On 8th August 1942,
in the Gwalior Tank Ground, Bombay, the leaders of the All India Congress Committee gathered. They were about to announce a movement. A final struggle against the British imperialist government in power. In front of thousands of people, Mahatma Gandhi gave a historic speech.
“Every one of you should consider yourself free. We can no longer live under the shoes of imperialism. We need complete freedom.” I give you a mantra. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. This mantra is ‘Do or Die’. Either we will see India free or we will be killed in this attempt. But we shall not live in this slavery anymore. Long live Mother India! We’ll succeed or die, this was the beginning of the Quit India Movement.
The British government was aware of it. A few months prior to this, the Home Department of the British government was working on a 3-stage plan to end this movement.
- Stage 1. Use of Propaganda Controlling the media in such a way that no newspaper could publish this news.
- Stage 2. Raiding the offices of Congress organizations, seizing their funds, and arresting all the leaders of Congress.
- Stage 3, was to suppress the mass movement, using emergency powers: declaring the Congress leaders as anti-national and thus, ending the movement before it even began
The next day, 9th August, Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Azad, and all the top leaders of Congress were arrested and put in jail. These leaders were not to be released from jail for many years. Then the question was: how to further this movement? Amidst so much oppression and difficulties, How does the slogan of revolution reach every corner of the country? And who were those traitors living in the country who were on the side of the British during this movement? Let’s understand the Quit India Movement in depth
AUGUST PLAN:
It was exactly 2 years before this movement started. 8th August 1940. British Raj had presented an offer to Indian freedom fighters through Viceroy Linlith gow. It was called the August Offer. In this, he said that the Indian representation would be increased in the British-Indian government.
Actually, this was the time when World War II was in full rage in Europe. Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler was successfully invading one country after another and Britain was the only country standing against him. The British government in the UK was in big trouble and was desperate to get help from wherever it could.
Although Indian soldiers were already fighting on behalf of the British in World War II the British wanted more cooperation from the Indians. So they decided to send in an offer to convince the Indians. Till this time, Congress had decided that they would not accept inconsequential offers. They wanted complete freedom. They said that if the British government wanted India to cooperate with them in WWII then they would have to give complete independence to India. So this August Offer was a failure.
Cripps Mission
After this, in March 1942, another delegation was sent by Britain. It was called the Cripps Mission because the leader of the House of Commons at that time was Stafford Cripps. The mission aimed to give India independence after the end of World War II, but the offer given by the British in the Cripps Mission was not of full freedom, but of Dominion status. As per the Cripps Offer, India would be an autonomous region under the British Commonwealth. This was a better offer than the previous one, but Congress out rightly rejected it.
They clearly stated their goal, complete freedom. By then, Congress leaders were fed up with these offers and negotiations.
The Wardha Committee
A few months later, on 14th July 1942 in the Wardha Committee, a resolution was passed to start a civil disobedience movement. Many prominent leaders of the time like Saddar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, and Jayaprakash Narayan showed great interest in this initiative. 9 days after the meeting, on 23rd July, the Secretary of State for India Lord Amery, wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies Viscount Cranbourne.
He stated that the resolution passed at the Wardha meeting would be approved on 7th August in the All India Congress Committee meeting. After this, a mass movement would begin which would be a direct challenge to the British Empire. He stated that they should take strict measures to prevent it. He wrote in the letter,
“If necessary, we have to contemplate, therefore, the probable arrest of Gandhi and of the members of the Working Committee. It is also mentioned that some of the Congress leaders should be deported to Africa.
so that this movement could not begin. The next day, the British Empire Home Department shared a three-stage plan with Amery to stifle this movement. The same plan that I mentioned at the beginning of the video. This is the reason why when the All India Committee passed the Quit India Resolution, the British already knew about it. After Mahatma Gandhi’s historic speech,
on 9th August, at around 5 in the morning, Gandhi and the other top leaders were arrested. After the arrest, Mahatma Gandhi was taken to the Aga Khan Palace in Pune. The British had a strategic reason for this.
Viceroy Linlithgow wrote to Amery saying that
they should send the Mahatma to a place that doesn’t have the word ‘Jail’ in its name. If the people were to find out that he was put into a ‘jail’ it might infuriate the masses. So they decided to pretend that Gandhi was placed under house arrest in a Palace.
“We may be quite certain that we shall have some uphill propaganda battles to fight. After these arrests, the Congress party was banned. All the offices of Congress across the country were sealed and declared anti-national. Two other influential organizations of that time,
the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha, didn’t face any restrictions. Because both these organizations were not supporting the Quit India Movement. Not a single word of Gandhi’s historic speech was allowed to be printed in the newspapers. So neither did any newspaper publish Mahatma Gandhi’s speech, nor did they talk about the British government’s action.
On 31st August, Viceroy Linlith gow wrote a letter to Winston Churchill stating that
“I am engaged here in the meeting by far serious rebellion since that of 1857.” He acknowledged that the revolution he was dealing with was so big that the last comparable revolution was in 1857.”
All the strategies of the British government failed here. Despite arresting all the top leaders, this movement was moving ahead rapidly because the common people were participating in this. How many people could you shoot? How many could you put in jail?
Despite all this opposition, the Quit India Movement was successful. The world started talking about India’s freedom. The then-American President Roosevelt also put pressure on the UK government to fulfill some of India’s demands. Even in Britain, the British people were demanding that India be given freedom. In June 1945, the British Labor Party released its new manifesto. Let Us Face the Future. They made a promise to the British people that if they came into power then they would give complete freedom to colonies like India. Next month, in 1945, the Labor Party came to power in Britain and the new Prime Minister was Clement Attlee. And he openly declared that it was time to give India self-governance.