Quit India: Racial Tone Of A Crowd Puller & Its Subsequent Refinement

The phrase "Quit India" was first coined in 1942 by Yusuf Meherally, a fiery socialist leader and then Mayor of Bombay. He had a flair for airing captive slogans. In 1928 he founded Bombay Youth League which was formed with a view to organize protests against British rule. Another leader of the league was K. F. Nariman. Simon  Commission was appointed in 1927, and it was officially known as Indian Statutory Commission. Its job was  to review the Government of India Act of 1919. When the Commission was constituted it did not have any Indian representation.  It had seven British members chaired by Sir John Simon. It came to India in 1928. At the time of their arrival there was wide protests against this exclusion of Indians from the commission. Their feelings were reflected in the slogan, "Simon Go Back" coined by Yusuf Meherally.

The sections of people hurt by the slogan: Quit India 

The slogan hurt British people, but it hurt more, a major section of the Indian people who were the subjects of the British India. These sections were against British leaving India.  Upper caste hegemony was rampant even in institutions of British India.  The number of civil and military establishment were crowded with upper caste Indians. They have their own caste ridden laws of pollution with which they bound themselves and the world around them.  Take, for example the case of Choorayi Kanaran.  He was a member of thiyya caste. He was appointed as deputy collector at Thalassery office. He was the product of universal education initiated by East India Company and later continued by British government.  But his upper caste colleagues have the audacity to refuse him a chair and table, and was forced to sit on the floor of the office. When the District collector Henry Valentine Conolly visited the office this abuse came to his notice, and he took measures to see that Kanaran got his table and chair.  The idea of pollution had been there in the stratified British society as we see it in the character of Lady Cathrine in the Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, but the cruel practice of untouchability was not prevalent there.

Muslim League 

Politically, the slogan was not endorsed by Muslim League. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the most vocal opponent.  Jinnah called the movement, "ill-timed and ill-conceived." He termed it a Hindu majority call, that ignored Muslim political aspirations.  He feared British withdrawal before resolving the communal question would lead to Hindu domination. "Divide and quit" was the slogan advanced by him.

The Communist Party of India 

The Communist Party of India opposed it when the Nazi Germany invaded Soviet Union. British were now allied with the Soviet Union and the Second World War turned to a People's war for CPI. They termed "Quit India" movement "fascist- friendly sabotage." and urged cooperation with the British until Hitler was defeated.

Hindu Mahasabha

Initially it worked as a pressure group within Indian National Congress. Later it became a political party, and posed to work for the eradication of caste system. But this posture was only a tactic to widen its political base in a parliamentary democracy. The organisation had generally opposed fundamental social reforms like caste-based reservations that would significantly alter the traditional power structures.

Hindu Mahasabha was against the movement as it saw the movement chaotic and harmful to Hindu interests.  Savarkar argued that British army should be supported during wartime lest Japan invade India.  Shyama Prasad Mukherjee even joined provincial governments that cooperated with the British during the repression of the movement. Opposition to British leaving India on the part of Hindu Mahasabha was not ideological, but fear of loss of power, because they sat next to British in the high echelons of power [1]

There were reasons for this upper caste dominance. They had early access to Western education and economic resources, which were crucial to qualifying for administrative services.  Civil Services examinations were initially conducted exclusively in London, making it difficult and expensive for most Indians, especially for those who were coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In certain regions, such as Madras and Bombay presidencies and Bengal, Brahmins and Kayasthas effectively monopolized government jobs. For example, in 1912 in Madras, male Brahmins held over 83 % of all sub-judges' positions, despite being small minority of the population. 

Most Indian princes opposed the movement and the slogan.  Their power and privileges were guaranteed by the British, so that they resisted any agitation that threatened imperial authority and stability.  Several princely states actively repressed Quit India sympathisers and forbade political meetings.

Business and industrial leaders were cautious though G.D. Birla and Walchand Hirachand were sympathetic to Congress.  They feared that a total breakdown of law and order would damage India's growing industries. Some privately advised moderation and favoured a path of negotiations. A minority of older or moderate Congress leaders including C. Rajagopalachari and Rajendra Prasad expressed doubts. Initially Jawaharlal Nehru also was sceptical. Rajagopalachari warmed that immediate withdrawal of British would lead to anarchy.  However, after the resolution was passed most moderates fell in line behind Gandhi.

