Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: August 15, 2002
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/150802-fpj.html
May be Indians have forgotten the
date and the year. May be they have lost the art of observing anniversaries
and jubilees. May be, perhaps, they have no more respect for the past.
The mind-set could be and one is only guessing one of questioning the relevance
of certain events that took place years ago. But an older generation, one
hopes, would be forgiven for remembering 7 and 8 August 1942. Great days.
Historic days. For it was on 7 August 1942, sixty years ago, that the Indian
National Congress, in session at Gowalia Tank, Mumbai, passed the famous
Quit India Resolution that led to the arrest and incarceration of the entire
Congress leadership throughout the country, starting with Mahatma Gandhi.
The jailing of leaders wholesale
was never again to be attempted in India except once, in 1975, during the
Emergency.
What led to the Quit India Movement,
as it came to be called? Let us go back into history a little. Britain
declared war against Nazi Germany in September 1939. Plainly stated, the
country was unprepared. Inevitably it began to suffer early reverses both
in Europe and in Asia. In India the Congress was incensed because the then
Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow had not bothered to consult Indian specifically
Congress leaders before committing the country to war.
That was stupid and inexcusable.
Congress Ministries in five provinces resigned in consequence. In India
there was a lull. Tempers were rising at what was perceived as a calculated
insult heaped by Britain on colonial India. At the same time opinion was
divided. On the one hand India wanted independence. On the other, many
leaders did not want to let Britain down when it was engaged in fighting
Nazism and Fascism, then considered worse than Imperialism.
In the circumstances, Gandhiji thought
he would try out the national mood and called for what was known as Individual
Satyagraha, in contrast to Mass Civil Disobedience. It seemed to work.
Over 23,000 satyagrahis courted arrest. The Mahatma concluded that the
situation was ripe to call for poorna swaraj. A scared British Government
tried to make peace with the Congress and sent Sir Stafford Cripps to negotiate
with it. Poor Sir Stafford had a questionable brief. At first he promised
India responsible Cabinet Government, but then he reneged on that promise,
under pressure from London. A confrontation between India and the Imperial
Power became inevitable.
Meanwhile Japan had taken over Singapore
and Malaysia and Japanese troops were marching towards Burma. By February
1942 Gandhiji had come to the conclusion that he could not wait any longer
and must strike. It was a matter of `Now or Never'. ``Leave India to God
or to anar-chy'' was how he felt. For him there was no going back. Happily
he succeeded din convincing the two leading stalwarts of the Congress:
Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. There was a lot of back-stage
discussion and feverish argument among the leaders, with the Socialists
of that time leading the pack. An AICC meeting was scheduled to be held
in Bombay (Mumbai) for August 7 and 8, 1942. There was tension in the air.
The Quit India resolution had by then been already circulated among the
delegates.
After the usual preliminaries Gandhiji
addressed the meeting to explain what the Quit India resolution implied.
Then, after the resolution was passed almost unanimously (13 Communists
who were then members of the AICC voted against it) Gandhiji once again
addressed the session, this time of over 100 minutes. He said: ``I, therefore,
want freedom immediately, this very night, before dawn, if it can be had.
Freedom cannot now wait for the realization of communal unity. If that
unity is not achieved, sacrifices necessary for it will have to be much
greater than would have otherwise sufficed. But the Congress must win freedom
or be wiped out in the effort. And forget not that the freedom which the
Congress is struggling to achieve will not be for the Congressmen alone,
but for all the forty crores of the Indian people.... I am not going to
be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom.... Here is a `mantra',
a short one, that I give you. You may imprint it in your hearts. The `mantra'
is `Do or Die'. `Karenge ya marenge'! Take a pledge with God and your own
conscience as witness that you will no longer rest till freedom is achieved....''
Powerful words.
But the British government had anticipated
trouble. In the early hours of the morning of 9 August 1942 all the leading
Congressmen not only in Mumbai but everywhere, were swiftly arrested. The
Mahatma was taken to the Agha Khan Palace in Pune (there had earlier been
plans to have him sent to Mauritius!) and others were packed off to Yeravada
Prison.
The revolution had begun. The Quit
India revolution threw up many heroes and heroines, known, like Jayaprakash
Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Aruna Asaf Ali, Usha Mehta and others and thousands
unknown who suffered arrest, imprisonment, torture in jails and death.
