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The Quit India Movement officially began on August 8, 1942. A few weeks earlier, on 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee had passed the Quit India Resolution, demanding a complete end to British rule. The slogan ‘Quit India’ was coined by Yusuf Meherally, a socialist leader, who was then the mayor of Bombay.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who served as the youngest President of the Indian National Congress and after independence became India’s first Education Minister, recalls in his autobiography India Wins Freedom (1959) how the resolution generated an “electric atmosphere in the Country”.
Some months earlier, in March 1942, the British War Cabinet in London had sent a mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps to offer India the possibility of dominion status like Canada and Australia once the Second World War was over. The Cripps Mission intended to involve India more closely in the war effort and to avert political unrest at a time when the situation was uncertain for Britain and its Allies in terms of victory.
The Quit India movement, led by Mahatma Gandhi, proved to be an advanced stage in India’s prolonged struggle for independence. A decade earlier, another landmark campaign, the Civil Disobedience Movement, took place between 1930-34. The Quit India movement was particularly notable as it was launched at the height of the Second World War, when, as mentioned earlier, the tide had not yet turned in favour of Britain and the Allied powers.
More worryingly, from early 1942, the Japanese were steadily advancing from the east and had captured British territories like Singapore, Malaya, and Burma. In March 1942, the Andaman Islands also fell to Japan and heightened the threat of their advance towards mainland India.
A pressing concern in people’s minds was how India should respond in the event of a Japanese invasion. This concern became especially vexed due to the uncertainty over the British military response: If the British forces were to withdraw in the face of the Japanese advance, would India then have to negotiate directly with Japan for its independence?
The backdrop to the Quit India movement was thus very much shaped by the uncertain global situation that had arisen with the Second World War. Some leaders of the Indian national movement tended to sympathise more with the Allied powers, who claimed to be on the side of democracy and freedom as they fought against the Fascist Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. However, there was a feeling that support for the Allied powers needed to be tied to a greater commitment on the part of the British towards granting India self-rule after the war.
US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated freedom for India, exerting pressure on Britain and further reiterating his “Four Freedoms” outlined in his State of the Union Address in 1941. In India, resentment had already been building over the way the then Viceroy Lord Linlithgow, at the very outset of the war in 1939, unilaterally declared India’s involvement in the war effort without consulting the national leadership.
Notably, Jawaharlal Nehru presented his assessment of the political situation in The Discovery of India in the following manner: “I wanted India to take an eager and active part in the mighty conflict, for I felt that high principles would be at stake, and out of this conflict would come great and revolutionary changes in India and the world.”
The Quit India movement triggered a wave of arrests, especially of senior Congress leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who were interned at the Ahmednagar Fort Prison. Mahatma Gandhi was detained in the Agha Khan’s Summer Palace in nearby Poona. During more than two years they spent in Ahmednagar Fort Prison, Nehru and Azad, who were not just leaders of the national movement but also men of quite extensive learning, began writing two of their finest works.
Nehru wrote his seminal work, The Discovery of India, while Azad composed his much-loved Urdu classic, Ghubaar-e-khaatir, a collection of letters penned in the early morning hours when the Maulana would ruminate over subjects as diverse as life, literature, philosophy, and history, all over his favourite cup of Chinese Jasmine tea. Interestingly, other eminent co-prisoners and intellectuals, including J.B. Kripalani and Pattabhi Sitaramayya, also spent their time writing books.
Ghubaar-e-khaatir offers an interesting account of how these leading figures of the national movement spent their time while interned at the prison. For some time, they were denied access to newspapers and remained unaware of the course of the Second World War. Nehru’s The Discovery of India carries this dedication: “To my colleagues and co-prisoners in the Ahmednagar Fort Prison Camp from 9 August 1942 to 28 March 1945.”
Moreover, in response to the Quit India Movement, the Defence of India Rules of 1915 were invoked. This meant imposition of martial law, leading to many deaths and mass arrests. The Quit India Resolution, passed by the Congress Working Committee in July 1942 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, had envisioned a non-violent revolution.
However, the movement turned violent in certain parts of the country, and the British Raj used considerable force to quell it. The end of the Quit India Movement cannot be dated precisely, as local manifestations of the protest gradually tapered off towards the end of 1942 and the early months of 1943.
Notably, the Quit India Movement did not immediately attain its goal of ending British rule. However, it is important to understand the movement in the context of the course taken by the Second World War that wound its way from August 1942, when the movement began, to 1944, by which time the movement subsided. By June 1944, the Allied forces had landed on Normandy Beach in France and were advancing towards Germany, indicating Allied victory. This may have prompted the British Raj to start releasing senior Congress leaders.
In the final chapter of The Discovery of India, titled ‘Ahmednagar Fort Again’, dated August 13, 1944, Nehru observes: “It is just over two years since we came here, two years of a dream life rooted in one spot, with the same few individuals to see, the same limited environment, the same routine from day to day’.
While the Congress leadership was in jail, the Muslim League under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah continued to be active outside. In June 1945, the then Viceroy, Lord Archibald Wavell, announced his intention of holding a conference at Shimla, proposing that Indian leaders be included in the Viceroy’s Executive Council to create an interim self-government, with a view to prospective self-rule.
The timing reflected the changed wartime context: the war in Europe had come to an end, though Japan had not yet surrendered. However, the Simla Conference failed due to the Muslim League’s insistence that it alone would nominate Muslim representatives to the Executive Council.
The Quit India movement – preceded by the Cripps Mission of 1942 and some years later followed by the Simla conference of 1945 – played a crucial role in the attainment of Indian independence in August 1947. But the movement can be fully understood in the context of changes at the global level that were shaping the post-Second World War order, in which India emerged independent within the comity of nations.
How did the decentralised and leaderless nature of the Quit India Movement affect both its reach and its sustainability? Why did the movement turn violent in certain areas despite Mahatma Gandhi’s insistence on non-violence?
How does the backdrop of changes reshaping the post-WWII order, in which India emerged independent and joined the comity of nations, provide the context to understand the Quit India Movement?
How might the work such as The Discovery of India and Ghubaar-e-khaatir serve as a historical source for understanding not just the mindset of national leaders during incarceration but also the Indian national movement?
Discuss the launch of the Quit India Movement. Examine the contributions of prominent female freedom fighters who played formidable roles in the movement.
(Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
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