Today, in 1942, Gandhi mobilised the movement for independence with his 'Do or Die' speech.

By the 1940s, India had been kept in the waiting room of history for a hundred years.

Ever since the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, demand after demand for independence was given the same answer by the British: “Not yet.”

The intellectual stooges of empire had drawn up their justifications for the delay.

The people of India were supposedly not ‘civilised’ enough by comparison with fox-hunting English aristocrats and industrialists who profited from child labour and waged war constantly across the world…

Gandhi inspired millions with his campaign for independence. Click to view our Gandhi tea towel

The selfless elites of Britain were 'raising the people of India up to their higher standard'. Once that was done (always some undefined point in the distant future), they would leave.

Of course, this was just a big smokescreen. A web of deceit spun to cover the pillage of Asia.

For decades, the Indians who mobilised against this charade were silenced, arrested, or worse.

But by the middle of the 20th century, the empire was not the power it once was. And its Indian subjects were more committed than ever to national self-determination.

The time for being told “not yet” by charlatans and hypocrites was coming to an end.

A procession in Bangalore during the Quit India Movement.

By the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939, decades of anticolonial resistance by Indians, especially the campaigns of Gandhi, had forced Britain into serious concessions.

But concessions were not enough. Indian activists would no longer accept devolution – they demanded full independence.

Things really started to kick off when the British government took India into World War 2 without consulting anybody.

The Indian National Congress were as anti-fascist as anyone, and much more so than plenty in the English ruling class… But they would not be told that India’s continued oppression must be a condition of Europe’s freedom.

“If the war is to defend the status quo of imperialist possessions and colonies, of vested interest and privilege, then India can have nothing to do with it. If, however, the issue is democracy and world order based on democracy, then India is intensely interested.”

India would happily join the fight against fascist tyranny once it was given its own freedom. In the meantime, British claims to be fighting for national liberation sounded absurd in the colonies.

Keeping with tradition, Britain left the Indian nationalists on ‘read’. But by 1942, greater cooperation from India was seen as a war priority, even by the arch-imperialist Churchill.

A Cabinet minister, Stafford Cripps, was sent to negotiate with the Congress in March, offering devolution to an elected Indian legislature after the war.

But again, even in such dire straits, the imperial mind of Britain would not give a concrete timetable for Indian independence.

For Gandhi, it was the last straw.

Today, in 1942, at the Gowalia Tank Maidan Park in Mumbai, Gandhi gave what is now known as his ‘Do or Die’ speech to a huge crowd.

He called for a massive campaign of civil disobedience – the ‘Quit India’ movement – to force the British to accept Indian independence.

“I believe that in the history of the world, there has not been a more genuinely democratic struggle for freedom than ours.” 

Was the Quit India movement violent?

Of course not – this is Gandhi we’re talking about, heir to Thoreau and the forerunner of Martin Luther King.

There were scattered incidents of anger among Indians, but the vast majority of violence was done by the British state.

Gandhi and the Congress leadership were immediately locked up for the rest of the war, and tens of thousands more arrests soon followed.

Was Quit India successful?

Yes and no (as ever). For the Congress Party, having their leadership in jail for three decisive years saw them lose ground to rivals in the independence struggle, especially those in favour of a sectarian partition of the sub-continent.

But Quit India guaranteed full independence from Britain, instead of some unwanted middle-ground.

It wasn’t achieved immediately, but just two years after WW2 India was independent, and three years after that it was a Republic.

“Not yet” became right now.

Key years in India's fight for independence:

• September 1939: Britain and India enter WW2
• October 1939: Indian National Congress condemns German aggression and offers conditional support for the Allied war effort
• March 1942: Cripps Mission to India
• 8 August 1942: Gandhi’s ‘Do or Die’ speech launches the Quit India Movement | Gandhi and Congress leadership immediately arrested
• 1944: Gandhi released from prison
• August 1945: End of WW2
• 15 August 1947: India and Pakistan become independent
• 26 January 1950: India becomes a Republic