இந்தக் கட்டுரையில், TNPSC குரூப் 1, குரூப் 2, குரூப் 2A, குரூப் 4 மாநிலப் போட்டித் தேர்வுகளான TNUSRB, TRB, TET, TNEB போன்றவற்றுக்கான முறைகள் இலவசக் குறிப்புகளைப் பெறுவீர்கள்.தேர்வுக்கு தயாராவோர் இங்குள்ள பாடக்குறிப்புகளை படித்து பயன்பெற வாழ்த்துகிறோம்.
Cripps Mission
Britain – War Condition
The year 1941 was bad for the allied forces. France, Poland, Belgium, Norway and
Holland had fallen to Germany and Great Britain was facing destruction as well.
Of far more significance to India was Japan’s march into South-East Asia.
December 7, 1941 – The attack on Pearl Harbour, where Japanese war-planes bombed
the American port.
US President F.D. Roosevelt and Chinese President Chiang Kai-Shek were concerned
with halting Japan on its march.
India, thus, came on their radar and the two put pressure on British Prime Minister,
Churchill to ensure cooperation for the war from the Indian people.
By the end of 1941, the Japanese forces had stormed through the Philippines, Indo-
China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Burma and were waiting to knock at India’s doors in the
North-East.
The way the South-East Asian region fell raised concerns to Britain and the Indian
National Congress.
The British forces ran without offering any resistance.
The Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army were left to the mercy of the Japanese
forces.
Churchill was worried that Calcutta and a might fall in Japanese hands. Similar thoughts
ran in the minds of the leaders of the Congress too and they too were desperate to seek
an honourable way out to offer cooperation in the war effort.
The Congress Working Committee, in December 1941, passed a resolution offering
cooperation with the war effort on condition that Britain promised independence to
India after the war and transfer power to Indians in a substantial sense immediately.
Arrival of Cripps
March 1942 – A delegation headed by Sir Stafford Cripps reached India.
Before setting out to India, he announced that British policy in India aimed at ‘the
earliest possible realisation of self-government in India’.
But the draft declaration he presented before he began negotiations fell far short of
independence.
Cripps Proposals
Cripps promised Dominion Status and a constitution-making body to India after the war.
The constitution-making body was to be partly elected by the provincial assemblies and
nominated members from the Princely states.
The draft also spelt out the prospect of Pakistan.
It said that any province that was not prepared to accept the new constitution would
have the right to enter into a separate agreement with Britain regarding its future
status.
The draft did not contain anything new.
Nehru recalled later: ‘When I read these proposals for the first time I was profoundly
depressed.’
Rejection of Cripps’ Proposals
The offer of Dominion Status was too little.
Both the Congress and the Muslim League rejected the proposal
The Congress also rejected the idea of nominated members to the constitution-making
body and sought elections in the Princely States as in the Provinces.
Above all there was the possibility of partition.
The negotiations were bound to breakdown and it did.
Options for Congress in the wake of Pearl Harbour Attack
Churchill’s attitude towards the Indian National Movement for independence in general
and Gandhi, in particular, was one of contempt even earlier.
Churchill did not change even when Britain needed cooperation in the war efforts so
desperately. But he came under pressure from the US and China.
The Indian National Congress, meanwhile, was pushed against the wall. This happened
in two ways:
The colonial government’s adamant stand against any assurance of independence
on the one hand and
Subhas Chandra Bose’s campaign to join hands with the Axis powers in the fight for
independence.
Bose had addressed the people of India on the Azad Hind Radio broadcast from
Germany in March 1942. This was the context in which Gandhi thought of the Quit India
movement.
Quit India Movement
Introduction
May 1942 – Gandhi took it upon himself to steer the Indian National Congress into
action.
Gandhi’s decision to launch a mass struggle this time, however, met with reservation
from C. Rajaji as much as from Nehru.
Conditions were ripe for an agitation. Prices of commodities had shot up many-fold and
there was shortage of food-grains too.
Congress Meet at Wardha
July 14, 1942 – The Working Committee of the Indian National Congress met at Wardha.
The meeting resolved to launch a mass civil disobedience movement.
C. Rajaji and Bhulabhai Desai who had reservations against launching a movement at
that time resigned from the Congress Working Committee.
Nehru, despite being among those who did not want a movement then to bound
himself with the majority’s decision in the Working Committee.
Quit India Movement/Do or Die
The Cripps mission had turned both Gandhi and Nehru sour with the British than any
time in the past.
May 16, 1942 – Gandhi expressed this in a press interview, where he said: ‘Leave India to
God. If that is too much, then leave her to anarchy.
