Dr. R.C. Mazumdar strikes the hardest blow at the biggest myth of the independence story, the Quit India movement, which did not do much for Indian independence. It all but collapsed within a few months. The reasons for Indian independence were due to the many factors that played out between 1942 and 1947. Subhash Bose, the INA, the Red Fort Trials, the naval mutiny of Bombay, the labour government in the UK, and the financial issues of post-war Britain were arguably the more important reasons for Indian independence.

The 1942 Quit India Movement

Mazumdar starts by saying that it is necessary at the very outset to remove two great misconceptions regarding the outbreak of 1942. The first, namely, that it was predominantly non-violent, will not bear a moment’s scrutiny in the face of the detail. Gandhi himself, Nehru, Azad, Patel, and the official history of the Congress all admitted this patent fact.
According to Patel:

“one had to face reality, and India switched over from a non-violent to a violent attempt to regain independence.”

If the outbreak of 1942 is a specimen of a ‘predominantly non-violent form of satyagraha’, then this phrase must mean something very different from what Gandhi himself understood by it. Indeed, the movement called forth on more than one occasion the true spirit of non-violent satyagraha, when people, young and old, gave a display of cool, sublime courage by calmly facing the bullets with the national flag in their hands and the revolutionary cries on their lips. It proved that the spirit of 1930 was not yet dead, but to call the movement of 1942 a non-violent movement in any sense is nothing but a perversion of truth or a travesty of facts.

Secondly, credit is given to Gandhi for conducting this glorious revolution, which led us to our goal of freedom. Both assumptions are opposed to facts. It is well known, and the Congress was the first to admit it, that the movement collapsed in two months, and India had to wait for five more years before it achieved freedom under very different circumstances. Similarly, far from claiming any credit for the achievements of 1942, both Gandhi and the Congress offered an apology and explanation for the ‘madness’ that seized the people participating in it.

Jayaprakash Narayan most emphatically asserts:

“to fasten the August programme on Gandhiji is a piece of perjury of which only the British ruling class can be capable.”

The correspondence between Gandhi and the Government of India is conclusive on this point. We may next consider the question of whether, and if so, how far, the Congress was responsible for the outbreak of 1942. It has been argued that the Congress leaders could not be held responsible for the violent outbreaks that broke out after they were all behind prison bars. It was, however, pointed out by the government that during the period between the Working Committee’s resolution on July 14 and the meeting of the A.L.C.C. at Bombay on August 8, the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, Nehru, and Patel, indicated in public speeches the nature of the coming struggle, and laid special emphasis on two points.

First, it was the final struggle for freedom that ‘would kindle a fire all over the country, which would only be extinguished after either achieving it or wiping out Congress’s organisation altogether’. The people — everyone, and not merely Satyagrahis as in 1930 — must therefore respond to this desperate campaign in a spirit of ‘do or die’. The second was the insistence with which almost all speakers urged that every man should be prepared and willing to act on his own initiative. In view of such speeches, the government argued, not without some reason, that the Congress leaders could not altogether be absolved of responsibility for the outbreak of 1942.

But in all fairness, the responsibility — or credit — cannot be said, on such evidence alone, to extend beyond the creation of a mental state or excitement easily leading the mass to a violent outbreak, though the leaders never ceased to emphasise the non-violent character of the movement they had in view. The utterances of Congress leaders also largely support the view that the outbreak was a spontaneous popular reaction to the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders and not a premeditated course of rebellion.

In reply to such a suggestion,

“the government spokesman in the Central Assembly pointed out that the disorders had begun simultaneously at widely separated points, that the worst trouble had been located in a vital strategic area, that expert technical knowledge had been displayed and special tools used in the assault on communications, and that discrimination had been shown in the conduct of sabotage from which, for instance, the plant and machinery of private industrialists were exempted, all of which seemed to be evidence of design and preparation.”

These revelations also much weaken the plea, urged on behalf of the Congress, that the violent items of the campaign would not have come into operation but for the terrorism of the government. In support of this view, it is pointed out that the popular reaction to the arrest of Gandhi and other leaders was very mild on the 9^th and 10^th and assumed a violent character only on the 11^th after the government had broken up peaceful processions by lathi charge and firing.

