Mahatma Gandhi: Quit India Speech

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Quit India Speech is one of Gandhi's longest addresses. He delivered it first in Hindi and then in a shortened English version. The document reproduced here is a translation of the full Hindi text. The speech was the second made by Gandhi during the two-day All India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay. The earlier speech was given on August 7, before the AICC's endorsement of the Quit India Resolution. The speeches of August 7 and August 8 complement each other in content; both are passionate pleas for initiating the largest civil-disobedience movement in Indian history. In the first speech, Gandhi expressed his faith in nonviolent resistance, while barely touching upon issues such as the separatist politics of Hindu extremists or Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Instead, he emphasized the need for religious unity in order to foster true democracy, “the like of which has not been so witnessed” (Mahatma Gandhi, p. 380).

Paragraphs 1–21

Gandhi begins his speech of August 8 by congratulating the committee for its approval of the Quit India Resolution. He then also congratulates those thirteen members who had voted against the resolution. In his earlier speech on August 7, Gandhi had appealed to committee members to vote in favor of the resolution only if they believed in its truthfulness. He had also warned them that in case of the resolution's failure he was not prepared at his advanced age to remain leader of the Congress. In the opening paragraphs of the speech of August 8, Gandhi also names Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Jawaharlal Nehru, two Congress leaders who had questioned the timing of the Quit India Movement and had agreed to launch it only after much persuasion from Gandhi. By mentioning their names, Gandhi publicly conveys their consent.

After addressing internal voices of dissent, Gandhi turns to India's Muslim community. Jinnah had recently emerged as the chief spokesman for India's Muslims, and the Muslim League under Jinnah opposed joining with the Congress in any mass movement against colonial rule, particularly since the British Government had been wooing the league since 1940. (Gandhi uses the word Mussalman, an antique usage for “Muslim.”) Jinnah believed that the Muslim League should be recognized as the only representative of the Muslim community and be treated at par with the Congress in any negotiation for the transfer of authority from the Crown to Indian subjects. Gandhi viewed Muslim participation in the movement as essential to its success, and it was imperative for him to counter Jinnah's growing popularity as well as the two-nation theory, which held that Hindus and Muslims constituted two distinct religious and cultural groups. With his reference to Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali, brothers who had been prominent Muslim activists and allies of the Congress, Gandhi recalls the joint Hindu/Muslim movements of the early 1920s as the golden moment of interfaith unity, when Muslim leaders had worked hand in hand with the Congress.

Gandhi perceived religious and cultural conflict as arising from the fundamentalist Hindu Mahasabha organization as well as Jinnah's separatist faction within the Muslim League. Neither Mahasabha nor the Muslim League officially supported a united front involving all Indians. Gandhi criticizes two important Hindu fundamentalist leaders—Dr. B. S. Moonje and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the latter an ideologue who advocated forming an exclusively Hindu nation—for their opposition to the Quit India Resolution as well as their promotion of hatred and violence toward other religious communities. Despite these reservations, Gandhi insists that “freedom cannot now wait for the realization of communal unity” (paragraph 16). He had always considered conflicts about religious faith and caste to be internal issues, though he never would have wanted the price of political freedom to include religious strife. Therefore, Gandhi eagerly appeals here to Hindus and Muslims to unite in the fight for India's freedom and not pay much heed to demands for a separate Muslim state. Gandhi's statement that “the Congress must win freedom or be wiped out in the effort” (paragraph 16) reflects his determination as well as his growing anxiety over Jinnah's rise to power.

Gandhi then briefly alludes to the possibility of a Japanese attack on India. Here his disappointment with British rule is palpable. His close disciple, Mirabehn, born Madeleine Slade, had been traveling in the state of Orissa in eastern India and personally confirmed reports that British authorities were destroying Indian-owned boats. Gandhi was well aware of popular anger about repressive British wartime measures, which made his call for mass action all the more urgent: “If today I sit quiet and inactive, God will take me to task” (paragraph 21).

Paragraphs 22–35

After again invoking the need for united immediate action, Gandhi shifts to his time-tested method of inviting the British government to respond to his demands first. He thus makes clear that the Quit India Movement has not yet begun. Gandhi preferred to wait for the viceroy's response to the demands, and by his calculation that meant a window of two to three weeks. This was important because Gandhi launched civil-disobedience movements only after careful planning. This organizational drill was still necessary, even though the Quit India Resolution had been issued three weeks earlier and the proposed movement had already attracted considerable buzz.

As a preparatory measure in anticipation of the movement, Gandhi had prepared detailed instructions for civil resisters and presented them for consideration by the Congress Working Committee. The committee discussed these instructions on August 8, 1942, and approval was expected on August 9. Because of the arrest of Gandhi and all of the Congress's committee members on the morning of August 9, further discussion of the instructions and their approval was postponed indefinitely. Gandhi's instructions were meant to provide a discipline for resisters and thus ensure the movement's nonviolent character. Gandhi conceived of the movement as including a series of fasts, passive resistance to British coercive measures, and persuasion of movement nonsupporters to reconsider their political stance. On the day of a hartal, or national strike, no processions or meetings were to take place. Along with these instructions, Gandhi also encouraged people to follow a constructive program, aspects of which he describes in his speech. This program included efforts toward religious unity, the prohibition of intoxicants, and the propagation of homespun cotton cloth known as khaddar or khadi. It also advocated removal of “untouchability,” a reference to the Indian caste system that relegated—and continues to relegate—millions of poor Indians to the lowest rung on the social order and subjects them to discrimination and violence entirely because of their birth.

While Gandhi asks his listeners to wait for Viceroy Linlithgow's response and to meanwhile follow the constructive program, he also encourages them to consider themselves free men and women. Gandhi viewed the opposites of freedom and servitude as the outcome of a mental compromise between the ruler and the ruled. For this reason, he urges all Indians to break free from the mindset of British rule and remain “no longer under the heel of this imperialism” (paragraph 22). Gandhi was determined to translate this mental freedom into political reality. He announces that he will not be “satisfied with anything short of complete freedom” (paragraph 24).

Gandhi had no illusion about how daunting the movement would be or how long it might last, despite his insistence that Indians should already view themselves as free. Unlike during earlier civil-disobedience movements, he asks that his followers neither fill the prisons nor leave their occupations. Instead, he instructs different social groups on courses of action they ought to follow. In these instructions the core principles remained truth and nonviolence. These instructions were doomed to be misinterpreted and ignored, once British authorities had arrested all Congress Party committee members at the central, provincial, and district levels during the months following the speech.