The movement spread like wild fire. In all over 60,000 Indians were arrested
and jailed, some 600 flogged and over 900 officially reported killed. Nothing
like this had happened before. Nothing like that was to happen afterwards.
The one party that opposed the Quit
India Movement and sought to undermine it with deliberate intent was the
Communist Party of India (CPI) which denounced Gandhiji and Netaji Subhas
Chandra Bose and accused them of decadence, of all things! The CPI argument
was that the Soviet Union had been invaded by Nazi Germany and it was incumbent
on all Communists to rush to Moscow's rescue while Indian freedom would
wait. To gain Communist support which in any event was freely forthcoming
the British Government released some of the Communist leaders then in jail
like S.A. Dange, B.T. Ranadive and Soli Batliwala. The Communists turned
out to be more loyal to the British than the King.
`People's War', the CPI organ, ridiculed
the Quit India resolution and denigrated the clarion call to Do or Die
as illustrative of Congress political bankruptcy. The CPI (then a united
party) went about systematically denigrating the Congress and the Mahatma.
It wanted to build up its base and to that end it supported the Muslim
League demand for Pakistan with the objective of recruiting Muslims to
the party. The traitorous role of the CPI has never been fully exposed.
The CPI went to the extent of betraying Congress vol-unteers to the police.
`People's War' called all opponents of the CPI, including the Congress,
as fascist elements and made the most reckless and fantastic statements
damning Gandhiji and other Congress leaders.
To curry British favour, CPI leader
P.C. Joshi submitted to the government a 120-page report on how the Communists
had been disrupting the Quit India movement in province after province,
in the most shameless manner. What is even worse, the CPI, in a thesis,
proclaimed that India was not one nation, but a collection of several separate
nationalities, that the demand for Pakistan was a just and democratic one
and that the Congress must concede to the Muslims the right of self-determination.
Between 1942 and 1947 the CPI turned out to be the most anti-national party
functioning in India.
To the credit of the Muslims it
must however be said that they did not betray Congress workers to the police
as the Communists did. Indeed, it is on record that congregations of Bombay
Muslims prayed for Gandhi's life during his epic fast. The Hindu Mahasabha,
too, did not betray the Congress and indeed, several Sabha members participated
in the Movement in an individual capacity, while others helped underground
workers in many ways.
The Quit India Movement remains
unparalleled in the history of India's struggle for freedom. It was an
explosion of pent-up anger and energy of the people against an alien government.
Unfortunately it lacked a central
direction. Had Gandhi not been so precipitously arrested he apparently
did not expect it the movement might have become more focussed. In past
Civil Disobedience Movements everything was open and above board. The Quit
India Movement turned out in many ways to be violence-prone. In Maharashtra
some 600 villages declared them-selves free and ran a `patri-sarkar'. Nothing
of the kind had happened in India since 1857. But by 1944 the Movement
began to fizzle out; in the war the British started gaining the upper hand.
By 1945 it was getting clear that
the Axis Powers would be effectively destroyed. Britain had nothing then
to fear in India. Mahatma was released and thereafter other leaders too,
one by one. But the Congress had made its statement. Britain may have emerged
victorious in the war but a tired nation had no more stomach to continue
to rule over India. it was only a matter of time before the British were
finally to Quit India. What was a slogan in August 1942 became a reality
in August 1947, a bare five years later.
The question is frequently asked:
Would things have been very different had Congress agreed to cooperate
with Britain in the war effort and went all out to support it in its fight
against Germany and Italy and later Japan? Would Britain at the end of
the war have agreed to give India its inde-pendence in good grace? One
can only guess. One thing is sure: the war would have been effective-ly
shortened. With India's might at its disposal, Britain would have had the
upper hand in no time. But would that have made Britain more grateful?
Would Winston Churchill have relented? Perhaps all these would have happened.
And who knows, perhaps Pakistan would never have been born. But all this
is hindsight. On August 7, 1942 things looked differently. And Time had
its way. And that is all that one can say about an event that is now part
of history. All that we now can do is to remember it and pay our homage
to those who were killed and those who suffered in untold ways so that
some day India may be free. A free India cannot forget them and it shouldn't.