The Cripps Mission and the Quit India Movement

The War, which had started in 1939, was now continuing in full rage. By the summer of 1940, Germany had conquered all those who were against them in the European continent except England. England now stood alone. The Congress Working Committee held a meeting in July 1940 and demanded for “an immediate and unequivocal declaration of the full independence of India, which will enable it to throw its full weight into the efforts for the effective organisation of the defence of the country”. In response to this, the Viceroy made an offer known as the August Offer. While reiterating the offer of Dominion Status, he agreed that the writing of an Indian constitution was the primary responsibility of Indians themselves. He therefore offered to set up a constitution making body after the War. As for the present, he suggested that there would be an increase of Indians in the Governor-General’s Council; also a war-advisory council would be established. The Congress, rejected the offer, saying that it was too little and too late. After the rejection, the Congress resorted to a Civil Disobedience Movement on a small scale; it was restricted to an individual and not to a mass Satyagraha.  In 1941, the campaign picked up some momentum but met with very little success. TheBritish Government arrested and convicted over 20,000 persons.

By the end of 1941, the War took a very serious turn. The Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbour joined the Axis powers against Britain. Very soon they overran Singapore, which was considered impregnable; next came the turn of Malaysia and soon after they entered Burma, thus coming to the doorstep of India. The impending threat of a Japanese invasion of India loomed large. The Viceroy made a public appeal for a united national front, but it fell on deaf ears. At the same time, there was a section of English opinion led by Mr Amery – the Secretary of State - that was openly with the Muslim League. But the enlargement of the Governor-General’s Executive Council without the approval of the Muslim League stiffened its attitude. It passed a resolution stating that any fresh declaration, which affects the demand for Pakistan or proceeds on the basis of Central Government with India as one single unit and Mussulmans as an all-India minority will be strongly resented by the Muslims. The Muslim Press rang with such cries: “Pakistan is our demand and by God we shall have it”. The Hindu Mahasabha challenged the threat and like the Congress demanded full independence, but unlike it was ready to cooperate with the British in the war effort. The British government, partly realizing the inevitability of India's future independence and partly under American pressure to secure her support during the war, sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India in March, 1942, with a proposal for dominion status after the war, as a first step towards full independence.

The Cripps Mission

 The proposals, which Sir Stafford Cripps brought with him, may be summarised as follows:

·        In order to achieve the earliest possible realisation of self-government, a new Indian Union would be created with the full status of a Dominion. This would mean that India would be ‘associated with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions by a common allegiance to the Crown, but equal to them in every respect but in no way subordinate to them’.

·        Immediately after the War, India would be free to frame its own constitution

·        Until then, a new Executive Council would govern the country; the British would retain control of the defence of India as part of their world war effort, but the task of organising the military, moral and material resources would be the responsibility of the Government of India in cooperation with the peoples of India.

Here is an extract from the speech given by Sir Stafford Cripps on March 30,1942:

“First of all you will want to know what object we had in view. Well, we wanted to make it quite clear and beyond any possibility of doubt or question that the British Government and the British people desire the Indian peoples to have full self-government, with a Constitution as free in every respect as our own in Great Britain or as of any of the great Dominion members of the British Commonwealth of Nations in the words of the Draft Declaration, India would be associated with the United Kingdom and other Dominions by a common allegiance to the Crown but equal to them in every respect, in no way subordinate in any aspect of its domestic or external affairs.

The principle on which these proposals are based is that the new Constitution should be framed by the elected representatives of the Indian people themselves. So we propose that immediately after hostilities are ended, a constitution-making body should be set up consisting of elected representative from British India and if the Indian States wish, as we hope they will to become part of the new Indian Union, they too will be invited to send their representatives to this constitution-making body, though, if they do, that will not, of itself, bind them to become members of the Union. That is the broad outline of the future.

There are those who claim that India should form a single united country: there are others who say it should be divided up into two, three or more separate countries. There are those who claim that provincial autonomy should be very wide with but few centrally controlled federal services; other stress the need for centralization in view of the growing complexity of economic development.

These and many other and various ideas are worthy to be explored and debated, but it is for the Indian peoples, and not for any outside authority, to decide under which of these forms India will in future govern herself.

