Gandhi Arrested: Quit India Movement Erupts

British authorities arrested Mahatma Gandhi at dawn in Bombay on August 9, 1942, triggering the largest mass uprising in India since the Rebellion of 1857. The arrest came just hours after the All-India Congress Committee passed the "Quit India" resolution demanding an immediate end to British rule. Gandhi's instructions to the Indian people — "Do or Die" — launched a movement that proved impossible to fully suppress despite two years of martial law, mass arrests, and military force. The timing of the resolution reflected wartime desperation. Japan had conquered Burma and was threatening India's eastern border. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 had shattered the myth of British imperial invincibility, and many Indians questioned why they should sacrifice for an empire that denied them self-governance. Gandhi argued that a free India would be a more effective ally against Japan than a colonized one. The British, fighting for their survival against the Axis powers, saw the movement as a betrayal during wartime. The crackdown was swift and brutal. Within hours of Gandhi's arrest, the entire Congress leadership was imprisoned. Authorities banned the Congress party, censored the press, and deployed troops to suppress demonstrations. Without centralized leadership, the movement became spontaneous and widespread: workers went on strike, students boycotted schools, peasants refused to pay taxes, and saboteurs cut telegraph lines and damaged railway tracks. The British arrested over 100,000 people and killed an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 civilians in suppressing the uprising. Gandhi was imprisoned at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, where his wife Kasturba and his secretary Mahadev Desai both died during confinement. He was not released until May 1944. The Quit India movement failed to achieve immediate independence, but it demonstrated that British control over India depended on a level of coercion the empire could no longer sustain. Within five years, Britain withdrew, and India became independent on August 15, 1947.