The Terrible Price of Freedom 223patty Beach of Bombay and passed the Quit India resolution by a mas-
sive majority. Gandhi exhorted his followers to “do or die” in what he
envisaged as the final mass movement to expel the British from India.
Viceroy Linlithgow had by now perfected his plans to repress the Quit
India movement with a heavy hand and crush the Congress or ga ni za-
tion as a whole. Though he did not act on a suggestion from London to
deport Gandhi, the British government imprisoned Gandhi, Nehru,
and the entire top leadership of the Congress party in the early morn-
ing hours of August 9.
The Quit India movement began in the second week of August 1942
as an urban uprising in which students, other young people, and work-
ers took the most prominent part. The police opened fire in the major
cities of Bombay and Calcutta—causing, by their own admission, more
than a thousand deaths—and reestablished their control over the ma-
jor urban centers by the end of the month. From late September, the
movement took the form of an agrarian rebellion in certain districts of
Bihar, the United Provinces, Bengal, Orissa, and Bombay Province.
Mass fury was directed against all visible symbols of government au-
thority. Railway lines were torn up, police stations looted, and revenue
and post of fices set afire. Orchestrated by middle- ranking leaders, the
1942 movement was the biggest civilian uprising since the 1857 revolt,
and was similar to it in its varied, multiclass character. The rebels had
perceived British power to be vulnerable, after the hard knocks it had
taken in the early years of the war. Yet the British had established a for-
midable military presence to counter the Japanese threat from South-
east Asia. The weakly or ga nized rebels were overwhelmed by the armed
might of the British raj, which was unleashed against them. The gov-
ernment counted more than sixty thousand arrests and some four
thousand rebels killed; the Congress claimed that nearly twenty- five
thousand Quit India rebels had been martyred. By March 1943, the
back of the resistance would be broken.
Bose gave unstinted and enthusiastic support as Gandhi moved to-
ward launching the Quit India movement. Once the rebellion began,
Bose broadcast detailed instructions to the insurgents on how to sus-
tain the uprising and make it more effective. Having taken part in all