So we provide the means and the lead by which you can attain that form of the absolute and united self-government that you desire at the earliest possible moment. In the past we have waited for the different Indian communities to come: to a common decision as to how a new Constitution for a self-governing India should be framed and, because there has been no agreement amongst the Indian leaders, the British Government has been accused by some of using this fact to delay the granting of freedom to India. We are now giving the lead that has been asked for and it is in the hands of Indians and Indians only, whether they will accept that lead and so attain their own freedom. If they fail to accept this opportunity the responsibility for the failure must rest with them”.

This was followed by protracted negotiations with all the parties. The Congress rejected the offer because it doubted Britain’s declared intention to share executive power. Another reason for the rejection was the clause that permitted the provinces to secede from the proposed union. In addition there was Gandhi’s pacifism, which proved to be a stumbling block. Gandhi called the proposals ‘a post-dated cheque on a crashing bank’. On the other hand, the Muslim League too was not satisfied because it was not agreeable to the creation of one Indian Union; they wanted the possibility of the creation of more than one Union. The Cripps mission thus ended in failure.

However, Sri Aurobindo had taken a totally different position. As seen earlier, he supported the Allies in the war, and when the Cripps offer was made he sent him the following message.

“As one who has been a nationalist leader and worker for India's independence, though now my activity is no longer in the political but in the spiritual field, I wish to express my appreciation of all you have done to bring about this offer. I welcome it as an opportunity given to India to determine for herself, and organise in all liberty of choice, her freedom and unity, and take an effective place among the world's free nations. I hope that it will be accepted, and right use made of it, putting aside all discords and divisions.... I offer my public adhesion, in case it can be of any help in your work”.

The next day, on April 1, Cripps replied with the following telegram: “I am most touched and gratified by your kind message allowing me to inform India that you who occupy unique position in imagination of Indian youth, are convinced that declaration of His Majesty's Government substantially confers that freedom for which Indian Nationalism has so long struggled.”

Sri Aurobindo in addition sent a personal messenger to the Congress to urge them to accept Cripps' proposal; he also sent a telegram to C. Rajagopalachari, in which he said: “... Appeal to you to save India. Formidable danger, new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination.”

Sri Aurobindo's advice was ignored: “He has retired from political life, why does he interfere?” said Gandhi to Duraiswamy Iyer, Sri Aurobindo's messenger. Although Nehru and Rajagopalachari favoured acceptance of Cripps' offer, Gandhi found it unacceptable “because of his opposition to war.” Had Cripps' proposal been accepted, the Partition and the blood bath that followed might have been averted.

Sri Aurobindo gave reasons for accepting the proposals.

• Firstly, Hitler represented an Asuric force and his victory would be good neither for India nor for the world.  
• Secondly, this offer was made chiefly to the Congress Party and it was an opportunity for it to handle the communal problem.
• Thirdly while the British were here, we would be administering the country with their support from behind the scenes. That would have meant that we would have been able to train a very large number of people in administration.
• Fourthly, he said that by participating in the war effort, almost a million soldiers would be trained in the very thick of war and fighting in the thick of war is the best experience; and if the British decided to back out of the agreement after that, we had a very large number of people who could take up arms against the British.  
• Fifth, he said that when one has to choose between a known enemy and an unknown enemy, it is better to choose the known enemy. Because if the Germans or Japanese won the war, there was no guarantee that we would get freedom.   We would only change our masters and knowing the British, knowing the background of their history, with all their shortcomings, they had generally a democratic approach to life and secondly, we knew them well having fought them for almost 200 years.   

He therefore thought that it would be better if we accepted the proposal.    

