the repression of 1932-34.
  • In political and ideological terms as well, the Ministries had added considerably to Congress support and prestige.
  • In East U.P. and Bihar, the areas of the most intense activity in 1942 were precisely the ones in which considerable mobilization and organizational work had been carried out from 1937 onwards.
  • In Gujarat, Sardar Patel had been touring Bardoli and other areas since June 1942 warning the people of an impending struggle and suggesting that no- revenue campaigns could well be part of it.
  • Congress Socialists in Poona had been holding training camps for volunteers since June 1942.
  • Gandhiji himself, through the Individual Civil Disobedience campaign in 1940-41, and more directly since early 1942, had prepared the people for the coming battle, which he said would be ‘short and swift.’

How did the use of violence in 1942 square with the Congress policy of non-violence?

• Gandhi shifted away from his long-standing condemnation of violence.  In 1942, a few months before the Quit India resolution was announced, “Gandhi argued that under certain conditions the use of violence would not injure the national cause, however much he might prefer a different form of service”.
  • Gandhi had always argued that violence was acceptable to use in immediate self-defense such as against murderers and rapists, and by 1942, he had decided that violent resistance to British rule could also fit underneath this category, as a form of immediate and instinctual resistance against criminal acts.
• On the question of non-violence, Gandhi this time was remarkably ambivalent. “I do not ask from you my own non-violence. You can decide what you can do in this struggle”, said Gandhi on 5 August.
  • Three days later on the 8th, speaking on the AICC resolution, he urged: “I trust the whole of India to-day to launch upon a nonviolent struggle.” But even if people deviated from this path of nonviolence, he assured: “I shall not swerve. I shall not flinch“.
• So while Gandhi still preferred and urged all those partaking in the struggle to use tactics of non-violence, he would not condemn those who took up arms.
  • And indeed, he arguably expected violence to break out, while almost sarcastically pushing the idea that mass struggle against exploiters would remain non-violent, as seen in this excerpt from an interview in 1942:
    • Gandhi: In the villages…the peasants will stop paying taxes…their next step will be to seize the land.
    • Fischer: With violence?
    • Gandhi: There may be violence, but then again the landlords may cooperate.
    • Fischer: You are an optimist.
    • Gandhi: They might cooperate by fleeing.
• The issue of non-violence seemed to have been of lesser importance in 1942 than the call for “Do or Die” or the invitation to make a final sacrifice for the liberation of the nation.
• The people accepted the challenge and interpreted it in their own ways and these interpretations were to some extent influenced by the lower level Congress leaders and students, who took over the leadership after the national and provincial leaders were all arrested between 9 and 11 August.
• There were many who refused to use or sanction violent means and confined themselves to the traditional weaponry of the Congress. But many of those, including many staunch Gandhians, who used ‘violent means’ in 1942 felt that the peculiar circumstances warranted their use.
  • Many maintained that the cutting of telegraph wires and the blowing up of bridges was all right as long as human life was not taken.
  • Others frankly admitted that they could not square the violence they used, or connived at with their belief in non-violence, but that they did it all the same.
• Gandhiji refused to condemn the violence of the people because he saw it as a reaction to the much bigger violence of the state.
  • In Francis Hutchins’ view, Gandhiji’s major objection to violence was that its use prevented mass participation in a movement, but that, in 1942, Gandhiji had come round to the view that mass participation would not be restricted as a result of violence.
• There is no denying that the Congress and Gandhi at this important historical juncture enjoyed unquestionable symbolic legitimacy in popular mind– whatever happened, happened in their name. But Congress as an organisation and Gandhi as a person had little control over these happenings. In the words of Gyanendra Pandey, Gandhi was “the undisputed leader of a movement over which he had little command.”