World developments in the latter half of 1941 made the British more willing to concede some Indian demands. These developments were:

(a)   Unprecedented Japanese onslaught on South East Asian nations;

(b)   Pressure of China and USA on Britain to settle on some sort of agreement;

(c)   Pressure on the Government within the U.K. from members of the Labour Party, some Liberals and Conservatives, and from the press to be more accommodating.

As the war came closer to India, after Singapore, Rangoon and the Andamans fell one by one, the Cripps Mission was sent to India to negotiate with Indian political parties.

The Congress too was becoming conciliatory. The CWC resolution on 30 December 1941 at Bardoli, for example, offered cooperation to the Government provided Britain created conditions in which Indians could honourably fight for freedom and democracy. Indian liberal leaders like Sapru and Jayakar also appealed for immediate Dominion status and expansion of the Viceroy’s Executive into a National Government.

Sir Stafford Cripps arrived in Delhi on 23 March, with a draft scheme for settling the Indian political problem. The two part scheme (a) prescribed the procedure for formulating the Dominion Constitution and (b) laid down the immediate and interim arrangements during the war period.

In brief, the Cripps proposals were:

1.    Immediately upon the cessation of hostilities, an elected constitutional body would be formed for drawing up a new Constitution.

2.    Indian states would participate in the Constitution-making body.

3.    The Constitution-making body would be elected by members of the lower house of the Provincial Legislatures through proportional representation.

4.    Provinces would have to right to secede.

5.    The protection of racial and religious minorities would be ensured.

6.    The defence of the country would be in the hands of the British Government till a new Constitution was framed.

The Cripps proposals, however, did not satisfy any political party. The Congress objected

(a)   To the provision for local option which implied the acceptance of Pakistan,

(b)   To selection of state representatives by the rulers,

(c)   To defence being in the hands of Britain, and

(d)   To the Viceroy’s veto power.

(e)   To no suggestion for a national government.

(f)    To the implicit encouragement to anti-Congress forces like the Muslim League.

The unfavorable War situation and international pressures had compelled the British to seek an amicable settlement with India and obtain her active support in the War. Sir Stafford Cripps landed in India with a set of proposals and negotiated with leaders of various political parties.

This Declaration was rejected by almost all the Indian parties. The Congress did not want to rely on future promises. It wanted a responsible Government with full powers and also a control over the country’s defence. Gandhi termed the proposal “as a post-dated cheque on a crashing bank.”Nehru said the proposals were meant to make a few Indians the Viceroy’s ‘liveried camp-followers’ to ‘look after canteens and the like’.  The Muslim League demanded a definite declaration by the British in favour of the creation of a separate state for the Muslims, and also seats for the Muslim League on 50:50 bases with the Congress in the Interim Government. The Depressed Classes, the Sikhs, the Indian Christians and the Anglo-Indians demanded more safeguards for their communities.

Thus, the Cripps Mission failed to pacify the Indians. The British had merely taken up this exercise to demonstrate to the world that they cared about Indian sentiments, rather than to actually do something concrete.

Background to the quit India movement

The Congress had to decide its course of action in wake of:

*     the failure of the Cripps Mission;

*     the arrival of Japanese armies on Indian borders;

*     the rising prices and shortages in food supplies, and

*     the different opinions within the Congress.

The Congress Working Committee adopted a resolution calling for complete non-violent non-cooperation with any foreign forces invading India (in May 1942). Rajagopalachari and a few other Congressmen from Madras attempted to get a resolution passed which proposed that in case the Madras Government invited them the Congress should form a ministry there. The resolution was rejected, but the very proposal demonstrated that there were certain Congressmen who wanted to cooperate with the government. Rajagoplachari was following an independent path. He had favoured the Pakistan demand, and was urging the Congress to support the War effort.

In May 1942 Gandhi told a gathering of Congressmen at Bombay that he had made up his mind to ask the British to quit India in an orderly fashion. If they did not agree, he would launch a Civil Disobedience Movement.

Many of the Congress leaders had reservations about the launching of a movement. Nehru was particularly concerned about the choice between fighting imperialist Britain and letting USSR and China down in their struggle against fascist powers. Eventually, he decided in favour of launching the movement. The Congress made it clear that the quit India demand did not mean that the British and the allied armies had to withdraw from India immediately. However, it meant an immediate acknowledgement of India’s Independence by the British. On July 14 the Congress Working Committee adopted the Quit India Resolution which was to be ratified at the Bombay AICC meeting in August.

