For those too young to remember The Quit India movement and the heady days fifty-five years ago when the Congress Party announced open revolt against the British Empire, the mental images that come to mind are solemn reminders of an age long vanished. The heart-stirring images of disciplined volunteers clad in khadi stoutly courting arrest, of arrogant white sahibs brandishing lathis are the more obvious images of the last campaign of the freedom struggle. What one tends to forget is that the cry of `Quit India' was muffled by the British authorities only two to three months after the famous meeting at Gowalia Tank Maidan, and that the movement was hardly the example of non-violent satyagraha that our nostalgia might entertain.While the celebrations to commemorate the launch of the Quit India movement are taking place on August 09, the actual resolution was passed by the All India Congress Committee on August 7, 1942 and announced at a public meeting at the Gowalia Tank Maidan, the following morning. After much deliberation at the famous Working Committee session at Wardha on July 14, where Mahatma Gandhi expressed his frustration with the crumbs being offered to Indians in return for participation in World War II, a decision was taken to proclaim "open, unarmed revolt" (in Gandhiji's words). Tactics were not discussed, and the programme remained vague. The decision split the CWC, with C Rajagopalachari immediately resigning his membership. The consequences of the act were clear to all but the Mahatma. To strike at the British during the opening of the war effort against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan - then still very much on the ascendant in Europe and Asia - could doom the freedom struggle, as well as invite the easy conquest of British India by Japan, which was then marching across China and Southeast Asia. But Gandhiji, perhaps only by his charisma and stubbornness, carried the CWC with him, despite the complete lack of any strategic focus to the campaign.The Congress Party, thus returned to Bombay - in those days the centre of all political activity in the country - to announce its final plan of action. The public meeting of the AICC gathered on a balmy Saturday morning on August 8 at the Gowalia Tank Maidan, not far from a canopied statue of the Queen-Empress Victoria. The lakhs of khadi-clad volunteers and sympathisers who attended were in a state of rare enthusiasm, expecting as they were some great news. Great Britain was in a vulnerable state with German planes pounding London and the Japanese easily capturing the imperial outposts at Hong Kong and Singapore. When Gandhiji approached the dais to roars of applause and cheering, the assembled masses listened to a speech of rare militancy from the frail Mahatma:"Every one of you should from this moment onwards consider yourself a free man or woman and act as if you are free.I am not going to be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom. We shall do or die. We shall either free India or die in the attempt."Gandhiji was clearly stating his demands, and thus ended the dithering that had characterised the freedom struggle he had led since the twenties. He dared Great Britain to leave India to God or anarchy, and exhorted the masses to use their individual initiative to achieve freedom."The problem was that no one really knew what he meant, whether to smash street lamps or derail trains," says M V Kamath, veteran journalist, who was present at the meeting. Gandhiji and the entire Congress leadership including Pandit Nehru and Maulana Azad were quietly arrested in the morning hours of August 9, 1942. The British were taking no risks in retaining their hold over India, whose order and security were central to the war effort. The AICC and all Provincial Congress Committees were declared illegal under the Defence of India Act, and the Party's offices throughout the country were raided, their assets confiscated, and their publications banned.When news of the arrests spread, there was a tremendous response. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out, and as people gathered on the Maidan and at Shivaji Park the next morning, the police opened fire, killing nine people and wounding 169 others. One unidentified woman was able to unfurl the national tricolour moments before (whether Aruna Asaf Ali or the daughter of Dadabhoy Naoroji, it is still disputed). Mob violence was reported all over the city. Matunga station was attacked, a railway van at Dadar Central was torched, and the suburban railway was disrupted. Workers demonstrated at Parel, schools and colleges were closed by students, and government offices including post and telegraph offices, railway godowns, and the Income Tax Department were attacked and in some cases, bombed. While disciplined Congress cadres proceeded non-violently, more often students, workers and lumpen elements resorted to confrontation and bloodshed to express their anger. The movement had catalysed these sections, and not the middle or upper classes, into action.Within two months the protests had largely died down in Bombay City, due to quick police and Army response, preventive detention and arrests. Absent in leadership, and all the while suffering from a lack of strategic planning and foresight, the movement quickly collapsed. Underground pamphleteering and radio broadcasts ended within several months of the announcement, and Gandhiji apologised from prison for unleashing such "madness". Salutary protests however continued, such as the sight of three women squatting on railway platforms throughout the country, each dressed in saffron, white and green saris.In the following years, Bombay turned into the munitions and supply centre for the Allied forces in Asia, and the port witnessed spectacular growth in this time, as did industry and trade throughout the country, leaving independent India with a very favourable balance of trade after the War. While throughout the War expectation was in the air, even by its end no one was quite sure whether Independence would come. It was at this time, with Great Britain exhausted and bankrupt and its far-flung Empire now untenable, that the election of the Labour Government of Clement Attlee promised Independence to India, and that too under very different circumstances than in 1942. With the despatch of Lord Mountbatten to India began the closed-door negotiations and byzantine wrangling that delivered an impatient and raging India, tearing itself in half, to its tryst with destiny.
