Quit India Campaign

In 1942 the Indian National Congress launched the Quit India movement. Led by Mahatma Gandhi, it used methods of non-violent resistance to demand freedom from British rule. Historian Sarah Ansari gives an overview of the movement and its influence on the struggle for Indian independence.

The Quit India movement of 1942–44 was the final mass civil disobedience campaign launched by the Indian National Congress against British rule.^[1] Against the backdrop of the Second World War, its objective was to secure a British commitment to immediate full independence (purna swaraj) once the conflict was over, as opposed to the promise of Dominion status. Dominions (such as Australia and Canada) were largely self-governing, but they remained part of the British Empire, with the British monarch as head of state. The movement’s immediate outcome was the arrest of the main Congress leadership, including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as thousands of Congress supporters. Most of them remained incarcerated until the end of the war. But in the longer term, the nature of the protest, which involved a greater readiness by some Congress activists to use violence against the colonial state, influenced post-war negotiations over India’s future. The British authorities succeeded in controlling the immediate challenge from Quit India, but the speed with which the British then pursued an ‘exit strategy’ between 1945 and 1947 can be attributed – at least in part – to the fear of a violent end to Empire that the movement generated. Along with the military setbacks experienced by Britain during the war, the Quit India movement irreparably damaged the veneer of invincibility that had previously surrounded the Raj.