Our school history books and popular historians insist on the role played by the Quit india movement and Gandhi in giving India its independence, Nothing can be farther from truth as RC Mazumdar explains in detail in his wonderful book The History and Culture of the Indian People: Volume 11: Struggle for Freedom. Chapters 27 and 28 of this seminal book places the Quit India movement in its correct perspective which is at great divergence from the history taught to us and popularised across the world too.
This is the final section of chapter 28 from this book which gives the overall picture of the Quit India movement. The break in the paragraphs, italics, and the bold fonts are mine. Also, the references which he quotes have been removed.
GENERAL REVIEW
It is necessary at the very outset to remove two great misconceptions regarding the outbreak of 1942. The first, namely, that it was predominantly non-violent, will not bear a moment’s scrutiny in the face of the details given in the preceding sections. Gandhi himself, Nehru, Azad, Patel and the official history of the Congress,— all admitted this patent fact. Patel said that “one had to face the reality and India switched over from non-violent to violent attempt to regain independence.”
If the outbreak of 1942 is a specimen of ‘predominantly non-violent form of satydgraha, then this phrase must mean something very different from what Gandhi himself understood by it. It is true that the movement called forth on more than one occasion the true spirit of non-violent satydgraha, when men and women, young and old, gave a display of cool, sublime courage by calmly facing the bullets with the national flag in their hands and the revolutionary cries on their lips. It proved that the spirit of 1930 was not yet dead, but to call the movement of 1942 as a non-violent movement in any sense, is nothing but a perversion of truth, or travesty of facts. The difference between the movements of 1930 and 1942 was such that even he who runs may read it.
Secondly, credit is given to Gandhi for carrying out this glorious revolution which led us to our goal of freedom. Both the assumptions are opposed to actual facts. It is well-known, and the Congress was the first to admit, that the movement collapsed in two months’ time and India had to wait for five more years before it achieved freedom under very different circumstances. Similarly, far from claiming any credit for achievements of 1942, both Gandhi and the Congress offered apology and explanation for the madness’ which seized the people participating in it.
Jayaprakash Narayan most emphatically asserts that “to fasten the August programme on Gandhiji is a piece of perjury of which only the British ruling class can be capable.” The correspondence between Gandhi and the Government of India is conclusive on this point. We may next consider the question whether, and if so how far, the Congress was responsible for the outbreak of 1942. It has been argued that the Congress leaders could not be held responsible for the violent outbreaks which broke out after they were all behind the prison bars. It was, however, pointed out by the Government that during the period between the Working Committee’s resolution on 14 July and the meeting oi the A.l.C.C. at Bombay on 8 August, the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, indicated in public speeches the nature of the coming struggle and laid special emphasis on two points.
First, that it was the final struggle for freedom that ‘would kindle a fire all over the country which would only be extinguished after either achieving it or wiping out Congress organisation altogether’. The people—one and all, and not merely tried Satydgrahis as in 1930—must therefore respond to this desperate campaign in a spirit of kdo or die’.
The second was the insistence with which almost all speakers urged that every man should be prepared and willing to act on his own initiative. In view of such speeches, the Government argued, not without some reason, that the Congress leaders cannot altogether be absolved from responsibility for the outbreak of 1942.
But in all fairness, the responsibility—or credit—cannot be said, on such evidence alone, to extend beyond the creation of a mental state or excitement easily leading the mass to a violent outbreak, though the leaders never ceased to emphasize the non-violent character of the movement they had in view. The utterances of Congress leaders also largely negative the view that the outbreak was a spontaneous popular reaction to the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders, and not a premeditated course of rebellion.
In reply to such a suggestion, “the Government spokesman in the Central Assembly pointed out that the disorders had begun simultaneously at widely separated points, that the worst trouble had been located in a vital strategic area, that expert technical knowledge had been displayed and special tools used in the assault on communications, and that discrimination had been shown in the conduct of sabotage from which, for instance, the plant and machinery of private industrialists were exempted, —all of which seemed to be evidence of design and preparation.”
These revelations also very much weaken the plea, urged on behalf of the Congress, that the violent items of the campaign would not have come into operation but for the terrorism of the Government. In support of this view it is pointed out that the popular reaction to the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders was very mild on the 9th and 10th, and assumed a violent character only on the 11th after the Government had broken up peaceful processions by lathi charge and firing. This view has been clearly expressed by Nehru and also in the official history of the Congress in a passage quoted above. But the view was by no means confined to the Congressmen or even the Indians. Horace Alexander, a well-known British journalist, who toured India during the period, also says that it was the “repression let loose by the police that goaded to violent fury crowds that have intended to act quite peacefully”
Gandhi himself wrote to Lord Linlithgow, that it was the ‘leonine violence’ which goaded the people to acts of violence. ” Such a view seems to be incompatible with the elaborate plans and preparations for violent acts like disruption of communications and sabotage of industrial works. It is idle to contend that these items would not have been carried out but for the terrorism of the Government. Special attention may be drawn in this connection to a document secretly circulated by the Andhra Provincial Congress Committee. “It was headed with Gandhi’s slogan, Do or die: and it outlined a plan of campaign to be developed in successive stages, the fifth of which was to include the cutting of telephone and tele¬ graph wires, the removal of rails and the demolition of bridges. Other items in the programme were ‘to impede the war efforts of the Government’ and ‘to run parallel Government in competition with the British Government.” It is significant that all these were the characteristic features of the 1942 movement throughout the country.
The truth of these instructions as well as the statement of the Government quoted above regarding preparations to carry them out, has been challenged as they emanate from official sources. But we have corroboration of the same from unofficial sources also. The Bihar Congress Committee had issued detailed instructions as to the course of action to be followed “after the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders”, and these conformed strictly to the Gandhian policy of non-violent Satyagraha. But on 11 August seven students were killed by police firing in an attempt to hoist the national flag on the Patna Secretariat building. On the 12th a meeting held at the Congress Maidan under the chairmanship of a prominent member of the Congress resolved: 1. To destroy all communications by cutting railway lines, telegraph and telephone wires, etc. 2. To take control of Police Stations, Courts, Jail and other Government institutions and also to burn the records etc. kept there. “Activities on these lines began on an extensive scale spontaneously and immediately.”
The word ‘spontaneously’ obviously means ‘without any direct and definite instructions from the Congress’. But it is difficult to understand how on that very evening “telegraph and telephone wires were cut at many places and telephone posts were uprooted”, without some previous direction (like the Andhra document), organization, training and equipment. This was followed by another Congress Circular, which began with the slogan ‘do or die’, and sketched a programme of 15 items including the following: 5. Railway lines should be uprooted, large bridges should be pulled down, telegraph and telephone wires should be cut of! and roads too should be torn asunder. 6. Courts and Adalats, thanas and post offices, should be brought under possession and tricolour flag be hoisted on them. 7. Arms of the Police and the Military should be taken non* violently. 14. Be always non-violent.
To reconcile the first three of these items with the fourth may appear difficult to an ordinary mind, but a philosophical explanation has been provided by Jayaprakash Narayan. He observed, when tak¬ ing up the leadership of the movement after escaping from prison: “Dislocation is an infallible weapon for people under slavery. . . Cutting wires, removing of railway lines, blowing up of bridges, stoppage of factory work, setting fire to oil tanks as also to thanas, destruction of Government papers and files-—all such activities come under dislocation and it is perfectly right for people to carry out these.” A review of these facts, to which others may be added, leave no doubt that the violent acts in the 1942 movement cannot be explained as ‘insensate and mad acts of fury on the part of the people provoked by ruthless acts of the Government,’ but were really due to the fact that whatever might have been its original character, the movement of 1942 shortly merged itself into the revolutionary or terrorist movement which was always an active political force running on a parallel line with the non-violent policy of Gandhi.
How strong this revolutionary feeling was may be judged by the fact that even a powerful section of the Congress led by Jayaprakash Narayan openly repudiated the policy of Gandhi and preached the cult of violence and mass revolution—to fight Britain with arms— and regarded this course to be in accord with the Congress resolution of Bombay though not with Gandhi’s principle.
It is not difficult to visualize the rapid development of the course of events after S August, 1942. The resentment at the arrest of Congress leaders including Gandhi, and the absence of his restraining hand, violently reacted on the amorphous groups of people who had no specific instructions to follow, but were urged to pursue their individual inclinations. The revolutionary wing of the Congress and even its other members who adopted non-violence as a policy and not a creed became very lukewarm in support of it.
The professed revolutionaries must have taken full advantage of the situation. They had their own organizations and a ready technique of violence to be carried through different stages according to circumstances. Many of these revolutionaries must have already infiltrated into the Congress camp. Horace Alexander tells us that “a section of younger Congressmen, some of whom were impatient with Gandhi’s delays and hesitations”, tried to procure arms and actually “set up bomb factories at several places.” We know that similar activities were carried on by one or more groups who went underground after the movement had been ruthlessly crushed by the Government.
