“Quit India” Movement (1942)
March 23rd, 2008 | by Raja Ghias |Gandhi now began to press for an immediate with drawl of the British from India and the transfer of power to the congress without a prior settlement with any other party. These ideas were formally adopted by the All-India Congress Committee meeting held at Bombay, on August 8, 1942, in the famous “Quit India” resolution, which demanded the “withdrawal of the brutish power from India” and authorized “the starting of a mass struggle on non-violent lines on the widest possible scale”. It stated, “Such widespread struggle would inevitably be under the leadership of Gandhijee. This, what Gandhi himself called “open rebellion” could not be tolerated by any government. All the Congress leaders were arrested on 9 August and the Congress was declared an unlawful body throughout India.
The Muslim League saw in these actions attempt “to coerce the British government into handing over power to a Hindu oligarchy”. The Muslim were not a whitless insistent on the attainment of independence, but they felt that the purpose of a Hindu Raj and deal a death low to the Muslim goal of Pakistan”. To Gandhi’s slogan “Quit India”, Jinnah replied with “Divide and Quit”.
