ON THIS DAY · 8 AUGUST 1942

Quit India Movement

8 Aug 1942 — Congress votes for immediate British withdrawal; Gandhi gives the crowd a mantra: “Do or die.” By dawn the whole leadership is jailed without trial, and the leaderless country rises anyway.

The moment in context

Quit India demanded that Britain leave at once, during the war, rather than promise reform after it, and the demand followed directly from the empire’s collapse in Asia. Singapore fell in February 1942 with 60,000 Indian troops among the captured, and Rangoon followed in March, so waiting for British protection began to look like waiting with the doomed. London sent Sir Stafford Cripps with an offer of post-war dominion status and a provincial opt-out but no Indian control of defence, and the mission failed within three weeks. In August, at Gowalia Tank in Bombay, Congress passed the Quit India resolution and Gandhi told the country to “do or die.” By dawn the British had imprisoned the national leadership without trial, and the movement continued without any central control. Railways were cut, police stations burned, and local parallel governments formed, one at Tamluk in Midnapore lasting two years, until the Raj answered with shootings, collective fines and sometimes aircraft. Official figures record about 2,500 dead and 90,000 arrested, while nationalist estimates of the dead ran much higher.

From Quit India and the Bengal famine, chapter 11 of Indian Independence & Partition, 1857–1964 (AUG 1942).

The place: Quit India Movement — map and full story →

The atlas that shows it

Indian Independence & Partition, 1857–1964

15 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP