Why did Mohandas Gandhi campaign so strongly for Indian independence from the British Empire, at a time when Japan was threatening the country's borders during World War II? What choices did he have, what support and advice did he receive, and how did his decisions affect history and his legacy? This book looks at a controversial event from modern history, showing why one of the world's most famous leaders chose a particular course of action.
Gandhi's Quit India Movement of 1942 was the climax of a nationalist revolutionary movement which sought independence on India's own terms. Indian independence was attained through revolution, not through a benevolent grant from the British imperial regime. "The British left India because Indians had made it impossible for them to stay." The bases for Francis Hutchins' thesis are new facts from hitherto unused sources: interviews with surviving participants in the movement, private papers from the Gandhi Memorial Museum and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, documents in the National Archives of India. In particular, he has studied the secret records of the British government, recently made available, which reveal for the first time the extent of the revolutionary movement and Britain's plans for dealing with it. Of the British records Hutchins says, "No other regime has left such careful documentation of its strategies or compiled such extensive records revealing the way in which it was overthrown." Even though England had always proclaimed its hope that India would one day become independent, the tacit assumption was that this was a remote eventuality. Only after Gandhi's Quit India Movement did Britain's political parties resign themselves to the necessity to leave quickly, whether or not they believed India was "ready." Obscured by censorship in India and by preoccupation with World War II, the significance of Gandhi's revolutionary technique was not appreciated at the time. Hutchins' impressive analysis uses the Indian case to develop a general theory of the revolutionary nature of colonial nationalism.
This book is a compilation of multi-disciplinary research papers on the various aspects of ‘Quit India to Free India and Free India to New India’, presented and discussed at the National Seminar on ‘From Quit India to New India: History & Society’, organized by Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur in collaboration with Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi. Topics of collected research papers range widely over time, from historical perspectives of Quit India Movement launched by Mahatam Gandhi in 1942 to the contemporary challenges of 21st century to make a ‘New India’ announced by Prime Minister Shri -Narender Modi in 2018, as well as political, cultural, social, economic studies of pre- and post-independent India. Taken together, to reaffirm the commitment towards ‘New India’ and to mark the 75th anniversary of Quit India Movement, studies presented in the book complement each other to provide a succinct overview of many of the key themes of historical and contemporary research on Indian history and society.
Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi is a magisterial account of the pains, struggles, humiliations and glories of the world’s largest and least likely democracy. A riveting chronicle of the often brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation, and of the extraordinary individuals and institutions who held it together, it established itself as a classic when it was first published in 2007. In the last decade, India has witnessed, among other things, two general elections; the fall of the Congress and the rise of Narendra Modi; a major anti-corruption movement; more violence against women, Dalits, and religious minorities; a wave of prosperity for some but the persistence of poverty for others; comparative peace in Nagaland but greater discontent in Kashmir than ever before. This tenth anniversary edition, updated and expanded, brings the narrative up to the present. Published to coincide with seventy years of the country’s independence, this definitive history of modern India is the work of one of the world’s finest scholars at the height of his powers.