Many Anglo-Indians and Christian missions groups were deeply wary of Quit India slogan. They feared that a hasty British exit might lead to majoritarian dominance or loss of educational and institutional safeguards they had been enjoying.

The response of the backward castes and scheduled castes to the Quit India movement was divided, complex, and regionally varied.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar who was a member of Viceroy's Executive Council, and who was later to become the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, opposed the Quit India movement.

His reasons were social.

Ambedkar believed that the movement was led by upper caste Hindu elites who did not represent the interests of the scheduled castes. He feared that the British withdrawal, without constitutional safeguards, would lead to upper caste domination of scheduled and other backward castes.  In his 1943 book, "Mr Gandhi and the Emancipation of the Untouchables," he wrote that Gandhi's politics aimed at political freedom first, not social equality, and this sequence would perpetuate caste hierarchy. Ambedkar remarked that for the Depressed Classes, political power in the hands of high-caste Hindus will be as bad as under the British.

Thus, Ambedkar supported constitutional reform within the British framework over mass agitation.

Ambedkar's political party Schedule Caste Federation, founded in 1942, officially abstained from Quit India movement, and refused to join Congress campaign. It focused on securing seperate political representation, reservation in government employment, social uplift, which they believed Congress ignored.

Backward castes were not a monolithic body. Castes lived in islands of xenophobia, and each of them had rules and rituals of pollution. The concept of Other Backward Castes was not officially crystalised. The term itself was of post independence origin.

There was a demand by Indian National Congress to conduct civil services examination in India along with London.  The Dalit organisations opposed it, fearing that upper caste Hindus would dominate it completely.

Thus, a symbiotic relationship often formed where the British maintained overall control, while upper caste Indians served as crucial intermediaries in the administrative machinery, effectively sitting alongside the British in positions of power.

Region-wise Participation 

In parts of Maharashtra and the Deccan, non-Brahmin movements inspired by Jotirao Phule and Shahu Maharaj were sceptical of the Congress, viewing it as Brahminical.

Some local leaders cooperated with the British or remained aloof.

In North India, particularly in Bihar and U.P. sections of Yadav, Kurmis and Koeris, influenced by Socialist leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia participated energetically in underground resistance.

In Tamilnadu (Madras), Justice Party, representing non-Brahmin castes opposed Quit India describing it as a Brahmin Movement.

So, backward castes' participation was split along ideological and regional lines.

Grass root participation: Economic, Not ideological 

Among poor peasants and farm workers ( mainly scheduled castes and backward castes) participation often took the form of economic protest rather than political ideology: 

° In Bihar, Bengal, and parts of U P, the rural uprisings that followed the Quit India call had large participation from the depressed classes, but as class revolts, and not nationalist movement.

° British intelligence reports noted that many of the participants were landless farm workers reacting to the authority of landlords rather than Raj.

Gandhi's view of Dalit Non-Participation

Gandhi was deeply aware - and somewhat pained that the scheduled castes had not joined Quit India wholeheartedly. In his 1943 correspondence, he wrote, "Our Harijan brothers have yet to feel that freedom means the end of their  slavery to caste." He saw their distance as a moral reminder that India's freedom must include the freedom of the oppressed. 

Quit India was a national call, but not an inclusive one.  The Scheduled castes and backward communities saw it as a freedom for the privileged.

Malabar, Cochin and Travancore presented a different scenario. The area here had already undergone a century of social reform, led by Sri Narayana Guru, Dr. Palpu and Kumaran Asan.  Their focus had been education and occupational mobility, rather than militant nationalism. They viewed the upper caste dominated Indian National Congress with skepticism. 

Malabar was directly under British rule, unlike princely Travancore and Cochin. Quit India movement there saw sporadic violence, especially in Calicut, Tellicherry and Ponnani. Thiyya community, because of the universal education brought in by the British had a mixed response towards Quit India movement.  In Travancore, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Sangham (SNDP) did not endorse the Quit India movement.

Racial Undertone of the Slogan 

The slogan's grammatical form - a direct imperative - was linguistically simple, but psychologically charged. It contained an implied racial address, "You the British leave our land." This was quite different from  Gandhi's preferred vocabulary of Swaraj ( self rule), and ahimsa (non-violence), which stressed inner discipline rather than outer expulsion.  Yet Gandhi, sensing the unity and fervour it could generate, adopted Quit India, without modifying its tone.  When he addressed the All India Congress Committee on 8th August 1942 in Bombay, he proclaimed, "Leave India to God. If this is too much, leave her to anarchy.  We shall not be satisfied with anything short of freedom."  He quickly qualified this by saying, "Our quarrel is not with the British people, but with imperialism." However, the clarification was drowned in the thunder of the slogan. In the public ear, Quit India sounded racial, not spiritual.

The movement was brutally supressed; for nearly two years Gandhi was confined in the Aga Khan Palace at Poona.  There he began to reflect deeply on its moral consequences.  The violence and reprisals that followed, disturbed him; they seemed to contradict his creed of ahimsa.

In letters written from prison, Gandhi's tone shifted from defiance to introspection. Writing to Lord Linlithgow in early 1944, he insisted: 

"I have no desire to harm England or her people.  I would have her withdraw with honour and continue as a friend of India.

The moral weight of Quit India began to change in his mind.  Quit no longer meant abandon or flee; it came to mean renounce domination.  In Harijan he wrote: 

"The end of British rule does not mean the end of British friendship."

The shift reveals Gandhi's self correction: he recognised that a slogan born of youthful anger needed to be transfigured into a message of universal goodwill. He was, in effect, neutralizing the racial tension implicit in Meherally's original phrasing.

The end of Second World War and Labour Party's victory in Britain reopened the question of Indian independence.  Gandhi, older and more reflective, used his influence not to rekindle agitation, but to pronounce reconciliation.  In Harijan, 

(30 Match, 1946) he wrote:

If the English remain in India as friends, they will find us truest friends they ever had."

This statement marked Gandhi's most direct reversal of Quit India. The slogan that had begun as a command to leave was now transformed into an invitation to stay- but as equals.

The final stage of Gandhi's redefinition came with the transfer of power in 1947. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, arrived in India to oversee independence.  Many leaders viewed him with suspicion, but Gandhi saw an opportunity to dramatise moral continuity, rather than rupture.

In April 1947 Gandhi astonished Mountbatten by saying: 

"You would be the best person to be first Governor-General of free India."

This extraordinary proposal was the symbolic culmination of Gandhi's reinterpretation Quit India.

Notes:-

1. Examples of upper caste hegemony in ICS.

° Satyendranath Tagore: The first Indian to successfully qualify for and join the Indian Civil Services in 1863. He was from the Brahmin Tagore family of Bengal. He served as judge in Satara.

° Ramesh Chandra Dutt:  A distinguished ICS officer who joined in 1871, and officially became a Officiating Commissioner of Bihar. He was a prominent economic historian and a member of Bengali Bhadralok ( Upper caste elite).

° Surendra Nath Banerjee: An ICS officer of 1869 batch.  He went on to become a major figure in the Indian Nationalist movement, and later served as minister in the Bengal provincial government.

° Mahadev Gobind Ranade: A renowned social reformer and a judge within the British Judicial system, he came from Chitpavan Brahmin background.

• Krishna Govinda Gupta: An 1873 batch ICS officer. He became a comissioner in Bengal and a member of Secretary of States Council in U.K.

• Sir C. V. Raman: Though a scientist, his older brother was an ICS officer. They belong to Tamil Brahmin community. 

• Sri Bengal Narsing Rau: an ICS officer who held several prominent positions including the Prime Minister of Kashmir. He was a member of Drafting Committee of the Constitution, and came from an educated upper caste community.

C. D. Deshmukh: A first rank holder of 1918 batch ICS. Became the first Indian Governor of Reserve Bank of India, and later India's Finane Minister.

These individuals were mainly from Brahmin, Kayastha and Kshatriya communities, who had established traditions of literacy and had 

early access to Western education brought and provided by the British, allowing them to dominate administrative roles in the British government.  The list given above is not exhaustive. The actual number was much larger. British administration in India was extensive, with thousands of gazetted officer positions at imperial and provincial levels. Upper caste Indians filled a large majority of positions available to "natives".

In areas like United Provinces, the 1931 census showed that Kayasthas and Brahmins had significantly higher literacy rates than the other groups, which translated direct into administrative appointments.