On 8 August 1942 the AICC passed the Quit India Resolution. After deliberating at great length on the international and national situation the Congress appealed to the people of India:

They must remember that non-violence is the basis of this movement. A time may come when it may not be possible to issue instructions or for instructions to reach our people, and when no Congress Committee can function. When this happens every man and woman who is participating in this movement must function for himself or herself with in the four corners of the general instructions issued.

Gandhi told the British to quit and “leave India in God’s hand”. He exhorted all sections to participate in the Movement and stressed “every India who desires freedom and strives for it must be his own guide”. His message was ‘do or die”. Thus started the Quit India Movement (QIM).

The movement

The Congress gave the call for ousting British but it did not give any concrete line of action to be adopted by the people. The Government had been making preparations to rust the Movement. On the morning of 9 August all prominent Congress leaders including Gandhi were arrested. The new leaders’ arrest shook the people and they came to streets protesting against it.

Spread of the movement

Before his arrest on 9 August 1942 Gandhi had given the following message to the country:

“Every one is free to go the fullest length under Ahimisa to complete deadlock by strikes and other non-violent means. Satyagrahis must go out to die not to live. They must seek and face death. It is only when individuals go out to die that the nation will survive, do or die.”

But while giving this call Gandhi had once again stressed on non-violence:

“Let every non-violent soldier of freedom write out the slogan ‘do or die’ on a piece of paper or cloth and stick it on his clothes, so that in case he died in the course of offering Satyagraha, he might be distinguished by that sign from other elements who do not subscribe to non-violence.”

The news of his arrest alongwith other Congress leaders led to unprecedented popular outbursts in different parts of the country. There were hartals, demonstrations and processions in cities and towns. The Congress leadership gave the call, but it was the people who launched the Movement. Since all the recognised leaders-central, provincial or local-had been arrested, the young and more militant cadres-particularly students-with socialist leanings took over as leaders at local levels in their areas.

In the initial stages, the Movement was based on non-violent lines. It was the repressive policy of the government which provoked the people to violence. The Gandhian message of non-violent struggle was pushed into the background and people devised their own methods of struggle. These included:

1.    attacks on governments buildings, police stations and post offices,

2.    attacks on police stations and sabotaging rail lines,

3.    cutting off the telegraph wires, telephones and electric power lines.

4.    disrupting road traffic by destroying bridges, and

5.    workers going on strike, etc.

Most of these attacks were to check the movement of the military and the police, which were being used by the government to crush the Movement. In many areas, the government lost all control and the people established Swaraj. We cite a few such cases:

In Maharashtra, a parallel government was established in Satara which continued to function for a long time.

In Bengal, Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar functioned for a long time in Midnapore district. This national government had various departments like Law and Order, Health, Education, Agriculture, etc., along with a postal system of its own and arbitration courts.

People established Swaraj in Talcher in Orissa.

In many parts of eastern U.P. and Bihar (Azamgarh, Ballia, Ghazipur, Monghyr, Muzaffarpur, etc.) police stations were over run by the people and government authority uprooted.

The Movement had initially been strong in the urban areas but soon it was the populace of rural areas which kept the banner of revolt aloft for a longer time. The Movement got a massive response from the people of Bombay, Andhra, U.P. Bihar, Gujarat, Orissa, Assam, Bengal, Karnataka, etc. But the responses in Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, etc. were weak.

Responses and trends

“Quit India” and “Do or Die” were the slogans of the day, and yet there were varied responses to the Movement. The Working Class in many industrial centres went on strike. Some of these centres were Bombay, Cawnpore, Ahmedabad, Jamshedpur and Poona. In Delhi the strike on 9 August was a result of the workers coming to the streets. But in most of these centres the strikes did not last long, except in Ahmedabad where it continued till about 3 months.

In Bihar, Patna was cut off from the rest of the areas as a result of mass actions by the people of rural areas surrounding Patna.