The one led by Jayaprakash was the most prominent among these underground organizations. The cult of violence preached by him and the specific acts to bo done in accordance with it have been mentioned above. Leaflets carrying these instructions were issued and widely circulated throughout the country. There was a secret meeting of a small group at Sardar Griha in Bombay, and it was decided to work underground in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Their programme was to procure arms and ammunition from non-British ports like Goa and Indian States where the Arms Act did not apply. Factories for preparing bombs and other explosive materials were set up at Agra, Gwalior, Kanpur, etc. Nagpur supplied dynamite from its neighbouring mines. Efforts were made to get rifles and guns from North-Western Frontier Province. Enterprising girls freely travelled from one place to another hiding on their persons arms and ammunition. The movement gained momentum after the escape of Jayaprakash Narayan and his colleagues from Hazaribagh jail in October, 1942, when efforts were made to co-ordinate the activities in all the States.
Programmes were framed with some reorientation, and in a highly significant document, entitled “The Freedom Struggle Front”, the socialist leaders unfolded their strategy. “The training of workers, the issue of leaflets, news-sheets, slogans, the organisation of contacts, the raising of funds, frequent reviews of progress and issue of directions to the fighting line”, were to be the urgent administrative problems of the Freedom Struggle Front. The first circular issued under the signature of Jayaprakash Narayan addressed to “All Fighters for Freedom” justified the use of arms to fight the British in terms of the Bombay resolution. He laid stress on intensive propaganda work among masses—peasants in villages, workers in factories, mines, railways and elsewhere. Then there was work to be done in the “Indian army and services in Native States and on the frontiers of India.” Jayaprakash’s other appeals were addressed to American officers and soldiers (to desist from shooting Indians), to students, to the peasants and others.
The Central Action Committee, consisting of Jayaprakash and some other leaders and a batch of students from Banaras Hindu University, met at Delhi to chalk out a programme of action for the whole of India. Gandhiites like Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani did not endorse the programme and kept out of the struggle. A separate code for sending and receiving information was formed. There was to be a dictator for each province, and in case of larger provinces like Uttar Pradesh, districts were grouped into zones for each of which a dictator was appointed. Agra, Kanpur and Banaras were the zones in Uttar Pradesh. Each dictator had a committee of action under him and in case of the arrest of a dictator, the seniormost member was to take his place. There were several departments as Demonstration, Propaganda, Information, Finance, Intelligence, Volunteer, Village, School and College, Dak, Ambulance, etc., each in charge of a member of the Committee.
Besides issuing the usual exhortatory pamphlets some of which have been appended to the White Paper, and setting up provincial and zonal committees, minute technical instructions were circulated to help saboteurs to destroy planes, tanks, locomotives, etc., with easily obtained substances and methods. There was a separate set of instructions to guerillas and details about the training and equipment were given out in these pamphlets. For the training of Azad Dastas or guerilla bands, a centre was set up outside the British territory at a place known as Bankro Ka Tapu.
Sardar Nityanand Singh of Bihar was the chief instructor at this centre while Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia took over the charge of Radio and Publicity Department. Among the revolutionary groups working in different parts of the country, Siaram Dal and Parasuram Dal in Bihar, Hindustan Socialist Republican Army in Uttar Pradesh, and Anusilan Samiti and Jugantar Group in Bengal were the most important ones. This gigantic revolutionary movement, spread over almost all the provinces, however, soon lost its tempo, and by February, 1943, it was over.
But though the 1942 movement in the open was practically crushed in less than a month and finally collapsed within two months, it would be a mistake to suppose that it was a dismal failure. The violent mass upsurge of 1942 left no doubt that freedom’s battle in India had begun in right earnest. The individual, and in many instances, collective, heroism and bravery in the face of heavy odds, and the readiness to suffer and sacrifice everything for the freedom of the motherland displayed by a very large number of people all over this vast country, and, above all, an enthusiastic response to the call of the Congress from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, were unerring signs of India’s grim determination to be free from the British yoke, and even he who ran could read them.
But this does not prove the oft-repeated claim that India won her freedom by the non-violent Satyagraha of Gandhi. For the movement of 1942, the last rising of the people against the British Government, was not non-violent, and was neither planned nor led by Gandhi. To give him credit for it, after he had publicly disowned his responsibility for the whole movement, would be an indirect imputation of untruth and insincerity on his part—a charge which his worst critics would be the foremost to repudiate. So far as India is concerned the year 1942-3 marks the end of her struggle for freedom. The revolutionary movement which had begun early in this century, as well as the non-violent Satyagraha which Gandhi had launched in 1920, both came to an end, almost simultaneously, without achieving freedom. Curiously enough, the last battle for India’s freedom began almost immediately after, far beyond her frontier, and this also proved a failure, in this respect. But it was out of these failures that success came in less than five years. We may therefore now proceed to describe this last fight for India’s freedom.
RANDOM MUSINGS 