Gandhi launched an attack on every aspect of western civilisation in order to prove how evil and how harmful it was. He suggested an alternative to modern civilisation and a programme of action and behaviour that Indians must follow to ensure getting freedom from British colonial rule.
Unlike other leaders of INC, Gandhi realised that the challenge to modern civilisation in India would have to come from the people who lived in the villages. But then, how was this challenge to be articulated? Gandhi was emphatic that it would have to be non-violent. He believed that Indians at large were used to offer passive resistance in all facets of life and the peasants were essentially non-violent. Thus modern civilisation in India, represented by British rule, has to be opposed passively through non-violent means. Gandhi gave a name to this form of struggle, satyagraha meaning the force which is born of truth and love and non-violence with the main aim of firm resistance for good cause.
Gandhi’s ‘Quit India’ movement was the third experiment on his concept of Hind Swaraj. His earlier two experiments, namely, Satyagraha movement (1920-22) and Civil Disobedience movement (1930) were not successful. On 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee at its meeting at Bombay passed a resolution demanding that the British must finally quit India. Gandhi raised the slogan ‘Do or Die’. In his words, ‘I am not going to be satisfied with anything short of complete freedom. We shall either free India or die in the attempt’. Such a declaration of Gandhi showed that ‘Quit India’ movement of August 1942 was a Gandhian movement with a difference. But why? Failure of the earlier movements made him more practical and indeed, from time to time, Gandhi suggested that non-violence might not be the only way to counter authoritarian intransigence and armed aggression.
The background to the ‘Quit India’ movement underscores another important point about Gandhi and nationalist movement at that time. Gandhi partly rose to power in 1919-20 on the back of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the revulsion it created throughout India. Gandhi probably could not reconcile his concept of civilisation in Hind Swaraj and the slavery of colonial rule. And he expressed his growing exasperation and said that he could wait no longer for non-violence to be experimented.
Eventually, like earlier movements, most active signs of the movement died away. So ended the seemingly most un-Gandhian of Gandhi’s campaigns. But then, did the ‘Quit India’ movement fail? Not really. Many scholars argued that this was India’s revolution, the South Asian equivalent of the American War of Independence. In this movement, Indians were united to throw off the colonial yoke. Though independence did not actually come until five years later, it nonetheless set in train the inevitable process of India’s decolonisation.
Gandhi Image Courtesy - read.cash1 / The week
Dr. Dilip Datta, Kolkata
An alumni of Presidency College, Calcutta; M. Tech (Chem Engineering), MBA (Finance); Ph.D in Business Management, Univ. of Calcutta; Has been teaching Global Financial Management, Corporate Finance, and Merger & Acquisitions in various Management Institutes. Has authored 7 books including ‘Indian Manufacturing Industries: Contemporary Issues’, ‘A Brief History from Creation of Universe to Evolution of Human Being’, ‘Swami Vivekananda: On Life To Budget’ and ‘Gandhi: Porbandar to Partition.’ He is Director & CEO, Sayantan Consultants Pvt. Ltd., Kolkata. Email: sayantan.consultants@gmail.com