Nehru clearly expressed this view, and this was the view in the official history of the Congress. But the view was by no means confined to the Congressmen or even the Indians. Horace Alexander, a well-known British journalist who toured India during the period, also says that it was the “repression let loose by the police that goaded violent fury from crowds that had intended to act quite peacefully.”

Gandhi himself wrote to Lord Linlithgow that it was the ‘leonine violence’ that goaded the people to acts of violence. Such a view seems to be incompatible with the elaborate plans and preparations for violent acts like disruption of communications and sabotage of industrial works. It is idle to contend that these items would not have been conducted but for the terrorism of the government.

Special attention may be drawn in this connection to a document secretly circulated by the Andhra Provincial Congress Committee. It was headed with Gandhi’s slogan, Do or Die, and it outlined a plan of action to be developed in successive stages, the fifth of which was to include the cutting of telephone and telegraph wires, the removal of rails, and the demolition of bridges. Other items in the programme were ‘to impede the war efforts of the government’ and ‘to run a parallel government in competition with the British Government.’ It is significant that all these were the characteristic features of the 1942 movement throughout the country.

The truth of these instructions, as well as the statement of the government quoted above regarding preparations to carry them out, has been challenged as they emanate from official sources. But we have corroboration of the same from unofficial sources as well. The Bihar Congress Committee had issued detailed instructions as to the course of action to be followed “after the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders,” and these conformed strictly to the Gandhian policy of non-violent Satyagraha.

But on August 11, seven students were killed by police firing while attempting to hoist the national flag on the Patna Secretariat building. On the 12th, a meeting held at the Congress Maidan under the chairmanship of a prominent member of the Congress resolved:

1) to destroy all communications by cutting railway lines, telegraph, and telephone wires, etc.; and

2) to take control of police stations, courts, jails, and other government institutions and to burn the records, etc. kept there. Activities along these lines began on an extensive scale, spontaneously and immediately.

The word ‘spontaneously’ obviously means ‘without any direct and definite instructions from the Congress. But it is difficult to understand how on that very evening “telegraph and telephone wires were cut at many places and telephone posts were uprooted” without some previous direction (like the Andhra document), organisation, training, and equipment.

This was followed by another Congress Circular, which began with the slogan ‘Do or Die’ and sketched a programme of fifteen items, including the following:

1) Railway lines should be uprooted, large bridges should be pulled down, and telegraph and telephone wires should be cut off! and roads too should be torn asunder.
2) Courts and Adalats, thanas, and post offices should be brought under possession and a tricolour flag hoisted on them.
3) The arms of the police and the military should be taken non-violently.
4) Always be non-violent.

To reconcile the first three of these items with the fourth may appear difficult to an ordinary mind, but a philosophical explanation has been provided by Jayaprakash Narayan. He observed, when taking up the leadership of the movement after escaping from prison:

“Dislocation is an infallible weapon for people under slavery… cutting wires, removing railway lines, blowing up bridges, stoppage of factory work, setting fire to oil tanks as well as to Thanas, destruction of government papers and files… all such activities come under dislocation, and it is perfectly right for people to carry out these.”

A review of these facts, to which others may be added, leaves no doubt that the violent acts in the 1942 movement cannot be explained as ‘insensate and mad acts of fury on the part of the people provoked by ruthless acts of the government,’ but were really due to the fact that whatever might have been its original character, the movement of 1942 shortly merged itself into the revolutionary or terrorist movement, which was always an active political force running on a parallel line with the non-violent policy of Gandhi.

How strong this revolutionary feeling was may be judged by the fact that even a powerful section of the Congress led by Jayaprakash Narayan openly repudiated the policy of Gandhi and preached the cult of violence and mass revolution — to fight Britain with arms — and regarded this course to be in accord with the Congress resolution of Bombay, though not with Gandhi’s principle. It is not difficult to visualise the rapid development of the course of events after August 1942.

The resentment at the arrest of Congress leaders, including Gandhi, and the absence of his restraining hand violently reacted to the amorphous groups of people who had no specific instructions to follow but were urged to pursue their individual inclinations. The revolutionary wing of the Congress and even its other members who adopted non-violence as a policy and not a creed became very lukewarm in support of it.

