Gandhi and the Quit India Movement
The Quit India movement was different from the other two
movements associated with Gandhian leadership of the Congress. The resolution
was passed by Gandhi without the usual policy of slow escalation following the
protestation to break the law in order to achieve political pretensions. The
movement was a product of the steady disillusionment of Gandhi with British
programs during 1942 and the graveness of the Japanese trouble to the security
of the country. Gandhi didn't endorse violence but he gave a important
watchword “ Do or Die” that in the period of war and growing nationalist
resentment was bound to have grave consequences. Gandhi and the Quit India Movement Gandhi believed in ahimsa but
preferred violence to poltroonery. The philosophical position of Gandhi can be
batted but the launching of a mass movement during wartime was bound to involve
violence both by the chauvinists and the social autocrats. Gandhi couldn't have
been ignorant of the consequences of his taglines and programme for domestic
order and he declared that the British should quit India incontinently indeed
if it led to lawlessness. Gandhi observed that the British pullout from India “
may induce concinnity or it may lead to chaos. There's also the threat of
another power
stuffing in the vacancy if it's there” (CWMG, Vol. LXXVI,p. 121). A revolutionary journal from Tamluk, in Midnapur quarter of Bengal, claimed to have a communication from Gandhi and the Quit India Movement Gandhi that although he believed innon-violence he couldn't condemn the violent resistance to the brutish suppression by the government since it was “ just like the violence of the mouse against the cat.
The scale of the mass movement, at least in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, was unknown. Indeed in other corridor of the country the movement was marked by acts of violence, strikes, pupil demurrers and dislocation of communal life. The Quit India movement didn't have a strong agricultural dimension because the duration of the struggle was cut short by the massive suppression that was unleashed by the social state. While the NonCooperation and Gandhi and the Quit India MovementCivil Defiance movements had involved the peasantry, both because of Congress action and that of the peasants themselves, this didn't be in 1942. It was more focused on nationalism and had lower peasant participation (Gyan Pandey). The Government had been staying for the Congress to launch the Quit India movement and had prepared itself to suppress the movement under draconian laws. Days after the Quit India resolution was passed on 8th August 1942, the maturity of the front ranking Congress leaders were arrested throughout the country. The movement was thus taken over by the youngish and further militant chauvinists both within and outside the Congress.
Militant scholars of Benares University and indeed seminaries played a significant part in this movement. While there were workers, scholars and middle class revolutionaries involved in utmost corridor of the country in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh the movement spread to the townlets. Communists like Jayaprakash Narayan played an important part in the Quit India movement in eastern UP and Bihar. Popular opinion in the region had been disturbed by the movement of wounded dogfaces who passed through in trains. Gandhi and the Quit India Movement The fall of Burma and the end of remittances from that country had created important anxiety about the very survival of British rule. Rumours about the impending collapse of British rule led to the pullout of plutocrat from banks and post services and the loss of respect for British authority. The Quit India movement in this region was marked by the pulling down of telegraph lines and the junking of fish plates and rails to disrupt the movement of trains. The raise was advanced than in the regions that were near to the advancing Japanese armies (Kamtekar).