What Every Indian Must Know About the Quit India Movement.
Key Points
- With the Congress leadership arrested, the Quit India Movement was led and owned by the people of India.
- 900 civilians were killed between August and November 1942.
It was the Final Fight for Freedom. Mahatma Gandhi's 'Do or Die' call for independence. 'We shall either free India or die in trying to do so,' was Gandhi's appeal to the people of India.
It was the biggest mass mobilisation against the British during the Independence struggle.
Began after the failure of the Cripps Mission which offered dominion-status (self-government under British monarch) in exchange for cooperation during World War II.
The offer was rejected because the Congress demanded complete independence. The Congress also refused the proposal of partition of India.
The Quit India resolution was taken at the Congress session held at Gowalia Tank Maidan (now August Kranti Maidan) in Bombay on August 7.
Soon after, Gandhi was arrested from Birla House at 4 am on August 9 and taken by a special train to Poona and put under house arrest at the Aga Khan palace.
Birla House belonged to Rameshwar Das Birla. Its current resident is Yash Birla. The Birla family widely supported and accommodated Gandhi and other freedom fighters throughout the Independence struggle.
The special train carried many other leaders who were also arrested: Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Sarojini Naidu, Abul Kalam Azad, Govind Ballabh Pant, Aruna Asaf Ali. Some were dropped off at Thana to serve time in Thana jail, others in Poona and Ahmednagar.
This was Nehru's longest incarceration. He was released in 1945. He wrote the bestseller Discovery of India in prison.
Kasturba Gandhi died during imprisonment at the Aga Khan palace.
Ahmednagar fort changed hands from the Nizam Shahi dynasty to the Mughals to the Marathas to the British who used it as a high security prison for Indian freedom fighters. It is now managed by the Indian Army.
With top Congress leaders arrested, the Quit India Movement became a people's movement. It was led and owned by the people of India. It threw up future leaders like Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan who led an underground resistance movement.
There were widespread strikes and boycotts as the movement raged on.
The press was muzzled and communication disrupted. A secret underground radio set up by Gandhians provided information at great risk to their lives. It was helmed by stalwarts like Usha Mehta who was then in her early 20s.
Women played a frontal role in the movement.
The movement spread from Bombay, Poona, Ahmedabad to the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), Bihar, Bengal and different parts of India. Police stations, railways, courts were attacked. Students boycotted classes, mill workers went on strike, British goods were burnt in bonfires.
Seven students were killed in cold blood for attempting to hoist the flag on the Patna secretariat. Still teenagers -- most were students of Classes 9 and 10 -- as each student was shot, he passed the flag to the next, till they were killed one by one. The flag was ultimately hoisted.
A statue commemorating them is placed outside the Patna secretariat building.
900 civilians were killed between August and November 1942, 60,000 arrested, 538 whipping punishments were meted out.
Rumour had spread that the British had taken Gandhi to Africa.
The iconic slogan 'Quit India' was coined by Yusuf Meherally. A socialist leader and mayor of Bombay, he had also given the 'Simon Go Back' slogan. Versions of the slogan continue to be used in protests across India even today.
Meherally was imprisoned in Yerwada jail in Poona and released in 1946. He died at 47 in 1950.
The British brutally suppressed the movement, but the Quit India Movement united a country. It brought students, factory workers, farmers and ordinary women and men from all strata to launch the largest mass movement that eventually led to the freedom of India.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
