Sardar Patel wanted to launch the Quit India movement earlier
If Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had his way,
the Quit India movement would have been launched weeks before
August 9, 1942.
Of all the Congress Working Committee members, Patel extended
maximum support to Mahatma Gandhi's call for Quit
India against the British. He strongly upheld Gandhi's 'do or die' slogan to the countrymen
in the thick of the second World War and castigated the Communists for
joining hands with the colonial government in the war efforts.
T Wickeden, a judge in the Central Provinces, who wrote the famous
report on the Quit India movement, summed up that Patel thought a
movement could have been launched immediately after the departure
of the Cripps Mission. This would be the most fitting expression of what the
country thought of the proposals which had no takers among the
national leadership.
Wickeden described Patel's attitude as 'anti-fascist and
bitterly opposed to continuance of British rule.'
The role of the 'Iron man' in the decisive phase of India's
freedom struggle, building up to the historic Quit India movement
(May 1940 to December 1942) has been chronicled in the Collected
works of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Volume IX), edited by Dr P N
Chopra.
This is the latest of the 15-volume series on Patel,
planned by the author, and is to be followed by a two-volume
biography of the great leader.
Delineating Wickenden's assessment of Patel, the book says while
mobilising the people in Ahmedabad for the movement, the
Sardar 'encouraged' them towards violence while expecting the Congressmen to observe nonviolence.
Presiding over a meeting of the Gujarat Congress Committee on
July 6, 1942, he said the campaign would include everything that
had been tried in previous campaigns. Significantly, he did not care to
whom power was handed over as long as Britain cleared out and said
it was better to die fighting for freedom than to die
after being completely ruined.
Referring to the 'Quit India' slogan, he said it could be
effective if four hundred million Indians asked one hundred thousand Englishmen to quit
India. He added that the Congress did not seek power for itself and
would be satisfied if it was handed over to the Muslim League.
Sardar Patel was named along with Jawaharlal Nehru by Giani Mehr
Singh as being present at the secret meeting of the working
committee at which the sabotage was decided upon.
According to Jai Chand Vidyalankar, Patel had dictated the
sabotage programme an hour or so before his arrest and the
arrangements for dissemination were made through a Gujarat worker.
Though Mahatma Gandhi was aware the movement might take the form
it did, it was actually started in that form by Patel who was in
favour of open rebellion, says the book.
Referring to the Communists' slogan about the 'people's war',
the Sardar said it was suitable for Russia. "How can
India call it a people's war?' he asked. Patel favoured India's
participation in war only after attainment of Independence and
disbandment of Congress.
''Between slavery and lawlessness, we shall have to choose
lawlessness. Even after lawlessness, Independent India will emerge.
But if India chooses slavery, it will not be able to rise
forever,'' Sardar Patel told journalists in Ahmedabad on July 28
while putting forth the programme of the movement.
Three days later, addressing a private meeting of Congress
leaders, he said the programme would include the 'no-tax' campaign,
national strikes, breach of salt laws, disobedience of government
orders and defiance of all government authority.
Patel told AICC delegates a day before the movement was formally
launched about British betrayal and untrustworthy character of the
Japanese which had brought the country to the brink.
The official resolution of the Congress Working Committee, demanding
withdrawal of British power from India and vesting leadership
in Gandhi to conduct a mass movement in case this demand was not
accepted by the British was moved before the AICC in its
August 7 session.
Seconding the resolution, Patel proclaimed that if America and
Britain were thinking that they could fight their enemies from
India without the cooperation of her people, they were being
foolish.
In the same vein, he warned against putting faith in Japan about
her intention regarding India. From her acts in Manchuria, China
and elsewhere, it was clear that Japan was following the same
ambition of empire-building as the British and even outdoing them.
''The movement will not be confined to the Congress only, it will
take in all men who call themselves Indians. It will also include
all items of nonviolent resistance, already sanctioned by the
Congress, and probably more,'' the Sardar thundered.
The Quit India resolution which Patel wanted the Congress
Working Committee to pass at Wardha in July in spite of Nehru's
opposition, was finally passed at the Bombay session of the AICC on
August 8, 1942.
Patel, along with other Working Committee members was detained
under the defence of India rules the next day and lodged in
Ahmednagar fort as the movement engulfed the nation.
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