The professed revolutionaries must have taken full advantage of the situation. They had their own organisations and a ready technique of violence to be carried through different stages according to circumstances. Many of these revolutionaries must have already infiltrated the Congress camp. Horace Alexander tells us that “a section of younger Congressmen, some of whom were impatient with Gandhi’s delays and hesitations,” tried to procure arms and actually “set up bomb factories at several places.” We know that similar activities were executed by one or more groups that went underground after the government ruthlessly crushed the movement.

The one led by Jayaprakash was the most prominent among these underground organizations. The cult of violence preached by him and the specific acts to be done in accordance with it have been mentioned above. Leaflets carrying these instructions were issued and widely circulated throughout the country. There was a secret meeting of a small group at Sardar Griha in Bombay, and it was decided to work underground in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. Their programme was to procure arms and ammunition from non-British ports like Goa and Indian States where the Arms Act did not apply.

Factories for preparing bombs and other explosive materials were set up at Agra, Gwalior, Kanpur, etc. Nagpur supplied dynamite from its neighbouring mines. Efforts were made to get rifles and guns from the North-Western Frontier Province. Enterprising girls freely travelled from one place to another, hiding their arms and ammunition. The movement gained momentum after the escape of Jayaprakash Narayan and his colleagues from Hazaribagh jail in October 1942, when efforts were made to coordinate the activities in all the states.

Programmes were framed with some reorientation, and in a highly significant document entitled “The Freedom Struggle Front,” the socialist leaders unfolded their strategy.

“The training of workers, the issue of leaflets, newssheets, and slogans, the organisation of contacts, the raising of funds, frequent reviews of progress, and the issue of directions to the fighting line” were to be the urgent administrative problems of the Freedom Struggle Front.

The first circular issued under the signature of Jayaprakash Narayan, addressed to “All Fighters for Freedom,” justified the use of arms to fight the British in terms of the Bombay resolution. He laid stress on intensive propaganda work among the masses — peasants in villages, workers in factories, mines, railways, and elsewhere.

Then there was work to be done in the “Indian army and services in Native States and on the frontiers of India.” Jayaprakash’s other appeals were addressed to American officers and soldiers (to desist from shooting Indians), to students, to the peasants, and others. The Central Action Committee, consisting of Jayaprakash and some other leaders and a batch of students from Banaras Hindu University, met in Delhi to chalk out a programme of action for the whole of India.

Gandhiites such as Mrs. Sucheta Kripalani did not endorse the programme and kept out of the struggle. A separate code for sending and receiving information was formed. There was to be a dictator for each province, and in the case of larger provinces like Uttar Pradesh, districts were grouped into zones for each of which a dictator was appointed. Agra, Kanpur, and Banaras were the zones in Uttar Pradesh. Each dictator had a committee of action under him, and in the case of the arrest of a dictator, the seniormost member was to take his place. There were several departments, such as demonstration, propaganda, information, finance, intelligence, volunteering, village, school, college, dak, ambulance, etc., each in charge of a member of the committee.

Besides issuing the usual exhortatory pamphlets, some of which have been appended to the White Paper, and setting up provincial and zonal committees, minute technical instructions were circulated to help saboteurs destroy planes, tanks, locomotives, etc. with easily obtained substances and methods. There was a separate set of instructions for guerillas, and details about the training and equipment were given in these pamphlets. For the training of Azad Dastas, or guerilla bands, a center was set up outside the British territory at a place known as Bankro Ka Tapu.

Sardar Nityanand Singh of Bihar was the chief instructor at this center, while Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia took over the charge of the radio and publicity department. Among the revolutionary groups working in different parts of the country, Siaram Dal and Parasuram Dal in Bihar, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army in Uttar Pradesh, and Anusilan Samiti and Jugantar Group in Bengal were the most important ones. This gigantic revolutionary movement, which spread over almost all the provinces, however, soon lost its tempo, and by February 1943, it was over.

But though the 1942 movement in the open was practically crushed in less than a month and finally collapsed within two months, it would be a mistake to suppose that it was a dismal failure. The violent mass upsurge of 1942 left no doubt that freedom’s battle in India had begun in earnest. The individual, and in many instances, collective, heroism and bravery in the face of heavy odds, the readiness to suffer and sacrifice everything for the freedom of the motherland displayed by a very large number of people all over this vast country, and, above all, an enthusiastic response to the call of the Congress from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, were unerring signs of India’s grim determination to be free from the British yoke.

