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Unlock This CourseIn December 1941 Japan entered the war. Its armies swept through South-East Asia. The great British base at Singapore fell in February 1942, and Rangoon, the capital of Burma, fell in March. India was next in line.
Britain now needed India's full support, and Congress was still refusing to give it. The American president, Franklin Roosevelt, pressed Britain to offer Indians more. So did Labour ministers in the war government, such as Clement Attlee. The prime minister, Winston Churchill, had always opposed Indian self-rule, but he agreed to send a minister to Delhi.
The man chosen was Sir Stafford Cripps, a left-wing member of the War Cabinet and a friend of Nehru. He arrived in late March 1942.
Key terms:
As soon as the war ended, India would become a dominion, free to leave the British Commonwealth if it chose. An elected body of Indians would write the constitution. Any province that did not accept that constitution could stay out and make its own arrangements. Until the war ended, Britain would keep control of India's defence, but Indian leaders were invited to join the viceroy's council.
It was the biggest offer Britain had yet made. But in April 1942 both Congress and the Muslim League rejected it, and Cripps flew home with nothing agreed. The mission had lasted about three weeks.
The Cripps Mission failed for several reasons:
The failure mattered. Britain could tell the USA that it had tried and that Congress had refused. Congress leaders were left bitter and felt that talking was useless. Yet one thing could not be undone. Britain had promised independence after the war, and no later government could take that back.
After Cripps left, Gandhi decided that the British must go at once. He argued that their presence in India invited a Japanese attack, and that only a free India could defend itself. Nehru had doubts about weakening the fight against Japan, but he backed Gandhi in the end.
On 8 August 1942 the All-India Congress Committee met in Bombay. It passed the Quit India resolution, which demanded an immediate end to British rule and approved a mass struggle, without violence, led by Gandhi. Gandhi told the meeting that his message was 'Do or Die'. 'We shall either free India or die in the attempt,' he said.
The British were ready. Before dawn on 9 August, Gandhi, Nehru and the whole Working Committee were arrested. Congress was banned and newspapers were censored. Gandhi was held in the Aga Khan's palace at Poona. Nehru and the others were locked in Ahmednagar Fort. The campaign had lost its leaders before it began.
News of the arrests set off the biggest revolt of the war years. With no leaders to guide it, it soon turned violent. There were strikes in the cities. Crowds burned police stations, post offices and railway stations and cut telegraph wires. In parts of Bihar and the eastern United Provinces, British control broke down for a time.
The British answered with force. Dozens of army battalions were used, and police and soldiers fired on crowds. By the end of 1942, official figures showed about 1,000 people killed and more than 60,000 arrested. Linlithgow told Churchill it was 'by far the most serious rebellion since that of 1857', the year of the great revolt against British rule. But the main rising was crushed within about two months. The army and the police stayed loyal, and the Muslim League and the princes kept out.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
Quit India was a reckless gamble. Gandhi launched it at the darkest hour of the war, with Japanese troops on India's border, and gave the British every excuse to strike. Within hours the Congress leaders were behind bars, and their followers were left to riot without a plan. The rising was crushed in weeks. Congress then sat helpless in prison for almost three years, while Jinnah, free and busy, built the Muslim League into a power that could no longer be ignored.
What impression does the author give about the Quit India campaign? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the Quit India campaign was a foolish mistake that badly damaged Congress. The language is harsh. Calling it a 'reckless gamble' suggests that Gandhi took a wild risk without thinking, and saying he 'gave the British every excuse to strike' puts the blame on him. Words such as 'crushed' and 'helpless' make Congress sound weak and beaten, while Jinnah is described as 'free and busy', a contrast that makes Congress's loss seem like the League's gain. The author has also chosen what to stress. The extract deals only with the speed of the defeat and the years in prison. It leaves out the huge scale of the rising and the way it shook British confidence, so the reader sees nothing but failure.
What lifts it to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations and what they suggest, and then explains what the author chose to stress and to leave out.
Do not retell the story of Quit India or argue about whether it really failed. Pick out the loaded words, such as 'reckless gamble' and 'helpless', say what each suggests, and finish with one sentence on what the author has left out.