Do or Die

The resolution of 8 August 1942, the arrests before dawn on the 9th, and how a rebellion with no leaders left spread through Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Bombay

On the evening of 8 August 1942 Gandhi gave a crowd in Bombay three words: Do or Die. Within seven hours he and every Congress leader who could have organised the movement were in jail. This scene-setter follows what happened next, when hundreds of districts decided for themselves what to do with a slogan and no instructions.

The Ground at Gowalia Tank

It is the evening of 8 August 1942, at Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay. The All India Congress Committee has been sitting for two days. The monsoon has soaked the ground. Thousands of people are packed around the platform, and thousands more stand in the lanes outside because there is no room left inside.

The resolution has just passed. It is called the Quit India resolution, and it asks the British to leave the country now, while a world war is still running. Then a man of seventy-two gets up to speak.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi talks for a long time, in Hindustani and then in English. Near the end he gives the crowd one line to carry home.

"Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is: 'Do or Die'. We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery."

Mohandas Gandhi, Gowalia Tank Maidan, 8 August 1942

He expects to begin the movement in a few days. He expects to negotiate first, then to lead it himself, slowly, the way he had led the salt march twelve years earlier.

He has about seven hours.

Before Dawn

Police cars moved in Bombay, Delhi, Allahabad, Madras and a dozen other cities in the small hours of 9 August. By four in the morning Gandhi was under arrest. So was the entire Congress Working Committee.

The government had the list ready long before the speech. The plan had been sitting in a file for weeks, waiting for the resolution to pass. It worked exactly as written.