August 8, 1942 – The All-India Congress Committee met at Bombay and passed the
famous Quit India Resolution demanding an immediate end to British rule in India.
The Mahatma called upon the people to ‘Do or Die’ and called the movement he
launched from there as a ‘fight to the finish’.
The colonial government did not wait.
August 9, 1942 – All the leaders of the Indian National Congress, including Gandhi, were
arrested early in the morning.
The Indian people too did not wait. The immediate response to the pre-dawn arrests
was hartals in almost all the towns where the people clashed, often violently, with the
police.
Industrial workers across India went on strike.
The Tata Steel Plant in Jamshedpur was closed due to workers strike for 13 days from
August 20.
The textile workers in Ahmedabad struck work for more than three months.
Industrial towns witnessed strikes for varied periods across India.
Brutal Repression
The colonial government responded with brutal repression and police resorted to firing
in many places.
The army was called in to suppress the protest.
The intensity of the movement and the repression can be made out from the fact that
as many as 57 battalions were called in.
Aircrafts were used to strafe protesters.
Linlithgow wrote to Churchill, describing the protests as ‘by far the most serious
rebellion since 1857, the gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed from the
world for reasons of military security.’
Though this phase of the protest, predominantly urban, involving the industrial workers
and the students was put down by use of brutal force, the upsurge did not end. It
spread in its second phase into the villages.
A sixty-point increase in prices of food-grains recorded between April and August 1942
had laid the seeds of resentment.
In addition, those leaders of the Congress, particularly the Socialists within, who had
managed to escape arrest on August 9 fanned into the countryside where they
organised the youth into guerrilla actions.
Timeline
July 14, 1942 – The Congress Working Committee met at Wardha.
August 8, 1942 – The All-India Congress Committee met at Bombay and passed
Quit India Resolution.
August 9, 1942 – All of the Indian National Congress leaders, including Gandhi,
were arrested early in the morning.
Outbreak of Violence
Beginning late September 1942, the movement took the shape of attacks and
destruction of communication facilities such as telegraph lines, railway stations and
tracks and setting fire to government offices.
This spread across the country and was most intense in Eastern United Provinces, Bihar,
Maharashtra and in Bengal.
The rebels even set up ‘national governments’ in pockets they liberated from the
colonial administration.
An instance of this was the ‘Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar’ in the Midnapore district in Bengal
that lasted until September 1944
There was a parallel government in Satara.
Socialists like Jayaprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan, Asaf Ali, Yusuf Mehraly and
Ram Manohar Lohia provided leadership.
Gandhi’s 21 day fast in jail, beginning February 10, 1943, marked a turning point and
gave the movement (and even the violence in a limited sense) a great push.
Spread and Intensity of the Movement
The spread of the movement and its intensity can be gauged from the extent of force
that the colonial administration used to put it down.
By the end of 1943, the number of persons arrested across India stood at 91, 836.
The police shot dead 1060 persons during the same period.
208 police outposts, 332 railway stations and 945 post offices were destroyed or
damaged very badly.
At least 205 policemen defected and joined the rebels.
R.H. Niblett, who served as District Collector of Azamgarh in eastern United Province,
removed from service for being too mild with the rebels, recorded in his diary that the
British unleashed ‘white terror’ using an ‘incendiary police to set fire to villages for
several miles’ and that ‘reprisals (becoming) the rule of the day.’
Collective fines were imposed on all the people in a village where public property was
destroyed.
Clandestine Radio
Yet another prominent feature of the Quit India movement was the use of Radio by the
rebels.
The press being censored, the rebels set up a clandestine radio broadcast system from
Bombay.
The transmitter was shifted from one place to another in and around the city.
Usha Mehta was the force behind the clandestine radio operations and its broadcast
was heard as far away as Madras.
The Quit India movement was the most powerful onslaught against the colonial state
hitherto.
The movement included the Congress, the Socialists, and the Forward Bloc.
The movement witnessed unprecedented unity of the people and sent a message that
the colonial rulers could not ignore.
Release of Gandhi
Gandhi’s release from prison, on health grounds, on May 6, 1944 led to the revival of
the Constructive Programme.
Congress committees began activities in its garb and the ban on the Congress imposed
in the wake of the Quit India movement was thus overcome.
The colonial state, meanwhile, put forward a plan for negotiation.
Lord Archibald Wavell, who had replaced Linlithgow as Viceroy in October 1943, had
begun to work towards another round of negotiation.
The message was clear: The British had no option but to negotiate!
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