This reflects the level of participation by the rural people and the constraints of Gandhian leaders in directing the Movement. A similar situation existed in eastern U.P. The account kept by R.H. Nibblet of what happened at Madhuban Police Station in Azamgarh district shows the fury of the revolt in that area. Nibblet has mentioned how the police station was attacked in an organized manner from three sides. The people from one side reaching earlier, waited at a distance for the people to reach from the other sides. The police fired 119 rounds to check the attack which lasted about two hours.

In Orrissa the government used airplanes to check the advance of peasant guerrillas towards Talcher town. In Maharashtra the battles were long drawn in the Satara region.

Besides mass action there emerged another trend in the movement. This was the trend of underground revolutionary activity. On 9 November 1942, Jaiprakash Narayan and Ramnandan Misra escaped from Hazaribagh Jail. They organized an underground movement and operated from the regions bordering Nepal.

Similarly, in Bombay, the Socialist leaders continued their underground activities under leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali. The most daring act of the underground movement was the establishment of Congress Radio with Usha Mehta as its announcer. This radio carried broadcasts for a long time. Subhash Bose, speaking over Berlin radio (31 August 1942) described this movement as “Non-violent guerilla warfare”. He suggested that:

The object of this non-violent guerilla campaign should be a two-fold one. Firstly, to destroy war production in India, and secondly, to paralyze the British administration in the country. Keeping these objectives in view, every section of the community should participate in the struggle.

There was massive participation by the students who spread to the countryside and played a role in guiding the people there. The Movement did not evoke much response from the merchant community. In fact most of the Capitalists and merchants had profited heavily during the War. In certain cases, the Capitalists did appeal to the government (through FICCI) to release Gandhi and other leaders. But their argument was that Gandhi alone could check attacks on government property. They were worried that if such attacks continued they may get converted into attacks on private property. The Muslim League kept aloof from the Movement and no communal riots were reported. The Hindu Mahasabha condemned the Movement. The Communist Party of India due to its “people’s war” line did not support the movement. The princes and the landlords were supporting the War effort and did not sympathies with the movement. There were also Congress leaders like Rajagoplachari who did not participate in the movement and supported the War effort.

However, the intensity of the Movement can be gauged from the following figures:

In U.P. 104 railway stations were attacked and damaged according to a government report. About 100 railway tracks were ‘sabotaged’ and the number in case of telephone and telegraph wires was 425. The number of post offices damaged was 119.

In Midnapore 43 government buildings were burnt.

In Bihar 72 police stations were attacked. 332 railway stations and 945 post offices damaged.

Throughout the country there had been 664 bomb explosions.

Repression

The Government had geared all its forces to suppress the popular upsurge. Arrests, detentions, police firings, burning of Congress offices, etc., were the methods adopted by the Government.

By the end of 1942 in U.P. alone 16,089 persons were arrested. Throughout India the official figures for arrests stood at 91,836 by end of 1943.

The number of people killed in police firings was 658 till September 1942, and by 1943 it was 1060. But these were official figures. Many more had died and innumerable wounded.

In Midnapore alone, the Government forces had burnt 31 Congress camps and 164 private houses. There were 74 cases of rape; out of which 46 were committed by the police in a single day in one village on 9 January, 1943.

The Government accepted having used aeroplanes to gun people at 5 places. These were: Giriak near Patna; Bhagalpur district; near Ranaghat in Nadia district; Monghyr district and near Talcher city.

There were countless lathicharges, floggings and imprisonments.

Collective punitive fines were extorted from the residents in the areas affected by the upsurge. For example in U.P. the total amount involved in such fines was Rs. 28,32,000. Similarly in North Bihar fines were imposed to the amount of Rs. 34,15,529 by the end of February 1943.

It was through such repressive actions that the British were able to re-establish themselves. The War situation helped them in two ways:

i)     They had at their disposal a massive military force which was stationed here to face the Japanese, but was promptly used to crush the Movement.

ii)    Due to War time censorship they repressed the upsurge in a ruthless manner. They did not have to bother themselves about any internal criticism of their methods, or international opinion. The Allied countries were busy fighting the Axis powers, and had no time to concern themselves with what the British were doing in India.

The Quit India Movement collapsed, but not without demonstrating the determination of the masses to do away with British rule. The Congress leadership did not condemn the deviation by the people from the principle of non-violence, but at the same time disowned any responsibility for the violent acts of the people.