But this does not prove the oft-repeated claim that India won her freedom through the non-violent Satyagraha of Gandhi. The movement of 1942, the last rising of the people against the British Government, was not non-violent and was neither planned nor led by Gandhi.

To give him credit for it, after he had publicly disowned his responsibility for the whole movement, would be an indirect imputation of untruth and insincerity on his part — a charge that his worst critics would be the foremost to repudiate.

As far as India is concerned, the years 1942–43 mark the end of her struggle for freedom. The revolutionary movement, which had begun early in this century, as well as the non-violent Satyagraha, which Gandhi had launched in 1920, both ended almost simultaneously without achieving freedom. Curiously enough, the last battle for India’s freedom began almost immediately after, far beyond her frontier, and this also proved a failure in this respect. But it was out of these failures that success came in less than five years.

The Final Phase (1935–1947): Bose, the Second World War, the INA Trials, the Naval Mutiny, and a Depleted England

The Congress, with a majority of Hindus, swept the polls in elections held at the beginning of 1937. The Muslims wanted to form a coalition ministry with the Congress in each province, but the Congress refused to admit into the ministry anyone who did not subscribe to its creed. Jinnah, previously favourably disposed towards the Congress, now vehemently declares that “Muslims can expect neither justice nor fair play under the Congress Government.” Jinnah became the unquestioned leader of the Muslim community.

The Congress formed ministries in seven out of eleven provinces. With a successful administration, the Congress rapidly grew in popularity. But soon a “left-wing” developed in the Congress, and its great strength became manifest when its leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, defeated even Gandhiji’s nominee (Pattabhi Ramayya) for the Presidency. When the moderate section forced Subhas Bose to resign, he formed a new party, the “Forward Bloc”, and this open split weakened the power and prestige of the Congress.

The political situation was tranquil until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 when the Congress took exception to the fact that Britain had dragged India into the war without her consent. The Congress Committee asked the British Government to state whether their war aims included the elimination of imperialism and the treatment of India as a free nation. As no satisfactory reply was forthcoming, all the Congress ministries resigned in October–November 1939.

On August 8, 1940, the Viceroy made a statement in which he refused to concede to the National Government that “its authority is denied by large and powerful elements in India’s national life,” which obviously referred to the Muslims.
But he offered:

(1) to set up, after the war, a representative body to devise a new constitution for India;
(2) to enlarge the Viceroy’s Executive Council by nominating additional Indian members; and
(3) to appoint a “War Advisory Council” consisting of representatives of British India and Indian States.

The Congress not only rejected this offer but also launched in October 1940 an individual civil disobedience campaign under the leadership of Gandhi.

This deadlock continued for a year and a half. When the Japanese, after overrunning Malaya, were rapidly advancing in Burma, the British made a conciliatory gesture. On March 8, 1942, Rangoon fell, and at once Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the British Cabinet, came on a mission. He promised dominion status and a constitution-making body after the war was over but held out no hope of any immediate change in the government of India. The Congress as well as the Muslim League refused his offer, and the Cripps Mission (March–April 1942) ended in complete failure.

Throughout these negotiations, the Congress could not count on the support of the Muslim League. Mr. Jinnah now publicly expressed the view that neither minority safeguards nor separate electorates could save the Muslims from the Congress at the center. When the Congress Ministries in the Provinces resigned, the Muslim League observed a day of deliverance and thanksgiving throughout.

In the Lahore Session of the Muslim League (March 1940), Jinnah declared that the Muslim nation must have a separate independent state, Pakistan. First proposed in 1930 and dismissed as impractical, the Muslim League formally endorsed it under the leadership of Jinnah. From that date on, all attempts at reconciliation between the Congress and the League foundered on this issue of Pakistan. The government could also now refuse the Congress’s demand for a national government on the ground that Muslims opposed it.

On August 8, 1942, the All-India Congress Committee adopted a resolution, The Quit India Movement, in favour of starting a mass struggle on the widest possible scale. Soon, the British arrested all its leaders and declared Congress an illegal body. The government again adopted strong measures of repression, including firing from airplanes. According to official estimates, there were arrests of more than 60,000 people, detention of 18,000 people without trial, killing of 940, and 1,630 injuries through police or military firing during the last five months of 1942.

