What was the significance and the consequences of the Quit India Movement?

Answer 1

the quit India movement affected many aspects of both british and Indian lifestyles. Politics were affacted because congress were all arrested and therefore during World War 2 congress almost ceased to exist. On top of this congress was declared illegal so there was no hope of others taking over from the imprisoned congress leaders. this let the Muslim league gain power and support from mainly Muslim populated areas. This therefore let the Muslim league have more say when it came to descision making with the British raj. Therefore eventually leading and contributing to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.

People were also affected because of the wide spread attacks on british people and on any building or structure which showed colonialism. Railway stations, telephone lines, police offices and post offices were attacked and destroyed by protests which were supposted to be peaceful. Gandi had condoned peaceful protests as the way forward but after his arrest on the morning of the campaign and the arrest of the rest of congress high command the protesters became angry and turned violent.

One person inparticular was against Gandhi and this was Subas Chandra Bose and he believed that Ganhis idea of non violence was not the way to go and so he teamed up with the axis powers of ww2 (Germany, Italy and japan). He took a much more millitant approach and so formed the forward bloc.He was arrested and then escaped and went to nazi Germany. The Germans sent him to Singapore to recruit Indian prisoners of war. He then built up the INA - Indian national army who would fight with Japan against India from Burma.

The wide spread rioting opened the gate for British repression. The British sent 30,000 troops into India to restore Law and Order. This could not be done easily and infact in some cases was dealt with brutaly and caused around a thousand deaths. Already mentioned was the imprisonment of congress to take away the leaders of the campaign and Gandhi remained in prison until 1944 and Nehru was put in prison, released and rearested in 1945. The government also declared congress illegal and stopped all there funds to cut them off completely.

Lastly the economy was affected because the British had to spend precious money sending troops into India to fight there own internal battles rather than sending troops to fight in the war against Germany. This could potentially have jeopodised Britains war situation. Secondly the rioting in the major cities of India like Bihar, caused supplies for British troops to become blocked making it increasing harder for the troops to protect the east boarder of India from the ever closer Japanese, and to continue trying to restore order and peace.

Answer 2

In this movement, Indians were shouting in a chorus voice to the British to Quit India. So the moment was named as Quit India Movement.