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Leave India to God… or to Anarchy

"Leave India to God… or to Anarchy"

The Congress called off the Civil Disobedience movement in 1934 by which time the movement had run out of steam. In June the same year the government lifted the ban on the Congress.
In the 1937 elections held under the 1935 Act the Congress swept the polls in 9 provinces. In July the Congress ministries assumed office in Madras, Bombay, Central Provinces, Orissa, Bihar and the United Provinces. Later it formed ministries in Assam and the North-west Frontier Province. However, it did not do well in Muslim constituencies. It contested 56 out of 482 Muslim seats and won only 28. The Muslim League which claimed to represent Muslim interests did not fare well either. It obtained only 4.8 per cent of the Muslim vote, winning only 43 out of 272 Muslim seats in the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, Sind, North-west Frontier and Bengal.
The Congress refused to recognise the Muslim League as the sole custodian of Muslim interests and maintained that the Congress represented the whole nation and all its people regardless of their religious affiliations.
However, M.A. Jinnah, who after the 1937 elections had brought various regional Muslim groups under the Muslim League banner strongly contested the Congress claim to represent the whole country and said that Hindus and Muslims were two nations.
Inspite of the bickering between the Congress and the Muslim League the formation of popular ministries electrified the nation. "…There was a release of long-suppressed mass energy which was evident everywhere…" Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in Discovery of India. "…hordes of people, from the city and the village entered these sacred precincts (headquarters of the provincial governments) and roamed about almost at will. They were interested in anything; they went into the Assembly chambers where the sessions used to be held; they even peeped into ministers' rooms. It was difficult to stop them for they no longer felt as outsiders; they had a sense of ownership…"
The people had tasted power and there was no going back on Purna Swaraj. The question of the independence of India assumed importance when the Second World War broke out in 1939. Britain committed India to the war on its side without consulting Indian leaders. The Congress held that Indians should decide whether they wanted to be in the war or not.


Could Indians fight for others while they themselves were not free?
The Viceroy gave vague assurances for the future which did not satisfy anyone. The Congress disassociated itself from the war efforts and the Congress ministries in the provinces resigned.
Gandhiji launched the individual satyagraha to press for freedom to speak out against the war. Acharya Vinoba Bhave was the first one to court arrest, on 21 October 1940, followed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Rajagopalachari and hundreds of Congress volunteers.
Subhas Chandra Bose was arrested for expressing the view that India would gain if Britain were defeated in the war.
Bose who had been elected president of the Congress for a second term in 1939 and had shortly afterwards resigned because of differences with senior Congress leaders, was convinced that Britain could be dislodged from India only by force of arms. When he was released from prison due to ill-health, he felt the time had come to put his plans into action and left the country.
In 1941, the war-time Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt of America, issued a joint statement which came to be known as the Atlantic Charter. Article III of the Charter stated that England and America respect the "right of people to choose the form of government under which they will live" and that they wanted "sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them".
These were the sort of assurances India wanted in exchange for her help in the war but they were not forthcoming. Churchill made it clear that the charter applied only to Europe.
On 7 December, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. In the next few days they bombed Singapore and occupied Malaya and Thailand and suddenly, the war which had till then seemed far away, confined to Europe and North Africa, was at India's door- step.
At America's insistence Britain once again tried to get the support of Congress for the war. Sir Stafford Cripps arrived in India in March 1942 with fresh proposals but Gandhiji was not impressed. He called the proposals "a post-dated cheque". To which a reporter added "…on a bank that is failing."
Even Englishmen friendly to India were confused. They could not understand why India was adamant in refusing to support Britain when her own security was threatened by the expansionist aims of the Japanese.
But Gandhiji was convinced that India could work out her own solution to the Japanese threat. He called upon British troops to withdraw from India. In a terse statement, Gandhiji told Britain: "Leave India to God — or to anarchy."

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