The British government soon faced another danger. Subhas Chandra Bose, who had escaped from India in 1941, made contact with Germany and Japan. When the Japanese conquered the Malay Peninsula, many Indian soldiers fell prisoners into their hands. Under an agreement with the Japanese Government, Bose, now called Netaji (Leader), organised them into an army that he named the Azad Hind Fauz, or Indian National Army. He inaugurated the Government of Free India in Singapore, and in 1943, his soldiers advanced with the Japanese army up to the very frontier of India.

In 1945, the Labour Party came into power in Britain. The new British government made an earnest effort to end the political deadlock in India. They decided to hold fresh elections of Indian Councils, both Central and Provincial, to reconstitute the Viceroy’s Executive Council. The elections held at the beginning of 1946 resulted in a sweeping victory for the Congress in terms of general seats and for the Muslim League in terms of Muslim seats.

The Indian National Army, organised by Bose, surrendered to the British after the collapse of Japan, and there was a trial of several of its officers in India for treason. This was a highly impolitic step on the part of the government, as it gave the Indian people a complete picture of an organisation of which they had hitherto known truly little. A wave of enthusiasm swept the country, and demonstrations happened in several cities. On February 18, 1946, the Indian soldiers of the Royal Indian Navy in Mumbai rose in an open mutiny, which, for a few days, assumed serious proportions. 

On February 19, the British Prime Minister announced that three members of the Cabinet would visit India “to promote, in conjunction with the leaders of Indian opinion, the early realisation of full self-government in India.” Later, on March 15, he referred to complete independence as a possible goal of Indian constitutional development, if Indians so chose. The Cabinet Mission arrived in Delhi in March 1946 and held a series of conferences with the leaders of the Congress and the League. As no agreement was possible between them, the Mission issued a statement on May 16, 1946, giving a broad outline of the idea of the future government of India and laying down the procedure for framing a detailed constitution.

The Cabinet Mission recommended a federal type of government for the whole of India, including the States. The federal government would deal with foreign affairs, defence, and communication, and the other powers would be with the provinces and states. The proposal was to divide British India into three groups of provinces: one comprising the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind, and Baluchistan; a second comprising Bengal and Assam; and the third the rest. Each province would have the right to opt out of the Federal Union after the first election of its Legislative Council under the new Constitution. The Cabinet Mission further recommended the establishment of an interim national government by the reconstitution of the Viceroy’s Executive Council from among the leaders of the different parties.

On June 6, the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission’s proposals, reiterating that the attainment of the goal of a complete sovereign Pakistan remained the unalterable objective of the Muslims in India. The Congress rejected the Viceroy’s proposal for an interim government but agreed to participate in the Constituent Assembly to frame the Constitution. The Cabinet Mission left India on June 29.

The Muslim League demanded that the Viceroy proceed with his scheme for an interim government even though the Congress would not take part in it. This the Viceroy refused to do, for he had already declared that it was to be a government of all the parties who had accepted the Cabinet Mission’s plan. There were also sharp differences between the Muslim League and the Congress over the interpretation of the Cabinet Mission’s plan. After a somewhat acrimonious controversy, the Muslim League formally withdrew its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission’s plan.

The Viceroy thereupon, in accordance with his previous declaration, reconstituted his Executive Council without any representative of the League. This complete triumph of the Congress provoked a violent reaction among separatist Muslims, and the Muslim League fixed August 16, 1946, as the day of “direct action.” On that day, while some of the supporters of the League contented themselves with demonstrations of a peaceful type, a rowdy section in Calcutta got completely out of control. They killed many Hindus by looting and burning their houses and shops. Soon, the Hindus retaliated, and for several days, the streets of Calcutta were the scene of communal riots of the worst type. Neither the League Ministry nor the Governor and the Viceroy, who were ultimately responsible for law and order, took adequate steps to stop the hideous violence that disgraced the name of the first city of modern India.

On September 2, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues became members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. Soon after this, the Hindus of several villages in the district of Noakhali and the adjoining part of Comilla suffered terribly from raids organised by bands of armed men belonging to the other community. This provoked reprisals in Bihar, where large numbers of Muslims received the same treatment at the hands of the Hindus. Pandit Nehru flew to Bihar, and the Congress Ministry there took vigorous steps to suppress the disturbances.