The Quit India Movement

As a result of the failure of the Cripps mission, Gandhi’s attitude towards the British changed radically. He was convinced that the presence of the British in India was an invitation to the Japanese to invade India. He suggested that the safety and interest of both Britain and India “lie in orderly and timely British withdrawal from India”. He believed that with the withdrawal of the British, the danger of a Japanese invasion would disappear. At this time differences between Nehru and Gandhi emerged. Nehru believed that India must fight with Britain against Fascism, while Gandhi felt that all ideas of cooperation or friendly understanding between Britain and India must end. On June 7 he wrote: “I waited and waited until the country should develop the non-violent strength necessary to throw off the foreign yoke. But my attitude has now undergone a change. If I continue to wait I might have to wait till doomsday. For the preparation that I have prayed and worked for may never come and in the meantime I may be enveloped and overwhelmed by the flames that threaten all of us. That is why I have decided that even at certain risks, which are obviously involved, I must ask the people to resist the slavery”. On 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee passed the Quit India resolution. It renewed the demand that British rule should end in India immediately assuring that it was agreeable to the stationing of the armed forces of the Allies in India.  It pleaded with Britain to accept the very reasonable demand, failing which it would be reluctantly compelled to utilise all the non-violent strength for the vindication of its political rights and liberty. On August 8 the Congress Working Committee endorsed the Quit India resolution. Gandhi announced to the people of India, ‘I am not going to be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom. We shall do or die. We shall either free India or die in the attempt’. The next morning he and all other Congress leaders were arrested.  Immediately after the arrests, Jinnah issued a statement deeply regretting that the Congress had declared war on the Government, regardless of all interests other than its own, and appealing to Muslims to keep completely aloof from the movement. This position of Jinnah further endeared him to   the British Government.

The news of these arrests led to violent popular demonstrations, which soon spread over the whole of India. Spontaneous acts of protest in the form of hartals, strikes and processions took place. From 11 August the situation deteriorated. There were concerted outbreaks of mob violence, arson, murder, sabotage, most of them being directed against the railways, telegraphs and against the police.   These outbreaks occurred simultaneously in widely separated areas in the provinces of Madras, Bombay and Bihar. So serious was the situation that parts of the country were completely cut off and British rule virtually ceased to exist. The cult of non-violence had come to an end once for all, never more to figure as a potent force in India’s freedom struggle.

The British Government crushed the movement ruthlessly using all the machinery of modern warfare at their disposal. These methods included machine gun firing and even aerial bombing. Tens of thousands were arrested and the police used the most bestial methods to quell the uprising. By the end of September, the movement was more or less crushed and the British regained control over the whole of India. The Quit India movement had ended in a total failure. The question then arose as to who was responsible for the terrible violence and the sufferings that followed; a prolonged correspondence between Gandhi and the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, took place each blaming the other. Gandhi, not getting a satisfactory response went on a fast from 9 February to 2 March 1943 but it was not clear what the fast was about. This was followed by a terrible famine in Bengal and parts of Orissa, Bihar and Madras in which over three million persons died; this famine was the result of the Government’s scorched earth policy. 

Subash Bose and the INA

Subash Bose who had escaped to Germany in 1940 formed an anti-British axis with the Germans.  In 1943, Bose now known as Netaji turned his attention to the Far East. Earlier in 1942, at a conference of the Indian Independence League, it was resolved that the INA would fight for the liberation of India. Netaji was invited to the Conference. He accepted the invitation and was appointed President of the League in place of Rash Behari Bose who had resigned. Netaji was then appointed supreme Commander of the INA. Following this, he announced the establishment of the Azad Hind Sarkar or Provincial Government of Free India; this Government was recognised by Japan and other countries. The INA was organised into three brigades – the Subash Brigade, the Azad Brigade and the Gandhi Brigade. It adopted the same battle cry of 1857 ‘Delhi Chalo’. In May 1944, the Battalion No 1 of the Subash Brigade entered Indian Territory. It captured Mowdok, a small town south of Chittagong; at the same time the main body of the Subash Brigade entered Kohima in Nagaland with the intention of capturing Imphal in Manipur. The idea was to cross the Bramhaputra and then enter into the heart of Bengal. The two other brigades of the INA assisted them.  But soon the fortunes of war turned against the Japanese. They were compelled to send all their forces to the Pacific theatre. Not having sufficient air support they were compelled to withdraw to Burma. Later in the year 1944, the Japanese retreated leaving Rangoon in Indian hands. The British captured the city in May 1945 and around 20,000 troops of the INA had to surrender. Netaji escaped to Singapore and from there to Bangkok. There are conflicting reports about his death later. In August 1945, after the dropping of two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered and the war came to an end. The Second World War had ended and the INA was routed. And yet they made a great contribution the Indian Freedom Movement, which we shall see, in the next chapter.

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(To be continued )

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