Radio independence

This piece has been triggered by the old editorial on the frontpage of The Indian Express, marking the 66th anniversary of the Quit India Movement. In those days, I was a student of class VI in the Craddock High School in Wardha where our father was the district magistrate and we stayed in a government bungalow not far from Bajajwadi. We saw Sir Stafford Cripps in a linen suit going towards Gandhi8217;s ashram in 1941. It was before the official Cripps Mission and he had come in his private capacity as a Labour MP to meet Gandhi. On the early morning of August 9, 1942, we saw posters marked Q on the verandah wall of our bungalow. They could also be seen all over town, pasted unobtrusively overnight by an extremely efficient organisation of Congress workers.

How that historic slogan was selected at the Congress meeting on that night in August 1942 is a story in itself. The words 8220;Get out8221; were rejected as too impolite. At the meeting, Yusuf Meherali presented Gandhi with a bow bearing the inscription 8220;Quit India8221;. Gandhi said 8220;amen8221; and that is how the slogan was accepted. The early hours of August 9 saw the arrest of all the leaders: Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Azad. Public processions were banned but Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the Indian flag at the Gowalia Tank Maidan, watched by a young girl. She was to be the brains behind a clandestine Congress radio. It was located in Bombay and after the leaders8217; arrest it broadcast news of underground activity. After the police discovered the radio station on November 12, the 22-year-old Usha Mehta was imprisoned for four years. Later she got a doctorate and became a distinguished professor of politics and won the Padma Vibhushan. She claimed that operating the Congress radio was her finest moment, and the saddest too, because a technician betrayed them to the police.

Another memory I have is how my father had to try the first individual satyagrahi, Acharya Vinoba Bhave. Kasturba Gandhi wanted to be present at the trial so it was conducted under a banyan tree. It was an embarrassing experience for my father as his father-in-law was a staunch Congressman. But that was how the Raj functioned, no harm coming our father8217;s way.