The Executive Council of the Viceroy, under the guidance of Nehru, worked like a cabinet and changed the whole spirit and outlook of the Indian government. Lord Wavell, whose power thus became almost non-existent, now sought to bring in the League members as a counterpoise in the name of communal parity. He told Pandit Nehru that the League had agreed to join the Constituent Assembly and had reconstituted the Executive Council by including members of that organisation. The introduction of this new element destroyed the team spirit of the Council, as the League members openly repudiated the idea of collective responsibility.

What was worse, the League did not join the Constituent Assembly, and Jinnah made the startling disclosure that it had never agreed to do so. It was an awkward situation for the Viceroy, and the British Government did nothing to improve it when it declared, on December 6, that if the Muslim League did not join the Constituent Assembly, the British Government could not implement the decision of this body, at least as it affected the provinces with a Muslim majority.

Nevertheless, the Constituent Assembly met on December 9, 1946, without the members of the League. They elected Rajendra Prasad as President and selected various committees to draft the various parts of the Constitution. The tense atmosphere continued until February 20, 1947, when the British Government made an important announcement of policy. It declared its intention to quit India by June 1948 and appointed Lord Mountbatten Viceroy of India to arrange for the transfer of authority from British to Indian hands.

This momentous proclamation evoked hearty enthusiasm all over India, save in the ranks of the Muslim League, which once again resorted to “Direct Action.” Riots broke out all over the Punjab and soon extended to the North-West Frontier Province, and looting, arson, murder, and violence occurred on a large scale over a wide area. These successive communal outbreaks had a very unfortunate consequence. The Hindus and the Sikhs, who had hitherto been strongly in favour of a United India, now gradually came to realise its impracticability and demanded partition of Punjab and Bengal if the Muslims refused to join the Constituent Assembly.

Lord Mountbatten assumed office as Viceroy on March 24th, 1947, and on June 3rd, broadcast the famous declaration laying down “the method by which power will be transferred from British to Indian hands.” The main points of this new procedure or policy were:

1. Areas with a majority Muslim population should be allowed to form a separate Dominion, and a new Constituent Assembly would be set up for that purpose. But in that case, there would be a partition of Bengal and the Punjab if the representatives of the Hindu majority districts in the legislatures of those provinces so desired.
2. A referendum would be held in the North-West Frontier Province to ascertain whether it should join Pakistan.
3. The district of Sylhet would be joined to the Muslim area in Bengal after the views of the people had been ascertained by a referendum.
4. Boundary Commissions would be set up to define the boundaries of the Hindu and Muslim Provinces in Bengal and Punjab.
5. Legislation would be introduced in the current session of Parliament for immediately conferring Dominion Status on India (or the two Dominions if partition is decided upon), without any prejudice to the final decision of the Constituent Assembly (or assemblies) in this respect.

There were mixed feelings among the public. The Hindus and nationalists of all persuasions deplored the vivisection of India, while the Muslims of the League were not fully satisfied with the “truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan,” as Jinnah once described it. It was, however, generally agreed that the new scheme offered the best practicable solution to the Indian problem. Accordingly, both the Congress and the League accepted it, and the partition of Punjab and Bengal happened through two commissions appointed by the British Government, with Sir Cyril Radcliffe as Chairperson of both.

The India Independence Bill, passed by the British Parliament on July 1, 1947, without any dissent, was fixed for August 15, 1947, as the date of the transfer of authority. Accordingly, at midnight on August 14–15, there was a special session of the Constituent Assembly in Delhi. It solemnly declared the independence of India as a part of the British Commonwealth and appointed Lord Mountbatten as the first Governor-General of the new Indian Dominion. Mr. Jinnah became the first Governor-General of Pakistan, which soon took steps to summon its own Constituent Assembly. 15 August 1947, which saw the end of the long-drawn National Struggle against British rule, is a red-letter day in the history of India, and the date will ever remain engraved in the hearts of millions of her people.

All other parts of this series can be found at the following links:

History Of Freedom Movement: The View Of R.C. Mazumdar – Part 1

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement in India By R.C. Mazumdar – The Politics Of The Book – Part 2

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – The Muslim Politics – Part 3

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – The Ruthless English: Attitudes, Second World War, Churchill, and Mountbatten – Part 4

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – Criticism Of Gandhi – Part 5

Excerpts From History Of The Freedom Movement In India By R. C. Mazumdar – Part 6 – The Revolutionaries; The Hindu Mahasabha; The Japanese Invasion; And The Inevitability Of Pakistan